The Democratic National Committee sent a letter to the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party Friday that could end up helping Ambassador Nikki Haley — a more formidable foe to President Biden than Republican frontrunner President Trump, according to polls.

In the letter to New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman, Raymond Buckley, the co-chairmen of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, Minyon Moore and James Roosevelt, call the state’s first-in-the-nation primary “meaningless” and “detrimental.” 

The New Hampshire primary is scheduled for January 23, just two weeks away. President Biden’s name will not be on the state’s Democratic ballot, because New Hampshire’s Republican-led state government has refused to comply with Democratic National Committee directives to schedule its historically first primary after voters in the more racially diverse state of South Carolina cast their ballots.

New Hampshire is going first — per state law — anyway, consequences be damned. The DNC letter doesn’t mince words on what these consequences will be. 

“The event on January 23, 2024 cannot be used as the first determining stage of the state’s delegate selection process and is considered detrimental,” the letter says. “No delegates or alternates shall be apportioned based on the results of January 23.”

New Hampshire’s Democratic Party “must take steps to educate the public that January 23rd is a non-binding presidential preference event and is meaningless,” the letter says.

The way this could help Ms. Haley is if more “undeclared voters” — the largest faction of registered voters in the state — who can cast their ballots in either the Democratic or Republican primaries, are  persuaded to vote Republican now to make their vote count. 

Before the October deadline to change party registration, 4,000 Democrats had already switched their registration to undeclared or Republican, according to New Hampshire’s secretary of state, David Scanlon.

These undeclared voters are a wildcard in New Hampshire. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s long-shot path to victory hinges on high turnout from this group. In 2016, the last contested election on both sides, just over 50 percent of undeclared voters who cast their ballots did so in the Republican primary. This year, that percent could be much higher.

A Republican strategist in New Hampshire, Matthew Bartlett, though, tells the Sun he doesn’t think the average independent voter is that calculated or paying attention to insider baseball. “When independent voters are voting, they’re probably voting much more with their heart than their head,” he says.

The DNC letter came one day before New Hampshire Democratic Party members met at Manchester Saturday to select delegates for the Democratic Party’s Chicago convention. The letter also says that this selection process “has not been approved,” though Massachusetts’ governor, a Biden surrogate, Maura Healey, attended the event.

This may seem like an escalation of tensions between the state and national party, but Mr. Buckley told Politico in a statement that this is “nothing new.”

“They’ve been saying that for a year, yet we persist,” Mr. Buckley said.

The New Hampshire Democratic Party did not return the Sun’s request for comment. Mr. Buckley, though, was defiant one year ago, when he told the Sun, “The DNC did not give us our first-in-the-nation primary, and it is not theirs to take away.”

Mr. Biden, who pushed for the new primary calendar in a December 2022 letter to the DNC, has refused to campaign in the Granite State. Mr. Biden came in fifth in New Hampshire in 2020, departing the state before election day to focus on South Carolina. His win in the Palmetto State — and specifically his overwhelming support from Black voters — revived Mr. Biden’s campaign and catapulted him to the nomination.

Despite all this, Democratic leaders in New Hampshire are organizing a Biden write-in campaign. It will likely be successful, since Mr. Biden’s two challengers, self-help author Marianne Williamson and Congressman Dean Phillips, are polling in the single or low double digits in the state.

Yet there is still some worry among Mr. Biden’s supporters, since a New Hampshire Journal poll in December found that only 38 percent of likely Democratic voters said they would write in Mr. Biden, while 39 percent said they were undecided.

Ms. Williamson and Mr. Phillips took to X over the weekend to express their frustrations with Mr. Biden and the Democratic National Committee.

“The day Joe Biden gives a speech about protecting democracy, his DNC reminds New Hampshire Democrats their Jan 23 votes won’t count,” Mr. Phillips posted to X. “Well, Granite Staters, your primary and your votes absolutely matter to me, and when I’m President the DNC will be forced to practice democracy.”

“Election 2024 is not simply a decision between democracy and autocracy,” Ms. Williamson posted to X. “The Biden administration making that their message when they themselves are suppressing democracy in this primary is absurd.”

Mr. Bartlett dismisses the importance of the DNC letter as just “a food fight within the Democratic Party.” He tells the Sun, “It’s possible that Joe Biden wins the New Hampshire primary with a larger margin than Donald Trump.”

“The Democratic primary is rather uncontested,” Mr. Bartlett says. “Those who are motivated to write in Joe Biden will continue to be motivated to write in Joe Biden.”