The last Fox News Power Rankings spelled out the criteria for the remaining Republican candidates to make this race competitive.<\/p>\n
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had to take “Iowa Silver” and\u00a0outperform vote share expectations<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the end, the Florida governor achieved second place, but he was never going to shake up this race with 21% of the vote.<\/p>\n For former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley,<\/a> the criteria is simple: she\u00a0must win New Hampshire.<\/p>\n NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY CLASH: CAN NIKKI HALEY SLOW DOWN DONALD TRUMP’S PUSH FOR THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Taking gold will not be easy. Former President Trump<\/a> continues to beat her in polls, and despite the state\u2019s large bloc of “undeclared” voters, remember that the former president won the Granite State in his first presidential run.<\/p>\n If Haley wins, the pathway runs through the townships below.<\/p>\n Last week, Trump notched wins in all but one of Iowa\u2019s 99 counties. The exception was Johnson County, one of the most heavily populated in the state, where Haley came out ahead by a single vote.<\/p>\n Those results illustrate the divide in the GOP \u2013 rural voters all across the map turn out for Trump, making the cities must-win for his opponents.<\/p>\n In New Hampshire, Haley must perform well in the four cities with the highest raw vote in the 2016 primary.<\/p>\n For each county below, find Trump\u2019s 2016 primary vote share and, for back-of-the-envelope reference, the combined “Republican establishment” vote. In 2016, this meant former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. When combined, they beat Trump by\u00a0about 6 points<\/a>\u00a0statewide, or 42%-36%.<\/p>\n To be clear, these are not benchmarks for Haley. Thanks to a different field and New Hampshire\u2019s pseudo-open primary rules, there are no simple comparisons to make. She will, however, need to post strong results here to make a race of it.<\/p>\n Bedford is particularly important for Haley. This affluent suburb of Manchester is home to the types of voters most likely to vote for the former governor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bedford also flipped to Biden in the 2020 general election, marking the first time a Democratic presidential candidate won there since at least 1972.<\/p>\n Together, there are a lot of votes on the table in these four towns: out of the 234 municipalities in New Hampshire, they were responsible for 16% of the total vote in the 2016 primary.<\/p>\n The same towns are also home to 17% of the state\u2019s total “undeclared” voters, who can choose to fill out either a Democratic or Republican ballot.<\/p>\n Johnson County, where Haley took that one vote victory in Iowa last week, is also home to a large university.<\/p>\n In New Hampshire, Haley will be looking for strong results in:<\/p>\n Kasich won Hanover by a whopping 24 points in 2016 \u2013 one of just a handful of towns where the former Ohio governor notched a win (Rubio came in second at 18%, Trump was in fourth with 11%). Trump took Durham, but only by 3.5 points over Kasich.<\/p>\n Haley will need to do a lot more than win in these small towns to keep the race competitive tonight, but the size of her margins here will provide some clues about the strength of her overall vote.<\/p>\n Results start coming in at 7 p.m. ET, but 20 towns across the state won\u2019t close until 8 p.m., including Nashua.<\/p>\n Early returns will mostly come from rural areas, so be aware that they may not be representative of the overall vote.<\/p>\n Democracy 24 continues on Fox News Channel all day and throughout the evening. Stay tuned for insights from our best-in-class Fox News Voter Analysis and the Fox News Decision Desk, which will call the race.<\/p>\n Fox News will also have results from the Democratic race between President Biden<\/a> (who appears on the ballot as a write-in candidate thanks to a dispute between the DNC and the state), Rep. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson.<\/p>\n Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The last Fox News Power Rankings spelled out the criteria for the remaining Republican candidates to make this race competitive. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had to take “Iowa Silver” and\u00a0outperform vote share expectations. In the end, the Florida governor achieved second place, but he was never going to shake up this race with 21% of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}