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.
Latest headlines:
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
Trump’s evangelical base is missing in New Hampshire
New Hampshire is one of the least religious states in the country. That might help explain why Trump’s closest competitor, Haley, has closed in on his lead a bit there: He’s at 54 percent to her 36 percent. While in 2016, evangelical Christians and regular churchgoers were reluctant to throw their support behind Trump, this key Republican voting bloc is now his solid base. And they’re missing in this first-in-the-nation primary.
In Iowa last week, Trump improved on his 2016 caucuses performance by 35 points in the most evangelical areas of the state, according to a Washington Post analysis. That’s just the latest evidence that evangelical voters are his to lose. In the 2020 general election, he won 59 percent of voters who attend church at least monthly, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. More than that, Trump moved many of his voters to identify as evangelical Christian, regardless of their church attendance habits.
Evangelicals remain one of the most motivated, active parts of the Republican Party nationwide, and, without that, Trump’s campaign might be missing a little steam. In addition to being less religious, New Hampshire residents have other identity markers that pull them further from Trump’s base. It’s one of the most educated states in the country, and has had an active Libertarian Party. In this respect, New Hampshire Republicans are a bit different from their fellow party members in other states. All of these factors might be giving Haley a small opening, but Trump is still favored to win.
Looking beyond that toward November, New Hampshire has voted for the Democratic candidate in every election save one since 1992. So while the eventual Republican nominee will have a shot, the less religious nature of New Hampshire might be a sign that the state is simply becoming more solidly Democratic like its New England neighbors, at least when it comes to presidential elections.
—Monica Potts, 538