Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina – endorsing Donald Trump at Concord’s Grappone Center – was the latest sign of a Republican Party that’s closing ranks around the former president’s 2024 bid.

“We need a president who doesn’t see black or white. We need a president who sees Americans as one American family,” Scott said as he stood on the stage with Trump. “And that’s why I came to the very warm state of New Hampshire to endorse the next president of these United States.”

Scott, who ended his own White House bid in November, became the third former Republican presidential candidate in the past week to endorse Trump.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum teamed up with Trump at a rally in Indianola, Iowa, last weekend as he backed Trump. And multi-millionaire biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy endorsed Trump on Monday night, as he suspended his own campaign following a dismal finish in Iowa’s caucuses. Ramaswamy joined Trump at a rally in Atkinson the next evening.

And it’s not just former Republican presidential nomination rivals.

Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, became the 26th GOP lawmaker in the upper chamber to back Trump. Nearly 120 House Republicans are also supporting Trump, as are 10 governors.

Trump’s four indictments last year, including charges he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss, boosted his support among Republican presidential primary voters. For months he’s been the far-and-away front-runner for the nomination as he makes his third straight White House run.

The former president is miles ahead of his two remaining GOP 2024 rivals – Florida Gov. Ron DeSanits and former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley – in the battle for endorsements. And on Monday, Trump squashed the competition in the low-turnout Iowa caucuses, the first contest on the GOP nominating calendar.

While Haley and DeSantis remain in the fight for the Republican nomination, Matt Mowers, a former GOP candidate for Congress, told the Monitor that “a lot of folks are starting to look past the primary.”

But Mowers, a former New Hampshire GOP executive director and veteran of the Trump State Department, highlighted that Tuesday’s election is far from a sure thing.

“New Hampshire has a tendency to surprise at times too, so we’ll see how it all shakes out,” he said.

Haley turns up the volume on Trump

Haley, down by double digits to Trump in the latest surveys four days ahead of the New Hampshire GOP primary, is taking every chance she has to blast the GOP front-runner.

“You look at Iowa. I mean President Trump won a state of three million people with 56,000 votes. We had a very low turnout in Iowa. We’re going to have a really good turnout in New Hampshire,” Haley told reporters at the Newfields Country Store, her first retail stop Friday morning, as she pilloried Trump’s landslide victory in Monday’s Iowa caucuses.

A day earlier at a stop in Hollis, Haley blasted the former president for GOP losses at the ballot box in recent election cycles.

“The reality is, who lost the House for us? Who lost the Senate? Who lost the White House?” she said as she held a question-and-answer session with reporters on Thursday. “Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump.”

Trump called Haley a “disaster” at a rally in Atkinson on Tuesday night.

The next night, in Portsmouth, Trump claimed that Haley will “never secure the border” and that she “wants to gut Medicare and Social Security.”

Firing back during a campaign event in Rochester, Haley criticized Trump for his past support for increasing the federal gas tax and raising the retirement age and accused him of lying about her own record.

“He honestly thinks if he says something, it just becomes true,” she told the crowd.

After Trump falsely claimed this week that Democrats could vote on Tuesday in the New Hampshire Republican primary, she fired back.

“Another reason we need to move on from Trump: too many lies. Democrats can’t vote in the New Hampshire primary. They haven’t been able to change their registration for months,” Haley posted on her social media page on X, formerly Twitter.

Independent voters in the state are forced to register as Republican or Democrat to vote in the primary, and after voting, they can change their status back to undeclared.

Haley is getting a big assist in taking on Trump from her top surrogate and adviser in the state, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.

Sununu, who endorsed Haley last month and who has joined her at each stop on the campaign trail, has long been a vocal GOP critic of the former president.

Haley has repeatedly argued all week that it is a two-person race in New Hampshire, with DeSantis a distant third in the single digits in public opinion surveys.

However, the big question is whether Haley’s increased attacks on Trump, and her hustling on the campaign trail, can help her close the gap with the former president.

Haley is holding the type of retail political stops that are hallmarks of the New Hampshire primary, while Trump is holding large rallies only open to ticket holders.

“This is it. Stop to stop. Person to person. Town to town. Small business to small business,” Sununu told the Monitor as he spoke in his hometown of Newfields. “This is it. This is how we’re successful in New Hampshire year after year.”

Haley agreed.

“It’s touching every hand. It’s making sure we get out there,” she said. “We’re going to hit every single place we can. This is about making sure people know they have a choice. This is our chance. Don’t complain about what happens in a general election if you don’t play in this primary.”

Warmer weather forecast for primary day may draw strong crowds to the polls.

“I think we will have a good turnout. It looks like it’s going to be 40 degrees and sunny. That’s what we want to see,” Haley said. “We’re going to have a really good turnout in New Hampshire. So we feel good about it.”

Turnout predictions

Turnout in Iowa’s caucuses, at just over 110,000, was anything but impressive.

But the frigid sub-zero temperatures likely contributed to the depressed showing.

As of Friday, New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan was predicting a turnout of 322,000 in the state’s GOP presidential primary and 88,000 in the Democrats’ contest.

Scanlan also reported that as of Friday there were 267,768 registered Republicans, 261,254 registered Democrats, and 344,335 undeclared voters in New Hampshire.