When Haley arrives, her fashionable camel coat standing out amid the puffy jackets, the press corps descends like a throng of obnoxious uncaring microphone waving drones, silently elbowing their way around voters to shove cameras in as the candidate takes selfies with eager fans and staffers demand they leave a lane for voters. Haley is a practiced expert at this by now: always smiling, deftly kneeling for younger fans, applauding the resistance to cold to make democracy happen.
If you saw this scene play out, you might think this is a competitive election. But even among her supporters, many admit that they don’t expect her to win tonight. “She’ll keep it close,” Jennifer Nassour tells me — the former GOP chairwoman of Massachusetts when Scott Brown pulled off his upset Senate win, she’s familiar with long odds. “The really important thing is that we don’t let voices in the Trump camp and the media figures who are in the tank for him call this election before more voices are heard. That’s not fair and balanced.”
[In forty minutes, we’ll start to find out. Haley insists she’s staying in the race no matter what happens tonight, and I’ll have more thoughts on that in my post with the live-results widgets. — Ed]
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