CNN (“Trump wins New Hampshire GOP primary as Haley says she’s staying in race“):
Former President Donald Trump took a huge step toward winning a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination Tuesday, winning the New Hampshire primary in a one-on-one matchup with his last challenger standing, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Haley vowed to remain in the Republican race, saying she’ll now focus on the February 24 primary in her home state of South Carolina. As Haley seeks to prove she remains a viable contender, President Joe Biden began preparations for a general election rematch with Trump.
NPR (“Biden wins the New Hampshire primary after Democrats write him on the ballot“):
President Biden won the New Hampshire Democratic primary on Tuesday, an unusual race that he skipped after his party changed its rules in favor of seeing South Carolina hold the first nominating contest of the year.
As a result, Biden wasn’t on the printed ballot. But Biden won regardless, according to a race call by The Associated Press.
The victory comes after a grassroots campaign urged Democrats to write in his name and a super PAC raised about $1.5 million to back the effort.
For the record, Trump won 164,700 votes (54.5%) to Haley’s 129,646 (43.2%), with no other candidate cracking the 1% mark. Biden got 54,570 votes (51.5%) to Dean Phillips’ 20,976 (19.8%), Marianne Williamson’s 5016 (4.7%), and Derek Nadeau’s 1180 (1.1%). “Unprocessed write-in” got 14,967 votes (14.1%) and “Other write-in” got 6583 (6.2%).
Neither result, of course, was a surprise. The Democratic “contest” was more disorderly because it’s not an official event, so there’s not much point in analyzing the support of the vanity candidates.
But, of course, you can’t sell papers with that kind of thinking.
AP (“New Hampshire takeaways: Trump’s path becomes clearer. So does the prospect of a rematch with Biden“):
This time, New Hampshire didn’t surprise.
Instead, its famously fickle voters stuck to the script of delivering a ringing ratification of the front-runner, Donald Trump, the former president. His victory over a defiant Nikki Haley cemented his hold on core Republican voters and substantially reduced the chances of any challenger overtaking him.
Never before has a presidential candidate won the first two contests on the primary nomination calendar — as Trump has now done — and failed to emerge as the party’s general election nominee, substantially increasing the already quite likely prospect of a rematch between him and President Joe Biden.
Even so, there were signs of restiveness among voters for both men. Here are some key takeaways from Tuesday’s New Hampshire Primary.
POLITICO (“Tonight’s results show voters’ discontent with Biden and Trump“):
More than three-quarters of the vote is in, and the discontent is clear: More than two in five voters so far favored someone other than Trump or Biden.
The looming rematch of the 2020 election has become even likelier in recent weeks — and both presidents emerged from New Hampshire on a glide path toward their party’s nominations. But more than 148,000 voters so far — about 42 percent of ballots counted so far — voted for challengers like Nikki Haley, Dean Phillips, or others.
On the Republican side, Trump seems poised to win about 55 percent of the GOP primary vote, while 45 percent of Republican primary voters chose someone else. Biden should come in closer to two-thirds of the Democratic primary, depending on the breakdown of the remaining write-ins and the final tallies in outstanding towns.
POLITICO (“After Trump’s NH win, Biden gets the opponent he wants“):
The general election has all but begun — and it’s the race President Joe Biden’s team wanted.
Former President Donald Trump’s victory in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday dealt a blow to the hopes of his strongest challenger and strengthened Trump’s hold on his party’s nomination. Biden’s reelection team took Trump’s win over Nikki Haley as the starting gun for what will now be the longest and most grueling general election campaign in modern American political history.
Those aides believe that Trump poses a far greater threat to the nation’s democracy than any of his Republican rivals would. But they also feel the most confident about their chances in that looming matchup. That’s despite some reasons for concern — top among them Biden’s low approval ratings and recent polls showing the president trailing Trump in key battlegrounds. A wide swath of his own party doesn’t want Biden to seek a second term.
AP (“Why AP isn’t using ‘presumptive nominee’ to describe leading presidential candidates“):
There often comes a time in modern presidential campaigns when the last bit of drama has been drained out of a party nomination fight and the crowning of the eventual standard-bearer seems like a foregone conclusion. But we’re not there yet.
Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump are the front-runners for their respective parties’ presidential nominations. Though you may start to hear them referred to as their parties’ “presumptive nominees,” The Associated Press only uses that term once a candidate has captured the number of delegates needed to win a majority vote at the national party conventions this summer.
That point won’t come until after more states have voted. For both Republicans and Democrats, the earliest it could happen is March.
WaPo (“How soon could Trump have the nomination wrapped up?“):
Donald Trump is on track to make this the shortest primary in recent presidential history.
Just two states have voted so far. But he has won both, and a look at the math and polling in the states to come suggest that Trump could win the nomination by mid-March — even though former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley says she’s staying in the race, and voting goes through June.
The last time the nominee in a competitive primary was evident so quickly was in 2004. In recent elections, the primary in both parties has been drawn out until May or even June.
Trump is on track to win the Republican presidential nomination mathematically, by securing enough delegates to be the party’s nominee, and politically, by having everyone assume there are no viable competitors left who can beat him.
[…]
There are 2,429 delegates awarded in the Republican primary. To secure the nomination, a candidate needs to win 1,215 delegates, which is exactly one more than half of the total.
So far, only 62 have been awarded, but half of them have gone to Trump.
“If you look at the calendar and the number of delegates awarded, the earliest time mathematically someone could get to 1,215 is March 12,” said Nicole Schlinger, an Iowa-based Republican consultant.
But that would require winning every single delegate, and not even Trump can wrap up the nomination that quickly. That’s because in many states, the second-place winner gets delegates, too.
WaPo (“Haley faces uphill odds as GOP race goes to South Carolina“):
Nikki Haley’s underdog campaign against Donald Trump for the GOP nomination next ventures to surprisingly unfriendly territory: her home state.
Haley pledged to stay in the 2024 primary after Trump romped to a second primary victory on Tuesday night, winning New Hampshire by 11 percentage points with nearly 86 percent of the vote tallied. Trump on Tuesday night ridiculed Haley’s performance as fellow Republicans rallied behind him, boosting his formidable advantages ahead of the South Carolina primary.
Speaking to supporters at a watch party on Tuesday night, the former South Carolina governor acknowledged Trump’s win and said “he earned it.”
“New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation. This race is far from over,” Haley said, adding later: “But South Carolina voters don’t want a coronation. They want an election. And we’re going to give them one because we are just getting started.”
So—who knows?—anyone could win this thing.
