Former President Donald Trump is expected to handily win the New Hampshire Republican primary.
After polling ended, The New York Times and Washington Post predicted Trump would beat former Ambassador Nikki Haley on Tuesday. The Times reported a 9-point lead for Trump over Haley with 52% of the vote as of 10 pm ET.
After Trump won, Haley called it a “great night”
“New Hampshire is first in the nation, it is not the last,” Haley declared at a Concord, New Hampshire, election night rally. “This race continues. Dozens of states remain.”
Trump criticized Haley’s reliance on independent votes all night, even though he used a similar strategy in 2016. In his speech to supporters, the former president stressed his victory.
“She didn’t win, she lost,” Trump remarked of Haley’s speech.
New Hampshire was a “very special place,” according to the former president, who used it to turn around his first presidential campaign after losing Iowa in 2016.
“So this was a great evening and I want to thank everybody in the audience and I want to thank the people that are standing behind me,” he stated.
Prior to the results, Haley’s campaign showed she’s staying put. But New Hampshire gave Clinton advantageous footing that will be hard to find in the coming weeks. The pair won’t meet again until South Carolina’s February 24 primary. Polls show Trump is favored to beat Haley on her own territory, which would be embarrassing.
Her greatest chance is to survive until Super Tuesday when the delegate race begins. She is also publicly recruiting independent voters for the GOP primary, following Trump’s 2016 strategy.
Leading Republicans want the primary over. Trump made several South Carolina-related endorsements before New Hampshire to show he would take Haley.
Trump lacks the delegates to be his party’s “presumptive” nominee. None of the early states offer huge delegate hauls in a winner-take-all race by design. However, Trump and his allies are leveraging early triumphs to argue that opposing him is pointless.
Trump won a state for the second straight time on Tuesday despite a governor endorsing a challenger. In the final days of the contest, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu enjoyed criticizing the previous president. Like Iowa, enough Republican voters ignored their state’s GOP leader. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster support Trump, so he won’t face a similar issue soon.
While Democrats have an unsanctioned primary, President Joe Biden is expected to win. The Democratic National Committee punished New Hampshire for staying the first primary state despite pushing South Carolina ahead, removing Biden from the ballot.