Anti-Trump forces look to New Hampshire’s unique voter mix for salvation

MANCHESTER, N.H. — After Donald Trump’s blowout win in the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire Republican Joe Mohler became more adamant about his support for Nikki Haley.

A student at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce Law School, Mohler voted for former President Donald Trump twice, but he says he was “humiliated” by Trump’s denial of the 2020 election results and subsequent efforts to overturn them. He’s representative of a type of voter that could play a very important role in the state.

New Hampshire’s more suburban, less evangelically conservative Republican primary electorate gives Trump’s opponents a key opportunity to slow his momentum, along with the state’s rule allowing independent voters — voters registered as “undeclared” in New Hampshire — to participate in party primaries. Haley’s chances on Tuesday will rely on support from a unique coalition: Republicans open to a new party leader, those inside and outside the party turned off by Trump, and even Democratic-leaning voters who see Haley as a vessel to defeat Trump before the general election.

“I do not want see Donald Trump be the nominee for the Republican Party,” Mohler said, “and I was pretty much willing to vote for anybody that had a chance of beating him.”

Heading into Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary, multiple polls show the former president leading his former U.N. ambassador by double digits, though short of the 30-point margin by which he won the Iowa caucuses.

“I think she’s a strong candidate and also more moderate, without being divisive,” 22-year-old St. Anselm College senior Hannah Peterson told NBC News. Peterson voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, but is registered undeclared and called Haley “the lesser of two evils.”

“