For some Republican voters, to attend a Nikki Haley campaign rally is to dive headfirst into the warm waters of an alternate realitya reality in which Donald J. Trump is very old news.

Last Thursday, this comfortable refuge could be found at the Poor Boys Diner in Londonderry, New Hampshire, where a few dozen white retirees wedged into booths adorned with vintage license plates and travel posters suggesting a visit to sunny Waikiki. The crowd, mostly Republican and undeclared voters wearing sundry combinations of flannel and cable-knit, clapped along as Haleya youthful 51-year-oldoutlined her presidential priorities: securing the border, supporting veterans, promoting small business, and removing the kick me sign from Americas back. Haleys voice was steady; her words were studied; and the attendees beamed from their tables as though they couldnt believe their luck: Finally, their relieved smiles seemed to say, here was a conservative candidate who didnt sound completely unhinged.

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The voters I met had had it up to here with the former president, they told me: the insults, the drama, the interminable parade of indictments and gag orders. Theyve been yearning for a standard-issue Republican with governing experience and foreign-policy chops, and Haley, the former accountant turned South Carolina governor turned ambassador to the United Nations fits their bill and then some. When Haley finished speaking, voters scrambled to secure a campaign button reading NH ? NH . Some of them waited in line for half an hour to shake her hand.

If you havent checked the scoreboard lately, Haleys support has been ticking up steadily for weeks. New polling shows her at nearly 20 percent support in New Hampshire, up more than a dozen points since August, and knocking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis out of second place. She also leads DeSantis in her home state of South Carolina. In Iowa, Haleys support has grown to double digits, putting her in third place.

Haley is not exactly gaining on Trump. In all three states, hes leading the pack by roughly 30 points, which is a heck of a lot of ground for any candidate to make up. But in New Hampshire, voters were hopefuleven confidentthat Haley could win this thing. Maybe, some told me, with a hint of desperation in their eyes, their Trump-free alternate reality could soon be the one we all live in. Shes normal, Bob Garvin, a lifelong Republican who had driven up with his wife from Dartmouth, Massachusetts, told me outside the diner. With a sigh, he said, I just want somebody normal to run for president.

Some of Haleys new support comes from her strong performance in the first two GOP primary debates, where she often stood, stoic and unimpressed, as the dudes shouted over one another. When Haley did speak, she generally sounded more measuredand frankly, more relatablethan the others. In the second debate, she turned, eyes rolling, toward the cocky newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy and channeled the exasperation many watching at home felt: Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.

Haley has a clear lane. Shes seeking to build a coalition of Never Trump Republicans whod really rather not pull the lever for Biden and onetime Trump voters who now find him tiresome. She also seems to be appealing to the types of Americans the GOP needs to win in a general election: the college-educated, women, suburbanites. DeSantis, who was once expected to bring the strongest primary challenge to Trump, no longer seems to have a lane at all: Voters who love the former president dont need DeSantis as an option, and many of the voters who hate Trump have come to see DeSantis as a charmless, watered-down version of the big man himself. Hed be Donald Trump in a Ron DeSantis mask, one GOP voter told me in Londonderry.

Haley and DeSantis are surely both well aware that theyre vying for second place. The two have traded attack ads throughout the past month, and a few days ago, Haley was on the radio mocking the governors alleged use of heel lifts in his cowboy boots. Overall, though, the trend seems to be that, as the candidates introduce themselves to more and more Americans, DeSantis is losing fans and Haley is gaining them.

At a town-hall event that Thursday evening in nearby Nashua, Haley channeled Stevie Nicks in a white eyelet top and flared jeansa look that probably worked well for her audience of a few hundred more silver-haired New Hampshirites. The vibe was decidedly un-Trumpian. At one point, the audience burst into admiring applause when a scheduled speaker highlighted Haleys past life as an accountant.

In a disciplined, 30-minute stump speech, she laid out her conventionally conservative plans for shrinking the federal government, securing the border, and lowering taxesbut she also tossed in a few ideas that might appeal to Democrats, including boosting childhood-reading proficiency, reducing criminal-recidivism rates, and adjusting policy to support the least of us.

She took questions from the crowd, and when abortion inevitably came up, Haley was ready. I am unapologetically pro-life, she said. But I dont judge anyone for being pro-choice. As president, she elaborated, shed restrict abortion in late pregnancy and promote good quality adoption.

Haley tends to speak with such a straight face that she appears almost stern. And she begins many sentences as though she is imparting a very wise lesson: This is what Ill tell you. The voters I met found this appealing. Three separate women told me that they like Haley because they see her as a strong woman. One of them, Carol Holman, who had driven from nearby Merrimack with her husband, had voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. But shes ready for a change.

People are getting tired of hearing about Trumps problems, Holman told me, as she buttoned up her leopard-print coat. Holman loved Haleys performance in the second debate, and couldnt wait to hear from the candidate in person. She knows how to do it; shes not just a blowhard, she said, citing Haleys time as a governor. She made up my mind tonight!

The unfolding war in the Middle East also seems to have prompted more voters to take a second look at Haleys campaign, given her two years of experience at the UN. People are nervous right now, and she acknowledged a little bit of that fear, Katherine Bonaccorso, a retired schoolteacher from Massachusetts, told me.

Haley sees the attacks on Ukraine and Israel as a security issue for America, Jeanene Cooper, who volunteers as a co-chair for Haleys campaign in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, told me. She believes in peace through strength. In a television interview after the Hamas assault in southern Israel, Haley advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to finish them. Haley has long been hawkish on foreign policy; its one of the major differences she has with Trump and DeSantis, who tend to be more isolationist.

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The more people hear Haley, the more shell rise, Cooper said. Its time, she added, for the lower-polling candidatessuch as former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Ramaswamyto drop out and endorse Haley. As for DeSantis, she added, he cant fall that far and think that somehow its going to come back. (The DeSantis campaign has countered such assessments recently, saying theyre confident in the governors potential in Iowaand arguing that polling at this stage in the primary season is not always predictive.)

The third GOP primary debate, which will be held Wednesday in Miami, could give Haley a further boost. And new rules for the fourth debate in December would reportedly require candidates to have reached 6 percent in the polls, which, if their present numbers hold, would narrow the stage to three candidates: DeSantis, Haley, and Ramaswamy (assuming that Trump continues to boycott the debates.

The path for Haley to progress requires DeSantis to fall flat. If she can knock him out of the way, Haley could come in second to Trump in the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, and then score strongly in her home state of South Carolina, where voters know her best. Trumps legal standing is an important variable: At least one of the former presidents criminal trials is scheduled to begin just before Super Tuesday, which could cause some of his supporters to switch candidates. If the more mainstream Republicans drop out and endorse her, that could theoretically bring her close to beating out Trump to clinch the GOP nomination.

Thats a lot of ifs. The added national scrutiny that comes with being a primary front-runner could send Haleys star plummeting just as quickly as it rose. But the biggest problem for her and her supporters is the same conundrum that Republican candidates faced in 2020, and again in the 2022 midterm elections: The stubborn core of the GOP base wants Trump and only Trump, even if others in the party are desperate to wake up in an alternate reality.