Trump holds off Haley to win New Hampshire primary: Full coverage

An angry Donald Trump took the stage Tuesday night in New Hampshire to celebrate his victory in the state’s primary and to mock his opponent Nikki Haley for having “a very bad night.”

Trump began by labeling Haley an imposter who had claimed a victory earlier in the evening.

“She did very poorly, actually. She had to win,” Trump said.

The former president was joined on stage by, among others, former primary rival Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump invited to join in on the attack on Haley.

“The only person more angry than — let’s say me, but I don’t get too angry, I get even,” Trump said as he introduced a grinning Ramaswamy.

Trump also made fun of Haley’s appearance, saying that she had worn a fancy dress that night “that probably wasn’t so fancy.”

Also joining Trump on stage was South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who endorsed Trump last week. Haley had originally appointed Scott to his seat in 2013 to fill a vacancy, a fact Trump was eager to bring up.

“Did you ever think that she actually appointed you ... you must really hate her,” Trump said to a laughing Scott.

The senator then clarified that he did not hate Haley — he just loved Trump.

Speaking after her New Hampshire primary loss on Tuesday night, Nikki Haley vowed to soldier on to South Carolina, which votes on Feb. 24.

"This race is far from over," the former Palmetto State governor told supporters. "There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina."

Haley's campaign previously announced a $4 million statewide ad buy in South Carolina, and she will hold a rally Wednesday night in North Charleston, S.C.

The latest polling averages, however, show Haley (25%) trailing Trump (61%) by 36 points in the her home state — and by even wider margins in subsequent, delegate-rich states such as Wisconsin (-34 points), Ohio (-48 points), Florida (-52 points) and Texas (-53 points).

Nationally, the most recent Yahoo News/YouGov survey, from mid-December, found Trump leading Haley 70% to 19% in a head-to-head matchup.

“South Carolina voters don't want a coronation; they want an election,” Haley insisted. “And we're gonna give them one."

Data from AP VoteCast breaks down the New Hampshire primary results by a variety of voter demographics, priorities and positions on specific issues.

Nikki Haley was defiant after losing the New Hampshire primary Tuesday.

She spoke to supporters with less than a quarter of the vote counted. Donald Trump's lead was 8 points when she began her remarks, and had grown to 10 points by the time she finished.

But Haley used the moment to make her pitch to Republican primary voters on pragmatic grounds.

"A Trump nomination is a Biden win and a Kamala Harris presidency," Haley said. "I defeat Biden handily."

She challenged Trump to face her in a debate. And she said that the next few weeks until the South Carolina primary on Feb. 24 will be pivotal.

"Most Americans do not want a rematch between Biden and Trump," Haley said. "The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election, and I think it should be the Republicans that win this election."

The Associated Press led the way Tuesday, calling the New Hampshire primary for Donald Trump ahead of other networks. Here's how the organization described its calculation:

Read more on the AP’s methodology here.

Donald Trump defeated Nikki Haley in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, besting his last major challenger for the 2024 Republican nomination in what had been her strongest state — and moving closer to a general-election rematch against President Biden.

The Associated Press called New Hampshire for Trump at 8 p.m. ET, just as the last polls closed there. With less than a quarter of precincts reporting, Trump led Haley 53% to 46% — an insurmountable margin given the composition of the votes yet to be counted, according to the AP.

Trump employed what advisers called a “pincer” strategy, squeezing Haley from the right on border issues and from the left on her willingness to raise the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare.

The night before the primary, the former president rallied with a trio of ex-candidates who’d dropped out and endorsed him — South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy — in a “show of force” meant to convey a “united” GOP.

Read more here.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican who is a member of House GOP leadership, was among the first to call on Nikki Haley to drop out of the GOP contest for the presidential nomination Tuesday evening.

"For the sake of the Republic, it is well past time for her to suspend her failing campaign and unite behind President Trump," Stefanik said in a statement, issued before any winner had been declared in the New Hampshire primary.

Stefanik has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Trump. She has become one of the most strident voices in the Republican Party. Liz Cheney, a former member of House Republican leadership, on Tuesday called Stefanik a "crackpot."

Other Republican Trump supporters have also called on Haley to exit the race.

Hours before the polls closed in New Hampshire, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that "if the GOP wants to defeat Joe Biden this November, Nikki Haley must get out of the race."

A CNN exit poll of New Hampshire primary voters shows a drastic difference between how Trump and Haley voters view the results of the last presidential election. According to the poll, 80% of Trump voters said they did not think Joe Biden legitimately won in 2020 (he did), compared to Haley voters, 83% of whom said Biden was the legitimate winner.

President Biden, who is not officially competing in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire this evening, headlined an abortion rights rally earlier in Virginia.

The event was one of many that Democrats have had in recent days to commemorate the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal throughout the U.S. That decision was then overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, thanks in large part to the three justices appointed by Donald Trump.

"The person most responsible for taking away this freedom in America is Donald Trump," Biden said at the rally.

But while Democrats are broadly united when it comes to abortion, Biden has faced criticism from some on the left for his steadfast support of Israel in its ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza. Some of these critics were in attendance at the Virginia event, repeatedly heckling Biden with chants of "Ceasefire now" and "Genocide Joe" before they were removed by security, according to Reuters.

"This is going to go on for a while," Biden told the crowd as the protesters were removed, the Associated Press reported. "They got this planned."

Donald Trump claimed Tuesday on his social media website that "Democrats and Independents are allowed to vote in the Republican primary," which is not accurate.

Trump made the false claim as voters were going to the polls in the New Hampshire primary, where only Republicans and unaffiliated voters — those not registered with either party — can vote in the Republican primary.

Nikki Haley's campaign wrote a memo Tuesday touting her appeal to independent voters.

Nikki Haley made it very clear today that she has no plans to drop out of the Republican presidential race after the New Hampshire primary, regardless of the outcome.

Why? Well, her campaign released a 715-word memo explaining that a majority of the states that have yet to hold primaries allow independent voters — who Haley hopes to win over — to take part.

"Nikki Haley is the beneficiary of those Independents — in both the Republican primaries and the general election," Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney wrote in the memo, which was sent to reporters.

That includes the next big primary, in South Carolina on Saturday, Feb. 24. South Carolina "has no party registration, and anyone can vote in the Republican primary if they have not already voted in the Democrat primary," Ankney wrote.

The Michigan primary on Feb. 27 is also open to independent voters. And then, out of 16 states holding primaries on March 5 — Super Tuesday — 11 of them "have open or semi-open primaries," she wrote.

"After Super Tuesday, we will have a very good picture of where this race stands," Ankney wrote.

The Haley campaign, however, will have to deal with declining support from donors if she loses big in New Hampshire, former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod pointed out on CNN.

Photojournalists capture more scenes from across New Hampshire as voters cast their ballots in the first official primary election of the 2024 presidential race.

Voters in New Hampshire are legally allowed to take and post photos of their completed ballots, aka "ballot selfies." But that's only because a federal judge ruled back in 2016 that a state law barring voters from publishing photos of their ballots violated the First Amendment.

In other states, like Wisconsin, the practice is not legal. Felony charges were brought against a local official after he posted a marked ballot selfie from an April 2022 election on Facebook. (The charges were ultimately dropped.)

A proposal to legalize ballot selfies passed the Wisconsin Senate in 2020, but it died in the state Assembly.

The New Hampshire primary comes just after the Iowa caucuses, but the two states rarely pick the same Republican candidate.

So why are New Hampshire and Iowa so rarely in agreement? Because they’re very different states. Yahoo News Chief National Correspondent Jon Ward explains what the states do and don’t have in common:

New Hampshire is not as politically or culturally conservative as Iowa, in line with the general contrasts between the Northeast and the Midwest.

Haley’s strength with moderate voters is a big reason she’s competitive in the state, which historically tends to support more centrist Republicans, such as Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Trump, however, did win the New Hampshire primary in 2016 after losing Iowa to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

There are also far fewer evangelical Christian voters in New Hampshire than there are in Iowa. Evangelicals tend to be some of Trump’s most fervent supporters.

And unlike in Iowa, voters who are not registered with either political party can vote in the New Hampshire primary. In fact, this group makes up the largest group of registered voters there.

One major similarity between Iowa and New Hampshire, however, is that they’re both overwhelmingly white — much whiter than the country as a whole.

This is the major reason why the Democratic National Committee and the Biden White House say that South Carolina should hold the first presidential primary. (Although it should be noted that Biden won South Carolina when he ran for president four years ago after finishing a distant fifth in New Hampshire.)

Preliminary exit poll results reveal that more than half of New Hampshire voters do not identify themselves as part of Donald Trump's MAGA movement, as reported by CNN and CBS:

History has not been kind to Republican presidential candidates who don't win the New Hampshire primary. Since 1952, every GOP nominee save three — Barry Goldwater (1964), Bob Dole (1996) and George W. Bush (2000) — has first won the Granite State.

So if Donald Trump prevails tonight, Nikki Haley had better hope Trump turns out to be more like John McCain (the 2000 New Hampshire winner who later failed to win the presidential nomination) than, say, Ronald Reagan (who won New Hampshire and later became the party's presidential nominee).

And if Haley loses New Hampshire on top of losing Iowa, there's very little precedent — in either party — to suggest that she can come back and secure the GOP nomination.

Only three candidates — Democrats George McGovern (1972), Bill Clinton (1992) and Joe Biden (2020) — managed that feat.

President Biden's name isn't on the New Hampshire primary ballot this year due to a dispute between the state and the Democratic National Committee. So Biden's allies are instead encouraging Democrats to write his name in.

Biden had requested in 2022 that the DNC put South Carolina at the front of the primary pack. The main justification for the move is that while New Hampshire is overwhelmingly white, South Carolina is relatively diverse.

That meant New Hampshire was — as far as the DNC was concerned — booted from its first-in-the-nation primary status. But New Hampshire state law mandates that its primary needs to go a week before anyone else's, so it is still holding a Democratic contest even though the DNC says the results will not matter.

Biden is expected to win the Democratic primary handily despite not being on the ballot, although he faces competition from author Marianne Williamson and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips.

Photojournalists on the ground captured scenes from around New Hampshire as primary voters in the Granite State headed to the polls on Tuesday.

The daughter of immigrants from India, Nikki Haley was born in South Carolina as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. And on social media, Donald Trump has been mocking her birth name, repeatedly referring to Haley as "Nimbra."

Haley has responded to the taunt by saying the former president is "insecure" and feels "threatened" by her.

Over the weekend, Trump doubled down, telling Fox News host Bret Baier that the nickname just "came" to him.

"It's just something that came. It's a little bit of a takeoff on her name. You know, her name, wherever she may come from," Trump said.

"I have fun with it," he added of his penchant for handing out nicknames to his rivals. "And sometimes, to tell you the truth, it's a very effective tool."

So when will we know who won tonight's primaries in New Hampshire? Probably sometime between 8 and 9 p.m. ET, if history is any guide.

Most of New Hampshire’s roughly 300 polling places close at 7 p.m. ET; a few stay open until 8 p.m. The Associated Press doesn’t expect to make any calls before the last polls close. But depending on how big tonight’s margins of victory are, the AP could very well start declaring winners right at 8 p.m.

That’s precisely what happened in 2016, the last time there were contested primaries on both the Republican and Democratic sides. That year, the AP immediately called New Hampshire on the Democratic side for independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and soon-to-be Republican President Donald Trump.

Again, their margins of victory were determinative. Sanders defeated Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by more than 22 percentage points, earning 60% of the vote; Trump (35%) bested his nearest challenger, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (16%), by almost as much.

If those contests had been closer, the calls would have taken longer. In 2008, when Clinton upset soon-to-be Democratic President Barack Obama by just 2.6 points, the AP didn’t declare her the winner until 10:30 p.m.

But tonight, early calls seem more likely than not. According to FiveThirtyEight's final New Hampshire polling average, Trump leads his former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley 54% to 36% — an 18-point margin. President Biden leads Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips by far more.

One slight complicating factor: Biden’s name isn’t actually on the New Hampshire ballot due to a dispute over whether the state should continue voting first this year. So election workers will need extra time to count his write-in votes — which are still expected to vastly outnumber ballots for other Democrats.

New Hampshire residents — many with dogs at their side — have been casting their votes in the first presidential primary election today.

Donald Trump called New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu a “loser” in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, criticizing Fox News for having him on the air. The Republican governor has endorsed Nikki Haley for president.

"Why does Fox keep putting New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu on??? Every time I mention his name at a Rally, they BOOO like crazy," Trump wrote. “To have this loser on so much is really bad TV.”

Sununu hit back at Trump’s age in a post on X saying, "I suppose it’s tough keeping up with the conversation given your advanced age. Maybe try subtitles next time. Thanks for watching."

Paperboy Love Prince. Vermin Supreme. These are among the nearly 50 names listed on the ballot between both Democratic and Republican presidential primaries in New Hampshire.

The Granite State makes it fairly easy for someone to run for president in the state. If you want to cross “run for U.S. president” off your bucket list, New Hampshire is the place to do it. All you have to do is shell out a thousand bucks and fill out some paperwork.

On the GOP side, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley are among the top contenders. And on the Democratic side, Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson are the top challengers to President Biden. (Though notably, Biden’s name isn’t on the Democratic ballot this year due to a scheduling rift between the state party and the Democratic National Committee.)

New Hampshire voters can sport new “I Voted” stickers whose designs were hand-drawn by the state’s fourth graders.

The secretary of state’s office announced three winners from an inaugural statewide competition last fall in which any fourth-grade student in public, private or homeschool program in the Granite State was able to participate.

“The Secretary of State’s Office believes this contest can be used as a tool to teach students more about how our elections are run and how students can directly participate in our democracy in the future,” a press release from the office said in September.

Donald Trump and Nikki Haley continue to make their pitches to Republican voters — and to the throngs of local and national reporters trailing them in the Granite State.

"They're going to all vote for me again," Trump said in Londonderry, N.H., when asked how he plans to unify the party, including voters who backed him in 2020 but who now say they won't do so again.

Appearing on CNN, Haley zeroed in on what she clearly sees as an advantage: her age.

“You can’t say that when you’re 80 that you’re not in decline,” said Haley, who is 52. "Scientifically you're in decline, no matter who you are." Biden is 81. Trump is 77 and would be 82 at the end of a second term.

"I mean, look, we've seen him get confused," Haley said, pointing to examples of what she says were Trump's mental lapses. "Is that really what we want to do when we've got a country in disarray and a world on fire?"

Nikki Haley plans to still be in the race for South Carolina’s Feb. 24 primary, regardless of whether Donald Trump wins New Hampshire, the Associated Press reports.

“I’m running against Donald Trump, and I’m not going to talk about an obituary,” Haley told reporters at a polling site in Hampton, N.H. “This has always been a marathon. It’s never been a sprint,” she said.

On the eve of the Republican primary, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley delivered their final pitches for the party’s presidential nomination.

"We started off with 13, and now we're down to two people, and I think one person will be gone probably tomorrow," Trump said at a rally in Laconia, N.H., on Monday night, before taking a jab at President Biden. "The other one will be gone in November."

Haley, who made five campaign stops on Monday, argued that the country would not survive another Trump term.

"Chaos follows him. You know I am right," Haley said in Salem, N.H.. "Chaos follows him. And we cannot have a country in disarray and have a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos because we won't survive it."

The New Hampshire primaries aren’t even over, and Donald Trump is already being called the “presumptive nominee” by Republican Party officials.

The former president so far has won only the Iowa caucuses at the start of the 2024 presidential primary season.

As Business Insider notes, Sen. Steve Daines, chair of the National Congressional Senate Committee, said in a Jan. 21 post on X: "Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee. I am encouraging every Republican to unite behind him because it will take all of us to defeat Joe Biden, take back the Senate, and hold the House."

Hours after Daines made the comments, Rep. Richard Hudson, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, posted a similar message, saying, “Iowa sent a strong signal that Republican voters want the party to unify behind Donald Trump. He is the presumptive nominee. It is time to come together, kick Joe Biden out of office, and get our country back on track.”

Read more from Business Insider.

Heading into primary day, election officials in New Hampshire said they were expecting Republican voters in the Granite State to eclipse the record 287,652 votes cast in 2016.

According to the Portsmouth Herald, New Hampshire had 267,768 registered Republicans, 261,254 registered Democrats, and 344,335 undeclared voters as of Friday. Undeclared voters can vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary on Election Day. And Republicans have a more competitive primary matchup, with Donald Trump facing off against Nikki Haley. President Biden is not even appearing on the primary ballot on the Democratic side.

Which is why New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan is predicting Republican voter participation will outnumber that of Democrats by more than 230,000, with roughly 322,000 Republican and 88,000 Democratic votes expected.

Read more from the Herald.

Nikki Haley was up bright and early in New Hampshire on GOP primary day — first celebrating her sweep in the traditional after-midnight Dixville Notch vote on X and later visiting a polling place in Hampton, where she sported a bracelet emblazoned with “President Nikki.”

Haley told reporters the bracelet was made by a little girl she met on the campaign trail.

Trump has fueled speculation that he has a pick for vice president in mind. On Saturday he said people probably won’t “be that surprised” by his veep choice.

This past weekend, fellow Republicans campaigned on Trump’s behalf in New Hampshire, including New York Rep. Elise Stefanik and Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina and J.D. Vance of Ohio. All of them are thought to be on the shortlist of Trump’s possible VP contenders.

Meanwhile, Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s U.N. ambassador, said she’s not interested in being her former boss’s No. 2 in 2024. “I don’t want to be anybody’s vice president,” she told New Hampshire voters on Friday.

Trump also ruled out Haley as a running mate, saying at a rally in Concord last week that she’s “not presidential timber."

Voting in New Hampshire’s primary is underway. Most polls close at 7 p.m. ET.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ended his run for president on Sunday, saying in a video statement that there wasn’t a “clear path to victory.” He endorsed Trump for president.

Though DeSantis came in second to Trump in the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses and ahead of Haley, it was a distant second.

“Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear,” DeSantis said. “I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge. He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear.”

Read more from the New York Times.

The New Hampshire attorney general’s office is investigating what it said appears to be an “unlawful attempt” at voter suppression ahead of Tuesday’s presidential primaries in the state. The office received several complaints from voters who said they received robocalls that appeared to impersonate President Biden’s voice and advise recipients not to vote in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

“Although the voice in the robocall sounds like the voice of President Biden, this message appears to be artificially generated based on initial indications,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement on Monday. “These messages appear to be an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election and to suppress New Hampshire voters. New Hampshire voters should disregard the content of this message entirely.”

Read more from NBC News.

In recent days, Donald Trump has been pushing the false claim that Democrats are allowed to vote in Tuesday’s GOP primary in New Hampshire.

At a campaign event in Portsmouth on Wednesday, Trump falsely claimed that Granite State election laws “allow Democrats to vote in the Republican primary” and that “Nikki Haley is counting on Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican primary.”

This is false. Registered Democrats cannot participate in New Hampshire’s Republican primary. Only Republicans and independents can. And the deadline for voters to change their party affiliation was in October.

As CNN points out, the state does have a large share of independent voters who are called “undeclared” and can participate in either party’s presidential primary.

“They can pick which ballot to take when they show up to their polling place Tuesday,” CNN explained. “But registered Democrats can’t cross over to the GOP.”

In an effort to make the primary process more diverse, in 2022 President Biden wanted the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to hold the first official Democratic primary of 2024 in South Carolina. (It didn’t hurt that Biden won South Carolina’s primary in 2020, while coming in fifth in New Hampshire.)

New Hampshire state law says it has to hold its primary one week before any other similar contest. The state’s GOP-led legislature refused to break with a century-old tradition of having first-in-the-nation primary status, and it’s going ahead with an unsanctioned Democratic primary anyway.

Biden decided to not add his name to the ballot because the state isn’t complying with DNC rules. However, there have been efforts not associated with his campaign to get his name written in.

Since the state is going against party rules, the DNC says no Democratic delegates or alternates will be awarded based on Tuesday’s results.

The residents of Dixville Notch, N.H. — all six of them — cast the first ballots of the 2024 New Hampshire GOP primary shortly after midnight on Tuesday, and Nikki Haley swept the vote, winning all six.

"A great start to a great day in New Hampshire," Haley wrote on X after the votes were counted. "Thank you, Dixville Notch!"

The quirky tradition used to be something of a bellwether, with the winner of Republican primary in the tiny unincorporated township just 20 miles from the Canadian border going on to win the party's nomination in every election cycle from 1968 to 2012. That changed in 2016, when former Ohio Gov. John Kasich edged Trump three votes to two in Dixville Notch, but Trump went on to win the primary, the nomination and the presidency.

Read more from CBS News.