
CV NEWS FEED // Former President Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden easily won their respective parties’ primaries in New Hampshire Tuesday, paving the way for a rematch between the two men.
As of 11:00 pm ET, 76% of the Republican primary vote was in with 55.0% of it going to Trump and 43.5% to Nikki Haley.
Trump’s double-digit win was a huge blow to Haley’s fading hopes of capturing the Republican nomination. Her campaign had poured funds and resources into New Hampshire in hopes of scoring an upset.
On the Democratic side, 82% of the vote was counted by 11:00 pm ET. Due to Biden being a write-in candidate, the exact size of his win remained unknown at the time – although total write-ins accounted for just under 70% of all votes.
A little over 23% of the vote was directly attributed to Biden, with an additional 45.0% being “unprocessed write-ins” – of which the vast majority are expected to be Biden votes. The president’s longshot challenger Rep. Dean Phillips, D-MN, had 20.9% of the vote – a stronger showing than many polls had predicted.
POLITICO noted that “Trump’s back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire make him the only non-incumbent Republican candidate in modern political history to win the first two nominating contests.”
The New York Times added: “No Republican candidate has ever won the first two states and then not ultimately secured the presidential nomination.”
“Trump beat the governor of Iowa in Iowa, and the governor of New Hampshire in New Hampshire,” noted FOX News hostess Laura Ingraham.
Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu both endorsed their state’s second-place finishers – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Haley respectively.
National Review Editor Rich Lowry wrote that by exiting the race and endorsing Trump, DeSantis and Ramaswamy helped to stave off Haley’s chances of pulling the upset in New Hampshire:
For purposes of stopping Trump, the worst thing that may have happened to Haley was the further consolidation of the field after Christie left—she needed DeSantis and Vivek to hold some potential Trump voters.
POLITICO indicated that Trump’s convincing win “intensifies pressure” on Haley to “exit the race.” Haley has vowed to stay in the race, calling herself a “fighter.”
“New Hampshire is first in the nation, it is not the last in the nation,” she remarked following her projected loss to Trump. “This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go.”
Republican strategist Rob Gray said he no longer sees a path for Haley to secure the party’s nomination, adding that New Hampshire “was the best possible electorate for [her].”
“There’s a lot of highly educated voters,” Gray pointed out. “Independents can vote in the Republican primary. They probably comprise 40 to 45% of it, if not more.”
“She had to win in New Hampshire,” he added. “She did not win in New Hampshire.”
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Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy had strong words for Trump’s sole remaining challenger.
“The fact that Nikki is pressing ahead exposes the ugly underbelly of this race,” he wrote in a post to X (formerly Twitter).
“There’s no way she can defeat Trump through the front door, so her donor puppet masters are propping her up long enough while plotting to eliminate Trump from the ballot,” he stated. “It’s ugly. But it’s the TRUTH.”
Sen. J.D. Vance, R-OH, congratulated Trump on his “decisive victory,” adding: “At this point Haley can either drop out or help the Democrats.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, also called for Haley to drop out of the race.
“For the sake of the Republic, it is well past time for her to suspend her failing campaign and unite behind President Trump to take on the most corrupt president in history Joe Biden,” Stefanik wrote in a statement she posted to X.
“I know President Trump will defeat Joe Biden; the voters know it, Joe Biden knows it, and Nikki Haley knows it,” the congresswoman went on. “Any effort to desperately divide Republicans going forward will be remembered and seen as a direct assist to Joe Biden’s failing campaign. It must end now.”
Stefanik is the Chair of the House Republican Conference, making her the fourth-highest-ranking Republican in the chamber. She has supported Trump’s comeback bid since he declared in November 2022,
“The primary is over,” commented popular conservative X account End Wokeness:
New Hampshire was the last hope of the Never Trump movement.
Nikki Haley and allies spent a whopping $31,000,00 on New Hampshire.
The NH primary is open to Democratic and Independent voters, plus a huge swath of Republicans there are moderate.
“Trump won within minutes of polls closing,” the account emphasized.
Conservative political commentator Collin Rugg wrote on X: “[Trump’s] win is even more impressive considering tons of ‘undetermined’ voters are ‘strategically’ voting for Nikki Haley even though they’d never vote for her in the general.”
Rugg posted a video clip of an MSNBC reporter interviewing one such liberal Haley voter.
The voter, Dartmouth University freshman Christian Smith, said he would not vote for Haley if she is the Republican nominee, citing their differences in “climate change solution, a woman’s right to bodily autonomy [and] incarceration rates.”
Smith explained his primary vote for the former South Carolina governor: “I think a vote for Nikki Haley helps diminish Trump’s influence in the RNC.”
Meanwhile, National Review’s Noah Rothman analyzed Biden’s Democratic primary win as a write-in candidate.
“For a while, there was some speculation that Dean Phillips would have to clear 20% in his longshot challenge to Joe Biden if he hoped to send any a message to the White House,” he wrote in a post on X.
Phillips narrowly achieved that margin, despite one poll from last week showing him with only 10% of the vote.
“Dean’s performance against a sitting president from his own party is objectively remarkable,” Rothman wrote:
But Biden’s resounding victory as a write-in candidate, it must be added again, has muted the impressiveness of that performance.
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Earlier this week, Phillips indicated that he intends to continue his campaign “all the way to the [Democratic National Convention].”
CatholicVote previously explained that Biden ran as a write-in candidate in New Hampshire “[i]n protest against the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s decision to maintain the state’s tradition of holding its primary before South Carolina’s.”