MANCHESTER, N.H. (NewsNation) — The Republican race for the White House is heating up in early-voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire, with the war of words escalating between former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The two GOP front-runners have been butting heads over who’s a winner and who’s not.
DeSantis’ trip to New Hampshire was the governor’s first trip to the Granite State since announcing his run for president. There, he took a few jabs at the former president and attempted to frame himself as the candidate who could win the general election.
“There is no substitute for victory. We have to dispense with this culture of losing,” DeSantis said. “We should have 55 Republican senators instead of only 49 Republican senators. A lot of those were winnable races, a lot of those were flubbed.”
Looking at the polls, Trump has double-digit leads in most states and that’s the same here. In the 2024 New Hampshire GOP presidential primary poll by Real Clear Politics average, Trump leads with 41% of voters’ support, trailed by DeSantis with 23% and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu with 14.3% of voter support.
While Sununu has been a popular choice among New Hampshire voters, he has not entered the race for the White House.
Also, when looking at the polling results overall, 59% of New Hampshire Republican voters prefer other candidates over the former president — and that all boils down to electability.
“They’re concerned that Trump did not win in 2020, that many of his candidates and his message failed in 2022. So they’re concerned about that,” Neil Levesque, the director of New Hampshire Institute of Politics, said. “All these other candidates haven’t figured out what the secret sauce is; meaning, what is the key to taking that person who’s right now committed to Trump and stripping him away and bringing him into your own camp?”
New Hampshire has been a tough state for Republicans over the past few election cycles.
Trump, Mitt Romney and John McCain have all come close to putting the state into the Republican column. However, nobody’s been able to do it since 2000.
