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

What really matters in presidential primaries is not the polls or the votes but the delegates. Specifically, the number of votes each candidate gets in each state's nominating contest will determine the number of delegates allocated to vote for them at the meeting of the Republican National Convention in July. A candidate needs to win a majority — 1,215 — of all available delegates (2,429) in order to win the nomination. In Iowa last week, Trump won 20 delegates, DeSantis won 9, Haley won 8 and Ramaswamy, 3. And 22 more delegates are up for grabs in New Hampshire today.

538 has put together a detailed set of benchmarks that estimate how many delegates each candidate needs from each state in order to be on track to win a majority nationwide. These benchmarks take into account how well each candidate is polling in every state and make projections of support in states without polls. From there, we calculate estimated delegate hauls for each candidate in each state, project how many they'd win if the election were held today, and then adjust their support nationwide until each is just barely winning the delegate majority. Numbers from those scenarios get published as our delegate benchmarks.

Because Haley is so popular with the types of voters who are more heavily represented in New Hampshire than in most other states, our benchmark model stipulates she needs to win a lot of delegates today to win the nomination: 22, to be exact — or every delegate in New Hampshire. But since the state allocates delegates proportionally, that is very unlikely to happen even if she wins more votes than Trump. Meanwhile Trump only needs eight delegates to be on track to victory.

Today's contest is a make-or-break moment for Haley. If she ends up winning the primary and can take home, say, 15 delegates, she may get a big enough bounce in the polls to make up the ground in later-voting states. But it is foolish to hinge one's presidential hopes on an "if."

—G. Elliott Morris, 538

In most municipalities, polls don't close until 7 or 8 p.m. tonight, but the votes are already counted in one New Hampshire town: Dixville Notch, which by tradition casts, and counts, its votes at the stroke of midnight on primary day. The results? Haley 6 votes, Trump 0 votes.

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Voters in Dixville Notch cast first ballots at midnight in New Hampshire primary

All six voters in Dixville Notch cast their ballots for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary.

Haley called it a "great start" and may benefit from some fluffy media coverage today about how she won the hearts and votes of this very small town. But, of course, the results in Dixville Notch don't mean anything for who's going to win tonight. In incumbent-less Republican primaries since 1996, the winner of Dixville Notch and the winner of New Hampshire overall have only matched up two out of five times, counting a tie in 2012.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

Like Iowa (which held its Republican caucuses last week), New Hampshire's distinct character has been a selling point for its first-in-the-nation status. People in New Hampshire expect to meet their presidential candidates, the cliché goes, giving candidates a chance to show off their retail campaigning skills. But New Hampshire's unique character — its smaller towns, independent political streak and relatively homogenous demographics — have also been cited as a drawback. This raises a question: How nationalized are New Hampshire's politics? Are voters in the Granite State asking about issues of local concern, or about big national topics like abortion rights, Trump's indictments and foreign policy?

In some ways, New Hampshire seems to march to the beat of its own political drum. Measured by DW-NOMINATE scores, its all-Democratic congressional delegation is on the moderate side. Among the handful of other states that also have all Democrats representing them in Congress, most also have a Democratic governor — but New Hampshire has a Republican governor. And in 2016, on a night that was largely disappointing for Democrats, New Hampshire narrowly elected Democrat Maggie Hassan to the Senate, and Hillary Clinton won the state, despite the trends among rural white voters toward the GOP, which drove Clinton's losses in several other close states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan) — higher rates of college degrees may have had something to do with that.

Looking at past elections makes this even more interesting. Until 2016, New Hampshire had voted with the winner in nearly every presidential election since 1976. In the 1980s, Republican presidential candidates were strong there, but Bill Clinton won the state twice in the 1990s. Then it went for George W. Bush once — but Kerry in 2004 — then twice for Barack Obama.

It's possible that New Hampshire still goes its own way politically — but it's also possible that, as the Northeast becomes more Democratic (and the greater Boston area spills out into more of the state), New Hampshire is actually becoming less of a politically distinct place, and more like a typical place that's closely divided but pretty consistently blue (like Colorado).

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor

According to a January poll from the St. Anselm College Survey Center, Republican primary voters said they were less likely to vote for Trump in November than they are to vote for Haley. Twenty-one percent of GOP primary voters in New Hampshire said they would vote for Biden in a race between Trump and Biden. If the matchup were between Haley and Biden, just 10 percent said they would choose Biden.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538