KTAF NEWS

After months of campaigning, the list of Republican candidates for president has been whittled down to just three competitors.

The last two to drop out of the race were billionaire tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, after a poor showing in Iowa.

But with one candidate, Donald Trump, completely dominating the field, does anyone else stand a chance?

The eventual winner will challenge the presumptive Democratic nominee, President Joe Biden, in November’s general election.

Let’s look at the main candidates, what they stand for and what they are doing ahead of the New Hampshire primary on 23 January.

Donald Trump is sitting in the driver’s seat for the final stretch before the caucuses – exactly where he has spent most of the past year.

Despite a turbulent four years in the White House, the 77-year-old has an iron-clad grip of much of the party base as well as a commanding lead in national polls. His closest challenger, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, lost by 30 points in Iowa’s first in the nation caucuses.

If he can carry that lead into further success in New Hampshire, he will be well-positioned to send one of the other two candidates packing, although neither Mr DeSantis or Ms Haley have shown any signs of quitting.

Mr Trump has vowed to finish what he started if he is returned to the White House, including undoing the Affordable Care Act and expanding his southern border wall.

But his rhetoric has frequently caused concern on the campaign trail. He has also consistently repeated false claims that he won the 2020 election and accused Mr Biden of leading a “witch hunt” against him.

Mr Trump has made clear how he will attempt to use his legal woes to his advantage, turning courthouse steps and hallways into political stumps. Since the primary season began, he has made multiple stops to courtrooms in New York, verbally jousting with judges in cases against him, calling them “Trump-hating judges” and “biased”.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was once viewed as the candidate most capable of defeating Mr Trump, but has since faded.

In Iowa, he narrowly grabbed second place, receiving 2% more votes than Ms Haley, although he arguably campaigned the most among his Republican competitors in the Hawkeye State.

US media headlines are now describing his campaign as “in survival mode” after his disappointing Iowa performance.

Mr DeSantis has mostly looked past New Hampshire, where Ms Haley is beating Mr Trump in some polls, and focused his gaze on South Carolina.

Serving two terms as a little-known member of the House of Representatives, the former naval officer was boosted to the governorship by Mr Trump’s endorsement in 2018. There, he has backed a range of conservative legislation that has included restricting abortions and loosening gun laws.

After romping to re-election last year by more than 1.5 million votes, the largest margin in the state in more than 40 years, he was touted as the man to carry forward Mr Trump’s “America First” movement.

But an awkward personal brand, campaign trail flubs, financial woes and an onslaught from the Trump camp have hurt his once-promising bid.

Nikki Haley was the first major Republican candidate to launch a campaign against Mr Trump, jumping in last February.

Born in South Carolina to Punjabi Sikh immigrants, Ms Haley, 51, became the youngest governor in the country in 2009. She earned national attention by calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina capitol after a man shot and killed nine people in a hate crime at a historically black church.

Despite saying she was “not a fan” of Mr Trump in 2016, she later accepted his nomination to be US ambassador to the United Nations, a tenure marked by her dramatic exit from a security council meeting while a Palestinian envoy spoke.

At events and debates, the race’s lone woman has sought to find middle ground on hot-button issues and demonstrate her foreign policy expertise. She has also called for a “new generation” of leaders and for mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.

Her performance, along with an endorsement from conservative powerhouse Charles Koch, has pushed her poll numbers up since the first debate in August. She came close to second place in Iowa and polls show she has a chance at winning in New Hampshire, where independents can vote in the Republican primary.

A few recent slips on the campaign trail have pushed Ms Haley’s team more into the defence. In the last few weeks she has had to defend her comment that slavery was not the cause of the US Civil War. And in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper she had to explain recent on-air statements that the US was “never a racist country”.