MANCHESTER, N.H. — Any chance Nikki Haley has to defeat Donald Trump here and energize her flagging campaign depends on winning New Hampshire’s famous bloc of moderate Republican and independent voters, most of whom loathe the former president.
There’s just one problem: Many of those same people are also dubious about Haley.
In interviews in the days before Tuesday’s primary, many centrist New Hampshire GOP officials, strategists and rank-and-file voters expressed ambivalence about the former South Carolina governor, calling her a better candidate than Trump but voicing frustration over her far-reaching conservative ideology and longstanding reluctance to criticize the former president. That pervasive skepticism, they say, could lower her support among moderate voters — and make victory over Trump all but impossible.