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

Although Iowa and New Hampshire both lead off the presidential nomination process and are both very white states, they have different-looking Republican electorates. Overall, New Hampshire GOP primary voters are less Republican, conservative and religious than Iowa Republican caucusgoers. This is due not only to differences across the two states' populations, but also divergent electoral rules that give New Hampshire a larger, less right-leaning electorate than Iowa. Thanks in part to these cleavages, the two states have voted for different winners in every open Republican presidential contest dating back to 1980.

One reason for these divergent results is that New Hampshire primary voters are less likely to identify as out-and-out Republicans than Iowa caucusgoers. Differing electoral rules help explain some of this contrast, as caucuses have lower participation rates than primaries. In Iowa, only registered members of a party may participate in that party's caucuses, and caucusgoers must attend these events at an appointed time on a weekday evening. By contrast, state-run primaries like New Hampshire's generally give voters roughly 12 hours to visit their regular polling place to cast a ballot, and they usually include at least a limited option to vote absentee. But critically, New Hampshire permits independent voters to participate in party primaries, unlike Iowa's caucuses and many other states' primaries.

New Hampshire Republican primary voters also tend to be less ideologically conservative than Iowa GOP caucusgoers. Once again, electoral rules play a role in this contrast. In part because of their higher barriers to participation, caucuses tend to attract the most committed and ideologically minded members of a party, whereas primaries attract a broader pool of voters, especially if independents are allowed to participate. Another reason for this ideological split is that New Hampshire's population has a smaller share of white evangelical Christians — a core part of the GOP base — than Iowa does. This is notable because white evangelical Christians are among the Americans most likely to identify as Republican, and they are more conservative than non-evangelical Republicans.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

On election night, we're used to poring over maps as votes are reported. In general elections, this can get kinda boring, since the places where Democrats or Republicans do well are often very similar from year to year. Democrats dominated in big cities and college towns? Yawn. Republicans are racking up margins in exurban and rural areas? Wake me up when we get to the unexpected part.

As it turns out, primaries — at least in New Hampshire — have some geographic consistency, too. My University of Pennsylvania colleague Gall Sigler and I estimated just how tightly correlated the results of different Republican primaries in New Hampshire have been across the state's 320 precincts since 2008. We found some evidence that different GOP candidates aligned with the establishment tended to find support in the same communities, while Trumpier candidates also had similar bases of support.

For example, in 2010, the GOP primary for U.S. Senate pitted establishment-backed then-state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte against more conservative political outsider Ovid LaMontagne. Ayotte eked out a victory by under 2,000 votes.

Ayotte's support from establishment-aligned voters was positively correlated with that of then-Sen. John McCain, the winner of New Hampshire's 2008 presidential primary, and Sen. Marco Rubio's support in 2016. That said, both correlations were fairly modest. McCain, Ayotte and Rubio had overlapping, but by no means identical, bases of geographic support. In part, that's because they faced different fields of opposing candidates.

By contrast, Trump's 2016 support in New Hampshire was negatively correlated with McCain's and Ayotte's support. In other words,Trump won with disproportionate support from New Hampshire precincts that had backed Ayotte's and McCain's opponents.

These patterns have held up in more recent elections. In 2022, establishment-aligned former state Senate President Chuck Morse narrowly lost the primary for U.S. Senate to more right-wing retired Brigadier General Don Bolduc, who had publicly doubted the legitimacy of Biden's 2020 win. And Bolduc's performance was positively correlated with Trump's performance in 2016.

All this makes sense: When primaries pit the same factions within each party against each other year after year, they're going to produce similar maps. And in New Hampshire, those differences broadly track with levels of educational attainment: The places where Trumpy candidates tend to do well have smaller college-educated populations, and the places where establishment Republicans do well are more college-educated. I expect to see that divide reappear tonight.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor

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.

ABCNews.com

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