New Hampshire primary results
The 2024 New Hampshire presidential primary was held on January 23rd (Graphic by NPI with contributions from J. Stephen Conn and others)

Don­ald Trump and Joe Biden today pre­vailed in today’s New Hamp­shire pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry despite Trump’s author­i­tar­i­an rhetoric and Biden’s refusal to cam­paign in the state or even put his name on the bal­lot, in the lat­est indi­ca­tion that 2024 is like­ly to be a replay of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial election.

The Gran­ite State, which has a very unhealthy obses­sion with being first, chose to hold its pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry on a date that put it in vio­la­tion of nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty rules. Pres­i­dent Biden hon­ored the cal­en­dar approved by the par­ty and did not cam­paign in the unsanc­tioned nom­i­nat­ing event sched­uled by New Hamp­shire’s Sec­re­tary of State, leav­ing it to his sup­port­ers and sur­ro­gates to wage a write-in cam­paign on his behalf. They did, and loy­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers respond­ed enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, forc­ing elec­tions offi­cials to count lots of write-in votes.

Neo­fas­cist Don­ald Trump, mean­while, cruised past his lone remain­ing Repub­li­can rival Nik­ki Haley to a first-place fin­ish, dis­ap­point­ing Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Chris Sununu and oth­er Haley back­ers who had hoped New Hamp­shire vot­ers would inter­rupt Trump’s march to a third con­sec­u­tive Repub­li­can nomination.

With 81% of bal­lots count­ed, Trump had 54.8% of the Repub­li­can vote. Haley had 43.6% (113,123 votes). Trail­ing far behind them were Ron DeSan­tis (with 1,771 votes) and Chris Christie (597 votes). 474 vot­ers wrote in a name. 373 vot­ed for Vivek Ramaswamy, 204 for Mike Pence, and 151 for Mary Maxwell.

On the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side, about 69.1% of the vote was for write-in can­di­dates, with the vast major­i­ty of those going to Joe Biden. 17,701 votes were cast for Con­gress­man Dean Phillips and 4,403 for Mar­i­anne Williamson. A long list of oth­er can­di­dates failed to get more than a few hun­dred votes apiece.

It was an anti­cli­mac­tic end to one of the weird­er pri­maries in Unit­ed States his­to­ry. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic result will have no bear­ing on what hap­pens at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion. The Repub­li­can result only con­firms how slim Nik­ki Haley’s chances of get­ting past Don­ald Trump are. She has vowed to stay in the race for now, but it may be only a mat­ter of days before she withdraws.

“It is now clear that Don­ald Trump will be the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee,” said Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in a state­ment fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of returns. “And my mes­sage to the coun­try is the stakes could not be high­er. Our Democ­ra­cy. Our per­son­al free­doms — from the right to choose to the right to vote. Our econ­o­my — which has seen the strongest recov­ery in the world since COVID. All are at stake.”

“I want to thank all those who wrote my name in this evening in New Hamp­shire. It was a his­toric demon­stra­tion of com­mit­ment to our demo­c­ra­t­ic process. And I want to say to all those Inde­pen­dents and Repub­li­cans who share our com­mit­ment to core val­ues of our nation — our Democ­ra­cy, our per­son­al free­doms, an econ­o­my that gives every­one a fair shot — to join us as Americans.”

“Let’s remem­ber. We are the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. And there is noth­ing — noth­ing — we can’t do if we do it together.”

“Tonight’s results con­firm Don­ald Trump has all but locked up the GOP nom­i­na­tion, and the elec­tion deny­ing, anti-free­dom MAGA move­ment has com­plet­ed its takeover of the Repub­li­can Par­ty,” added Biden cam­paign man­ag­er Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

“Trump is offer­ing Amer­i­cans the same extreme agen­da that has cost Repub­li­cans elec­tion after elec­tion: promis­ing to under­mine Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy, reward the wealthy on the backs of the mid­dle class, and ban abor­tion nationwide.”

“Joe Biden sees things dif­fer­ent­ly. He’s fight­ing to grow our econ­o­my for the mid­dle-class, strength­en our democ­ra­cy, and pro­tect the rights of every sin­gle Amer­i­can. While we work toward Novem­ber 2024, one thing is increas­ing­ly clear today: Don­ald Trump is head­ed straight into a gen­er­al elec­tion matchup where he’ll face the only per­son to have ever beat­en him at the bal­lot box: Joe Biden.”

Trump cel­e­brat­ed his show­ing at an event with for­mer rivals Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy. Scott is one of South Car­oli­na’s two Repub­li­can senators.

Both recent­ly endorsed Trump.

“A very bad night for Nik­ki ‘Bird­brain’ Haley, but not as bad as last week, in Iowa, where she came in a dis­tant third,” Don­ald Trump’s account on TS (his Twit­ter clone) sneered, using all caps for empha­sis. “Next week, in the Neva­da Cau­cus, she didn’t want to play because of her bad Polling. She gets zero del­e­gates, I get them all. In South Car­oli­na, I am lead­ing by 30 to 50 points!”

Haley tried to por­tray the result as pos­i­tive­ly as pos­si­ble despite hav­ing lost.

“Thank you, New Hamp­shire! The polit­i­cal class want­ed us to believe that this race was over before it even began. You proved them wrong, and I am so grate­ful. It’s time to put the neg­a­tiv­i­ty and chaos behind us. Our fight is not over, because we have a coun­try to save,” Haley tweet­ed.

Nikki Haley and family on stage
Nik­ki Haley’s cam­paign released this image of her and her fam­i­ly stand­ing on stage at their New Hamp­shire pri­ma­ry night watch party

Haley also declared: “I’ve got bad news for the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment: I’m not going anywhere…except to my sweet South Car­oli­na. We’re not going to let them coro­nate Don­ald Trump when 48 states haven’t voted.”

Min­utes lat­er, she added: “Don­ald Trump’s only strat­e­gy is to lie about me and my record. That’s not going to work in South Car­oli­na. The peo­ple of South Car­oli­na know that I cut their tax­es, passed one of the tough­est immi­gra­tion bills in the coun­try, and moved thou­sands from wel­fare to work.”

South Car­oli­na Sen­a­tor Lind­sey Gra­ham — who once famous­ly tweet­ed “If we nom­i­nate Trump, we will get destroyed.……and we will deserve it” — dis­agreed. Gra­ham has refash­ioned him­self into one of the biggest Trump back­ers anywhere.

“It is my hope that we can now all ral­ly around Pres­i­dent Trump as the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee in 2024, putting all our resources and ener­gy into bring­ing the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion to an end, because it has been a dis­as­ter on all lev­els for the Amer­i­can peo­ple. As I said after Iowa, for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es, this race is over.”

While reaf­firm­ing his embrace of Trump (which has been described else­where using much harsh­er metaphors) Gra­ham did make an effort to say a few kind things about Haley’s can­di­da­cy, which he clear­ly sees as com­ing to a swift end.

“Ambas­sador Haley has acquit­ted her­self well through the pri­ma­ry sea­son and has much to be proud of. She has exceed­ed all expec­ta­tions in a crowd­ed field, and is one of the most tal­ent­ed and gift­ed lead­ers in the Repub­li­can Party.”

The next states to hold nom­i­nat­ing events will be South Car­oli­na and Neva­da. The South Car­oli­na Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry will take place on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 3rd; the Neva­da Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry will take place on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 6th. The Neva­da Repub­li­can cau­cus­es will take place on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 8th, and the South Car­oli­na Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry will take place on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 24th.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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