Analysis: Trump’s clear path, Haley’s refusal to bow and more takeaways from the New Hampshire primary

Former president Donald Trump won the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, delivering his second major statement in the first two states of the 2024 GOP nominating contest. The win seemingly forecloses a path forward for his lone major opponent, Nikki Haley.

Trump led the former U.N. ambassador 55 percent to 44 percent, with 72 percent of expected votes counted. He also won a majority of the vote in the Iowa caucuses last week, carrying the state by 30 points.

Shortly after the race was called for Trump, Haley signaled that she won’t yet drop out, declaring: “This race is far from over.” Trump, taking the stage later, called Haley an “impostor” and appeared angry that she hadn’t bowed out, while saying, “I don’t get too angry. I get even.”

Below are some takeaways - including from a Democratic primary that President Biden appears to have won easily.

1. It looks all but over

It’s not a novel take, but it’s true. If there was one state that appeared winnable for someone not named Trump, it was New Hampshire for Haley. And while she appears to have over-performed some late polling, she came up well short of a good argument for how this race might be competitive.

Early exit polls showed that nearly half of the voters who made up the state’s GOP primary electorate weren’t registered Republicans and 6 percent of the voters personally identified as Democrats. The electorate was also more educated, libertarian and supportive of abortion rights than that of virtually any other significant GOP contest.

Haley’s support drew disproportionately from the political middle - about 7 out of 10 Haley voters weren’t registered Republicans, and she won just 11 percent of “very conservative” voters - and that middle just isn’t as robust elsewhere. Independents can’t even vote in many other states’ primaries.

If you were making an idealistic case for Haley having a shot at least keeping things in doubt, you’d say she could have a strong showing in her home state of South Carolina on Feb. 24. But right now, the polls suggest that the state is only a little bit closer than a national race that favors Trump by more than 50 points.

A month is also a long time to keep a campaign rolling without much in the way of momentum or belief. We’ve seen how the official Republican Party has largely deemed Trump the presumptive nominee and rallied behind him, and that will surely continue in the hours and days ahead. That will apply pressure on Haley to fall in line if she wants to have a future in the party.

2. Haley voters were meh about her, which says something about Trump

Perhaps the most striking finding from the early exit polls concerned how much voters’ feelings about the candidates affected their votes.

Trump voters, no surprise, cited strongly favorable views of him, with 8 in 10 expressing that motivation.

But for Haley, that number was far lower: only about one-third. Nearly 3 in 10 expressed some reservations about her, and 4 in 10 said their vote was mostly about dislike for the other candidates - or, more aptly, candidate.

This is a pretty searing indictment of any path to victory Haley might have had. If she can’t make voters get excited about her, she’s definitely not going to win in the many less-favorable states ahead. The GOP isn’t close to being anti-Trump enough to build a candidacy around that.

But when it comes to the general election, the result was also a remarkable commentary on Trump - the fact that so many voters who felt so meh about Haley turned out to register what amounted to protest votes.

New Hampshire is an unusual state. It’s less favorable to Trump than other swing states. He lost it by more than seven points in 2020, and a recent poll showed Biden taking 52 percent of the vote there despite just a 38 percent approval rating.

But if it’s at all reflective of how reluctant even a small portion of the GOP base is to vote for Trump, the former president has real work to do in patching things up after the primaries.

3. The other big exit poll numbers

A few other findings that struck us from the early exit polls:

Fewer New Hampshire voters denied the results of the 2020 election (51 percent) than did Iowa voters (66 percent). This again reinforces how unusual New Hampshire’s electorate is; polls generally show around 6 in 10 Republicans reject the 2020 results. But also consider that even among this moderate Republican primary electorate, a majority are election-deniers.

67 percent of voters opposed a federal law banning most or all abortions, compared with 27 percent who favored one.

42 percent of voters said Trump wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of a crime - up from 31 percent in Iowa. Again, this could have major implications for the general election, even if the vast majority of those voters ultimately rally to Trump.

4. Haley’s reasons for staying in appear elusive

Haley’s argument for staying in the race effectively boiled down to the idea that Republicans can’t take a chance on moving forward with Trump because of his poor electoral track record.

“A Trump nomination is a Biden win and a Kamala Harris presidency,” Haley said, “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election.” (Trump is actually 77.)

She also cited Trump’s “senior moments,” a growing theme for Trump’s opponents.

If you’re to distill this message, it sounds as if Haley aims to wait it out until Republicans happen upon a realization about Trump that they’ve stubbornly refused to embrace. But it’s a difficult argument to make when a strong majority of Republicans believe Trump didn’t actually lose the 2020 election in the first place.

Or perhaps Haley just wants to play wait-and-see. Part of the reason Trump’s opponents fought with one another so hard is undoubtedly because they hoped some future event - in one of Trump’s legal cases, for example - would eventually shake up the race.

But that eventuality appears as distant as ever. Republicans by and large see Trump’s legal issues as a reason to stand by him. And it’s not even clear when he will stand trial in any of his various cases.

5. Biden’s apparent big win erases any doubt

The GOP primary wasn’t the only one in which a seemingly decisive verdict was rendered - not just for the state, but probably for the rest of the calendar.

The early results suggested Biden would win the Democratic primary overwhelmingly, despite not campaigning in the state and his name not appearing on the ballot over a primary calendar dispute.

Technically speaking, we don’t yet know how many votes Biden got, because the vast majority of ballots are write-ins that won’t be tabulated for a while. Only 19 percent have been allocated to him so far. But that plus the rest of the write-in votes led Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), 72 percent to 21 percent, and it’s likely that a huge chunk of that 72 percent will go to Biden.

Democrat Marianne Williamson was taking another 5 percent.

The result isn’t hugely surprising, but it sent a strong signal that there’s little doubt about Biden winning the Democratic nomination again.

Future states in which Biden is actually on the ballot should allow for a better gauge of how many Democratic voters are dug in against him.