New Hampshire primary 2024: Trump projected to win, Haley vows to fight on

Last week I wrote a bit about Iowa's poor track record when it comes to selecting GOP nominees for president; it's been 24 years since the winner of the Iowa caucus went on to secure the Republican nod. So it's only fair we give New Hampshire the same treatment.

While you have to go back to 2000 to find an instance of Iowa voting for the eventual nominee, you have to go back exactly that far to find a time when New Hampshire didn't vote for the ultimate winner. That was the year John McCain rode his "Straight Talk Express" to a 49 to 30 percent upset over George W. Bush. Since then, the winners of every contested Republican primary (McCain again in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012 and Trump in 2016) have become the nominee.

Looking back even farther, New Hampshire's record is similarly impressive. From 1952 through 1996, the state held 10 competitive GOP primaries, and in all but two of them the winner went on to claim the party's nomination. In 1964, U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. defeated Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater 36 to 22 percent. Despite not campaigning or formally declaring as a candidate (he was in Saigon the whole time), Lodge garnered write-in protest votes from liberals upset with Goldwater and was boosted by an endorsement from former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. And in 1996, New Hampshire opted narrowly for Pat Buchanan over Sen. Bob Dole by just 2,136 votes, making it one of just four states Buchanan ultimately carried.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

A couple weeks ago, Leah Askarinam wrote an interesting article about which voters were fueling Haley's recent rise in the polls. It turns out, the answer was largely college-educated voters. Nationally, about 20 percent of college-educated Republicans were telling pollsters they backed Haley, but only about 5 percent of non-college-educated Republicans supported the former U.N. ambassador.

While nationally, college-educated Republicans still preferred Trump, in New Hampshire, Haley was actually leading Trump among that demographic:

That's good for Haley, considering that New Hampshire is one of the most college-educated states in the nation: 41 percent of Granite Staters age 25 and over have a bachelor's degree. And the electorate today is probably going to be even more educated than that. According to exit polls, 53 percent of voters in the 2016 Republican primary in New Hampshire were college graduates.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

According to polling conducted in December and January, Trump and Haley were about equally popular in the Granite State before the Iowa caucuses, with an average net favorability rating (favorable rating minus unfavorable rating) among primary voters of +20 and +22 points, respectively. However, in polls conducted since the Iowa caucuses, Haley's net favorability among New Hampshire Republicans has fallen notably, to an average of just +3 points, while Trump's has risen to an average of +32 points.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

If you're looking for something to do before results start coming in and you love New Hampshire politics, might I suggest listening to our 538 Politics podcast from last week. I talked to two lifelong Granite Staters who research and report on politics in New Hampshire — Neil Levesque, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, and Annmarie Timmins, senior reporter at the New Hampshire Bulletin.

We talked about the competing coalitions in the current GOP race and also about some of the broader political trends in New Hampshire. It's a state where elections have remained very competitive over the years, but where Biden appears to be holding up well in hypothetical head-to-head polling against Trump in 2024.

—Galen Druke, 538