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

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.


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Does electability matter to Republicans?

I wrote about this earlier, but the “electability” question usually plagues women who run for the presidency because of the perception that a woman can’t win the White House (and hasn’t yet!). But Haley uses the electability argument to support her candidacy over and over again, and is in her speech now, in New Hampshire.

—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor


Hanover still very anti-Trump

The New York Times is reporting more than 95 percent of the vote in Hanover, where Dartmouth is located. As expected, voters there still really don't like Trump! Haley leads him there, 86 percent to 13 percent. That's actually a slight improvement for Trump over his 2016 mark, when he won just 11 percent of the vote there. And remember that in Iowa, the only county Haley won, Johnson County, was home to the University of Iowa. Haley is doing great in the college town primary, but coming up short elsewhere.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections


What about Grafton?

Readers of A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear will have a close eye on the small town of Grafton. But so far, Grafton has yet to report its votes. Trump is likely to do well, as he got 45 percent of the town's votes back in 2016.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor


What do the early returns say about where Trump's doing especially well?

There are now enough towns where more than 95 percent of the expected vote is in, so we can start to look at the characteristics of the towns where Trump is doing especially well relative to his performance in 2016. The answer: towns that have lower fractions of college-educated voters, but also towns with higher per capita incomes. Farmington, New Hampshire — a town near along the New Hampshire-Maine border — is the town where Trump is overperforming the most so far given the town's demographics.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor


New Hampshire independents boosted Haley, but they weren't enough for her

Coming into today, a big question was whether independents would turn out a high level and put Haley in a competitive position versus Trump. Based on the preliminary exit poll, the answer was yes — but not enough for Haley to win. Overall, 45 percent of voters identified as independent or something else, and they went for Haley by 24 points, 61 percent to 37 percent. However, self-identified Republicans made up 4 percent of the electorate and. broke for Trump by 39 points, 74 percent to 25 percent. Even with a little help from the 6 percent who identified as Democrats (went for Haley 84 percent to 6 percent), Haley couldn't catch Trump because of his overwhelming edge among Republicans.

Another aspect of the independent question is New Hampshire's electoral access rules, which permit those not registered with a party — "undeclared" voters — to vote in party primaries. That group, which includes many self-identified independents, did turn out in a big way, making up 47 percent of the electorate to registered Republicans' 50 percent (same-day registrants made up the rest). And Haley won among undeclared voters 66 percent to 32 percent. But Trump won among registered Republicans 74 percent to 24 percent. These numbers will change somewhat after further weighting based on the results, but the big takeaway is that independents put Haley in range, but Trump's dominance among Republicans preserved his edge.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538