If the New Hampshire primary results come in on Tuesday night looking like the final CNN/UNH poll results released Sunday, there is going to be one question hanging over the race for the Republican presidential nomination: Is this race over?
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has said plainly that “the road is never going to stop here in New Hampshire.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has indicated that he intends on competing for delegates at least through the month of March.
But it is hard to imagine how Haley and DeSantis continue to fund their campaigns at a competitive level, never mind convincing Republican voters and power brokers that there is a rationale to continue onward following sizable back-to-back victories for former President Donald Trump in Iowa and New Hampshire where the former president collects a majority of the votes and the delegates.
There has never been a non-incumbent Republican candidate for president who has won both Iowa and New Hampshire. In fact, in modern presidential campaign history — since the Iowa caucuses have served as the official kickoff, followed by the New Hampshire primary — the two people who have won both contests outright were Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, both of whom went on to become their party’s nominee.
In the new CNN/UNH poll, one finding stands out as a particularly telling element in this race: When likely GOP primary voters were asked for their overall opinion of the candidates, Trump’s favorability rating was in a different stratosphere than that of his competitors.
Trump scores a 56% favorable rating from likely Republican primary voters, compared with a 36% unfavorable rating. That is a net positive 20 points favorable advantage for the former president.
Haley and DeSantis are both underwater. More GOP primary voters have an…
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