Former President Donald Trump seeks to end it on Tuesday and formally become the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee for the third straight election as New Hampshire primary voters decide between Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Haley, the last remaining challenger to Trump in the GOP primary, is showing sheer desperation in her flailing presidential bid as she tries to project a pathway beyond New Hampshire into her home state of South Carolina and further out on Super Tuesday. Polls ahead of New Hampshire’s primary show Trump far eclipsing majority support in the Granite State and Haley trailing well into double digits.
As in Iowa, on January 15, the big question for both remaining GOP candidates is: What is the final margin? A Trump victory is essentially not in doubt — a Haley win would be an absolute shocker if she did pull it off — so the variable here is what the final margin looks like and how early the race is called. If New Hampshire is a repeat of Iowa — as the polls suggest it will be — then Haley is basically dead in the water and seems to have no path forward to the nomination and may drop out of the race as soon as this evening. But if she finishes with a shocker victory or a very close second place behind Trump in the low single digits in terms of a margin, she will likely continue her campaign into the South Carolina primary in February and then perhaps on to later states like Super Tuesday and the few before it.
Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign event in Derry, New Hampshire, on January 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Haley is not even competing in the Nevada caucuses, but she is a candidate in the U.S. Virgin Islands caucuses, which both happen on the same day, February 8 — weeks before the South Carolina primary. So the next major contest beyond New Hampshire is the first-in-the-South primary in South Carolina, where Haley faces perhaps even longer odds if she stays in the race after Tuesday, as Trump has the support of both U.S. senators and the sitting governor of South Carolina, among many others. Polls show Trump’s lead is even more significant in South Carolina than in New Hampshire or Iowa, so Haley’s pathway to continuing her campaign after New Hampshire is essentially non-existent. But, the question of whether she recognizes and accepts reality remains to be seen and will be largely determined by the margin in Tuesday’s primary in the northeast.
On the Democrat side, incumbent President Joe Biden does not even appear on New Hampshire’s ballot, but his supporters have launched a write-in campaign to avoid embarrassment at the hands of his two primary challengers, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) and author Marianne Williamson. Technically, no delegates to the Democrat National Convention are at stake in the Granite State as a result of a spat between the Democrat National Committee and the New Hampshire Democrat Party over the date of the primary — that spat is why Biden is not on the ballot — but if the sitting president cannot easily hold off these challenges, that could spell trouble for him in later contests.
President Joe Biden (Andrew Harnik/AP)
In other words, Trump has a path to wrapping up the GOP nomination for president in New Hampshire on Tuesday evening, while Biden may very well see the beginning of a protracted battle for the Democrat nomination just beginning in the same state on the same night. Both fights could be determined by how Democrat-leaning independents break: Do they vote for Haley in the GOP primary, or do they help Biden lock down his party’s nomination by writing in the sitting president in the Democrat primary? They cannot vote in both.
The polls close in most of New Hampshire at 7:00 p.m. ET and in the rest of New Hampshire at 8:00 p.m. ET. Results are expected to begin trickling in shortly after 7:00 p.m. ET on the GOP side, and on the Democrat side, things are expected to take much, much longer — possibly dragging out until Wednesday morning — as counting mass numbers of write-in votes for a candidate not even appearing on the ballot is very labor-intensive and time-consuming. Follow along here on Breitbart News for live updates on the election results, as well as breaking news and analysis from the New Hampshire primary.
UPDATE 7:26 p.m. ET:
With 7 percent reporting now, Trump has a 7 percent lead over Haley. That lead appears to be growing as more votes are counted. Things are looking dismal for Haley’s future at this stage.
UPDATE 7:23 p.m. ET:
Dave Wasserman from the Cook Political Report has already called the race for Trump, saying Trump has defeated Haley in the New Hampshire primary:
I’ve seen enough: Donald Trump (R) wins the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary, defeating Nikki Haley (R).
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) January 24, 2024
This early call is terrible for Haley’s prospects, and a sign that pressure will increase on her to end her campaign tonight. A lot of networks will hold off on calling the election until after 8 p.m. ET when the rest of the polls close, but this is about the most terrible outcome for Haley’s prospects of continuing her campaign.
UPDATE 7:16 p.m. ET:
With about 3 percent reporting now according to the New York Times, Trump has caught up to and overtaken Haley for the lead. He’s up by a few hundred votes and about 3 percent now.
UPDATE 7:13 p.m. ET:
About 1 percent is now reporting in New Hampshire, and Haley has an early lead of just over a couple hundred votes. This is very early and viewers cannot read too much into this.
UPDATE 7:00 p.m. ET:
The polls have now closed in most of New Hampshire. The rest of the polls close at 8 p.m. ET. Early results are expected soon.
UPDATE 6:58 p.m. ET:
Haley is getting more and more desperate ahead of tonight to keep her campaign alive beyond New Hampshire, with her staff making two distinct moves on Tuesday to try to protect her from pressure to drop out on Tuesday evening. The first move was to announce a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday, and the second move was to release a memo laying out her Super Tuesday strategy. But even if Haley does well on Tuesday night and survives, she has a very hard pathway from here on out and Trump is clearly the odds-on favorite to win as pressure mounts for the party to unify behind him.
UPDATE 6:53 p.m. ET:
An emerging narrative is whether leftists infiltrated the primary for the GOP to try to steer it away from Trump to Haley–and with high numbers of registered undeclared voters turning out it may be a story tonight:
NH 2024: CNN exit Poll
Composition of the electorate:
Registered Republican: 49%
Registered undeclared: 47%
—
Do you think Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election?
Yes: 49%
No: 49%
—
Are you a part of the MAGA movement?
Yes: 32%
No: 64%https://t.co/Hmz746BnTc— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) January 23, 2024
When results start coming in it may be clearer whether this matters or not.
UPDATE 6:52 p.m. ET:
Polls close in just a few minutes in most of New Hampshire–and in just over an hour in the rest of the state.
Exit polling reveals that immigration is far and away the number one issue to New Hampshire GOP primary voters. Fox News exit polling shows that 41 percent view immigration as the top issue. Thirty-one percent view the economy as the top issue, and everything else is in single digits.
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