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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Gender influences perceptions of ideological extremity

Dan mentioned that voters see more ideological space between Haley and Trump, than they did between DeSantis and Trump. It's worth noting that Haley will appear more moderate to lots of people, just because she is a woman.
—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor


Republicans on track to flip a blue state House seat

The presidential primaries aren’t the only races of note happening in New Hampshire tonight. There are also special elections for two seats in New Hampshire’s closely divided state House (Republicans have a 198-195 majority, with three independents and four vacancies, including those two).

And it looks like Republicans are on track to flip one of those seats that was previously held by a Democrat: According to Decision Desk HQ, Republican Michael Murphy leads Democrat Edith Tucker in Coos County District 6, 57 percent to 43 percent, with an estimated 82 percent of the vote counted. Although Biden carried this district by 12 points in 2020, the contested Republican presidential primary probably led to disproportionate turnout among Republicans.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538


What factors predict where Trump is doing well?

As more data comes in, we can get more precise estimates of the factors that predict where in New Hampshire Trump is doing especially well. One answer won't surprise readers: if one town's population has more college-educated adults by 20 percentage points, Trump's average vote share drops by 11 points. But in a state with a small immigrant population, it's noteworthy that towns with more foreign-born residents also tend to give lower levels of support to Trump.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor


Are governors losing their clout?

Astute point from an astute guy.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections


Welcome to 538's New Hampshire primary live blog!

It's been only eight days since Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses last Monday, but a lot has happened since then. On the night of the caucuses, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the race and endorsed former President Donald Trump, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis followed suit on Sunday. With former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson also leaving the race last week, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is Trump's last major competitor standing.

And everyone has their eyes on New Hampshire as potentially the only state where Trump has a realistic chance of losing. Haley has invested heavily in New Hampshire and has been suggesting since early December that today's race would be the start of a competitive two-person primary between her and Trump. She's got her two-person race, but whether it will be remotely competitive remains to be seen. Trump has only continued to consolidate party support since his Iowa victory, and anything less than a convincing win for him would be surprising.

So when might we know? First polls will close tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern, and last polls will close at 8 p.m., which is the earliest time we could have a race projection. But as we did last week (when Trump's victory was projected only 30 minutes after caucuses had begun), we will of course be sticking around no matter what happens to see how each candidate does across the state and discuss what it could mean for the rest of 2024.

And that's not all! Granite State Democrats also have a primary today, and it's a weird one — New Hampshire is violating Democratic primary calendar rules by holding it so early. As a result, President Joe Biden isn't campaigning or even on the ballot, but his competitors, Rep. Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, are. While Biden isn't expected to face serious competition for the actual nomination, his margin of victory today as a write-in candidate could be one early sign of Democrats' grassroots enthusiasm for the incumbent.

Bookmark this page for updates and analysis throughout the night!

—Tia Yang, 538