New Hampshire is where former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley plans to make her stand against former President Donald Trump, who is the far-and-away GOP primary frontrunner after his 30-point win in Iowa this week.

When New Hampshire voters cast their ballots on Tuesday, they will make their choice after months of campaigning and tens of millions spent on blanketing their airwaves and social media pages, a majority of which has been paid for by the Haley campaign and its allies. But it may be for naught: new polls released this week show around 50% of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters support Trump while Haley remains stuck in the mid- to high-30s. 

“The two most disliked politicians in America? Trump and Biden. Both are consumed by chaos, negativity, and grievances of the past,” a narrator reads in an ad released by Haley’s campaign this week. “The better choice for a better America? Nikki Haley.”

She’s made the case Trump’s controversies would hurt down ballot Republicans and prevent them from retaking the Senate and keeping their House majority.

"Trump says things, Americans aren't stupid to just believe what he says," Haley told reporters at an event in New Hampshire this week. "The reality is: who lost the House for us? Who lost the Senate? Who lost the White House? Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Nikki Haley will win every single one of those back."

Trump has argued the reverse.

“A vote for Nikki Haley this Tuesday as a vote for Joe Biden and a Democrat Congress this November. That’s what’s going to happen. You can’t do it,” Trump said at a rally in Portsmouth, N.H., on Wednesday night.

Haley is doing far better in New Hampshire than she is elsewhere, including in South Carolina — where she served as governor for two terms until joining Trump's administration. Her homestate is the site of the next competitive GOP primary (Nevada is having a caucus and a primary, but the trio of major candidates left in the race are not all participating in same contests). In New Hampshire, she’s done over 80 town halls and has secured the endorsement of popular Gov. Chris Sununu, who is at her side at nearly every campaign event. His father and brother, former Gov. John H. Sununu and former U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu, also endorsed Haley.

But the current governor is already playing down expectations.

“We always wanted to have a strong second. That was the only expectation we ever laid out,” Sununu told ABC News on Wednesday. But he previously predicted a victory for Haley, even saying “she’s gonna win in a landslide and that’s not an exaggeration” as recently as mid-December.

Haley, who narrowly finished third in Iowa with around 19% to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ roughly 21%, has been the beneficiary of nearly $30 million worth of television ads in New Hampshire since she began her campaign, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact. Ads from her campaign or allied political action committees have been on air in New Hampshire every day for 100 days.

Trump and his allies spent just $15 million and DeSantis, who is polling in the single digits in the state, spent $8 million and has no planned TV spending in the coming days -- in New Hampshire or elsewhere. Haley plans to spend another $4 million on ads between Wednesday and the primary, twice as much as Trump’s $2 million, according to AdImpact.

“Look, I'm MAGA all the way. I've always been America First. But this time, I'm for Nikki Haley for president,” says retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, the New Hampshire GOP’s 2022 Senate candidate, in a Haley campaign ad that aired this month. Bolduc, a 2020 election denier, once said that Sununu is “a communist Chinese sympathizer” whose family business “supports terrorism.” Sununu endorsed him in 2022 anyway.

“With Trump, there's too many distractions. There's too much risk of losing. Nikki's a strong conservative. She'll take Joe Biden to the cleaners,” Bolduc continues. 

The former U.N. ambassador’s presidential campaign has also spent thousands of dollars on Facebook and Instagram ads targeting New Hampshirites since the beginning of December, recording over 500,000 impressions. Her ads frequently describe her as part of a “new generation of conservative leadership” and tout her polling strength in head-to-head matchups with President Joe Biden.

But Trump has her beat on those platforms, recording millions of impressions on his Facebook and Instagram ads that are being seen by users in New Hampshire.

“Nikki Haley WILL CUT Social Security & Medicare!” one Trump ad blares, linking to a website that attacks Haley’s record. Haley says she won’t cut either program, but has called for the retirement age to be raised — limiting the number of Americans eligible for the long-guaranteed entitlements.

Haley has argued the primary has narrowed to a two-person race — DeSantis edged her out in Iowa, but is polling in third nationally and poorly in upcoming primary states — but she is unlikely to meet Trump face-to-face. He’s skipped every Republican debate so far and Haley scuttled two debates scheduled for this week, refusing to debate anyone besides Trump or Biden and frustrating some undecided New Hampshire Republicans at the same time. On Thursday night, she is set to participate in a CNN town hall at New England College in Henniker, N.H.

The time and opportunities to make the case she can beat Trump in the primary are running short, New Hampshire political observers have said.

“Haley still trails by a significant margin as she faces questions about her decision to skip the New Hampshire Debate, which may deny her the best remaining chance to close the deal with the voters she needs to make up ground on the front runner,” New Hampshire Institute of Politics executive director Neil Levesque said in a statement. 

Levesque’s institute partnered with Saint Anslem College to poll nearly 1,400 likely New Hampshire GOP primary voters on Tuesday, the day after the Iowa caucuses. Trump jumped seven percentage points since earlier this month to 52%, a highwater mark for him since the poll began querying New Hampshirites in March 2023. Haley also climbed seven percentage points to 38% in the aftermath of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy dropping out of the race. DeSantis remained steady at 6%, a number he’s sat at across three polls from Saint Anselm since last month.

Two other polls released this week — conducted by Suffolk University in partnership with the Boston Globe and Boston’s NBC 10 — found 50% of those surveyed supported Trump, while Haley was around 34% and 36%, respectively. Both Suffolk University polls reached prospective voters in the days immediately following the Iowa caucuses. 

Despite rising in the polls over the last couple months, Haley is still averaging around 34% to Trump’s 47%, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.

“You've got one poll that says we're both tied at 40. You've got another poll that says I'm down by 14. The only poll that matters is the one on Election Day,” Haley said on local New Hampshire radio on Thursday. “You've got two guys where 70% of Americans say they don't want a rematch between Trump and Biden. The majority of Americans disapprove of both of them. Both of them would be a president in their 80s, which is what we're desperately trying to get away from.”

Despite Haley going fully on the offensive against Trump, a tactic she avoided for months last year, it may be too late and too hard to win over some of Trump’s supporters, Jim Merrill said recently. Merrill is a New Hampshire political operative who helped run now-Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns in the state, as well as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 effort.

“What we've seen in the last year is the base is okay with the baggage, the base accepts Trump for who he is and they're not going to tolerate the kind of messaging that Chris Christie took on. Chris Christie punched Trump in the face every day” in New Hampshire, Merrill said at a panel discussion the day after the Iowa caucuses. “It didn't get them very far. And so I don't think there's much appetite there.”

“I think if three years ago today, we all said we'd be sitting here with Trump with a dominant win in Iowa and looking to maybe a big win in New Hampshire and closing the nomination process out, I think we all would think you're crazy. There's no way it's going to happen,” Merrill added, ten days after the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “But here we are.”