Trump and Biden had strong showings in the first-in-the-nation primary.
Former President Donald Trump will win the 2024 New Hampshire GOP primary, ABC News projects. As of 10 p.m. Eastern, Trump was ahead by less than 10 percentage points. While that represents a slight overperformance of polling for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, even a close loss is a big hit to her prospects, as she had staked her campaign on a strong performance in the Granite State. Haley spoke shortly after the projection to emphasize that "this race is far from over," while Trump (and his allies) amped up calls for her to drop out.
ABC News has also projected that President Joe Biden will win the Granite State's Democratic primary. A comfortable write-in victory for him despite not even being on the ballot is a good sign for the incumbent.
According to preliminary exit polls, Trump is doing about 10 points better with men than women in New Hampshire. In earlier primary polls, he was running more evenly, or better, with women. With Ramaswamy and DeSantis out of the race (and their endorsement of Trump), Trump likely picked up more support from male voters.
—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor
The first major news organization — the Associated Press — has called the New Hampshire Republican primary for Trump. Our colleagues at the ABC News decision desk, however, have not yet made a projection.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
There are a lot of arguments about whether the current nomination system that we have — influential early contests and the "invisible primary", where fundraising, polls and endorsements show which candidates have support — is effective. There's an argument that this system is effective at "winnowing" candidates who aren't able to unite the party behind them. But in the case of DeSantis dropping out on Sunday — unusual timing — it's not clear that this was especially effective winnowing. From a candidate perspective, maybe. DeSantis lost support as Trump gained it, and he didn't seem to especially strike people as an ascendant presidential figure.
DeSantis's departure from the race was good for consolidating the party around Trump at this stage, which is usually what parties want. But Trump is a complicated figure, and even as the GOP is increasingly his party, it's not totally straightforward. If your takeaway from the Iowa caucuses was that about 40 percent of caucusgoers preferred someone else, then it makes sense that a real contest between Trump and a competitor might have been good to have. Now the Haley campaign is trying to talk about a head-to-head contest. It's hard to know what a two-person race between Haley and Trump would have been like, and pretty difficult to imagine that Haley would be beating Trump now. But competition between Trump and an alternative might have been clearer if it had been a two-person race for longer.
—Julia Azari, 538 contributor
As we often say here at 538, results that come in early on election night can be misleading. That's because if you look at just the statewide results you don't know what's left to come in from where. Currently there's only 18% of expected votes reporting — so we're nowhere near what media networks and race-callers need to project the outcome.
That being said... One thing we can do is compare how Trump is doing relative to his 2016 vote share in towns that are fully or nearly fully reporting results. I took at look at five — Concord, Weare, Seabrook, Alton, and Conway — and Trump's doing an average of 20 points better than in 2016. As a crude guess, that would put him somewhere around 55 percent of the vote. If Haley gets the remaining votes, that would shake out as a high single-digits or low double-digits win for Trump. In other words, a little better than expected for Haley.
—G. Elliott Morris, 538
