MANCHESTER, New Hampshire: Donald Trump won New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary election, Edison Research projected, further asserting his dominance over the party as he heads toward a likely November rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden.
With 14 percent of the expected vote tallied, according to Edison, Trump had 52.3 percent compared with 46.6 percent for former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who had hoped the Northeastern state’s sizable cadre of independent voters would carry her to an upset win that might loosen Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party.
Instead, Trump will become the first Republican to sweep competitive votes in both Iowa — where he won by a record-setting margin eight days ago — and New Hampshire since 1976, when the two states cemented their status as the first two nominating contests.
While the final margin was still unclear, the results will likely increase calls from some Republicans for Haley to drop out of the race, though her campaign vowed in a memo on Tuesday to push forward until “Super Tuesday” in early March, when 16 states vote on the same day.
The next contest is scheduled for Feb. 24 in South Carolina, where Haley was born and served two terms as governor. Despite her ties, however, Trump has racked up endorsements from most of the state’s Republican figures, and opinion polls show him with a wide lead.
Haley finished third in Iowa, just behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, while focusing much of her early campaign on New Hampshire, where the more moderate electorate was expected to offer perhaps her best chance of winning a state over Trump.
“You just want to keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger. That’s our goal,” Haley said earlier in the day in Manchester.
New Hampshire was the first contest to feature a one-on-one matchup between Trump and Haley, after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once seen as Trump’s most formidable challenger, dropped out on Sunday and endorsed Trump.
Despite Trump’s win on Tuesday, however, exit polls hinted at his potential vulnerabilities in a general election campaign. He faces four sets of criminal charges for a range of offenses, including his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat and his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
Nearly half of the voters who participated in the Republican primary said he would not be fit to serve if convicted in court, according to exit polling by Edison.
A similar number of voters said they do not believe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, echoing Trump’s false claims that the result was tainted by fraud.
Edison projected Biden would win the New Hampshire Democratic primary.
There were also warning signs for Biden, however. More than two-thirds of Republican primary voters said the economy was either poor or not good, an area where Biden has struggled to highlight his administration’s accomplishments.
Republicans made up a smaller share of voters in the primary relative to the state’s 2016 Republican contest in the state, the exit polls showed. Some 47 percent of voters considered themselves Republican, compared to 55 percent in the 2016 primary. Eight percent said they considered themselves Democrats, compared to 3 percent in 2016. The share of independents was little changed at 45 percent.
BIDEN NOT ON BALLOT
Biden is not on the ballot in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary, having supported an effort by his party to move their first primary election to the more diverse state of South Carolina.
New Hampshire supporters were still able to vote for him by writing Biden’s name on the ballot, which could be a barometer of his political strength.
The Democratic president, whose advisers are anticipating a rematch with Trump, took aim at Republicans over their efforts curb abortion rights in a Virginia speech on Tuesday, but his remarks were interrupted repeatedly by hecklers protesting his policies toward Israel.
The US Supreme Court, with a conservative majority made possible by three justices who joined the court under Trump, eliminated a nationwide right to abortion in 2022, galvanizing Democratic voters in that year’s congressional elections.
Biden also has cast Trump as a would-be dictator and a threat to democracy.
’I’M VERY CONFIDENT,’ TRUMP SAYS
Trump, who is balancing campaign stops with appearances in various criminal and civil courts, denies wrongdoing and has used the criminal charges against him to bolster his claim of political persecution.
He predicted victory in New Hampshire early on Tuesday, saying the level of enthusiasm was incredible. Later, during a stop at a polling station in Londonderry, Trump briefly addressed supporters.
“So excited. I’m very confident,” he said.
New Hampshire, while also a mostly white state with a small population like Iowa, has a more moderate Republican electorate and a better record of predicting the eventual nominee.
Haley had stepped up her attacks on Trump as the election drew near, criticizing his affinity for strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Haley, 52, has also gone after Trump’s age — he is 77 — and mental acuity, attacks she has also regularly leveled at Biden, who is 81.
She took up the theme again on Tuesday, saying the country needs to put someone in the White House that can put in eight years to get it back on track.
“Do you want two 80-year-olds running for president?” Haley asked. Reuters
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