- Trump is projected to have won the New Hampshire primary.
- The former president has now won the first two states in the GOP primary contest.
- The Granite State was considered favorable ground for Nikki Haley.
Former President Donald Trump is projected to have easily won the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.
Minutes after polling closed, The New York Times and Washington Post both projected that Trump will win Tuesday’s primary over former Ambassador Nikki Haley. Haley’s allies once projected a victory in the state but in recent days have tempered their expectations down to a “strong” second-place finish.
Trump spent the early night railing over the fact that independent voters could cast a ballot in the race. The former president used these so-called open primaries to his advantage in 2016.
“SO RIDICULOUS THAT DEMOCRATS AND INDEPENDENTS ARE ALLOWED TO VOTE IN THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY, ESPECIALLY SINCE CROOKED JOE BIDEN HAS ABANDONED NEW HAMPSHIRE—BUT WORD IS WE ARE DOING REALLY WELL!!!” Trump wrote on Truth, his social media platform.
Haley’s campaign made clear long before the results were released that she’s not going anywhere. But New Hampshire offered her favorable ground that will be difficult to come by in the weeks ahead. The pair won’t formally face off again until South Carolina’s February 24th primary. It’s Haley’s home turf, but polls show Trump is favored to beat the former governor in what would be an embarrassing result.
Her best hope is to stay afloat until Super Tuesday when the delegate race will begin in earnest. She is also openly using Trump’s 2016-era playbook of trying to get independent voters into the GOP primary process.
Top Republicans are already calling for the primary to effectively end. Just before New Hampshire, Trump trotted out a series of South Carolina-related endorsements to further illustrate that he will take it to Haley.
Trump is nowhere near the number of delegates needed to actually be his party’s “presumptive” nominee. By design, none of the early states offer incredibly large delegate hauls in straight up a winner-take-all contest. But Trump and his allies are using the early victories to further the narrative that trying to stop him is futile.
The former president’s victory on Tuesday also marks the second straight time Trump’s carried a state despite a sitting governor endorsing one of his rivals. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delighted in tearing into the former president in the race’s closing days. And yet, just like Iowa, enough Republican voters decided to ignore their state’s top GOP official. Trump has the endorsements of Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, meaning he won’t face a similar situation for a while.
Elsewhere on the ballot, while Democrats technically had an unsanctioned primary, President Joe Biden is projected to have won his contest. Biden’s name wasn’t even on the ballot after the Democratic National Committee formally punished New Hampshire for insisting on remaining the first primary state despite the party pushing South Carolina ahead.
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