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Donald Trump extended his commanding lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination by winning the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, but failed to knock rival Nikki Haley out of the White House contest.
Trump had 53.8 per cent of the votes counted at 10pm Eastern Standard Time, while Haley held 44.7 per cent. With votes still to be counted, the exact margin of his victory will only be known later in the evening.
Trump’s New Hampshire win follows his landslide victory last week in Iowa, where the former president won more than 50 per cent of the vote. He is the first non-incumbent in the modern era to win both Republican presidential contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The victories in the two crucial early states give Trump potentially unstoppable momentum as the Republican nominating campaign moves to the South, setting him on course for a rematch in the 2024 general election with Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.
“We had one hell of a night tonight,” Trump told supporters at a post-election party in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Tuesday night, as he lashed out at Haley for staying in the race and said she would never win the Republican party’s nomination for the White House.
“Just a little note to Nikki: she’s not going to win,” Trump added.
Despite Trump’s back-to-back victories, Haley was defiant at her own election night party in Concord, New Hampshire, insisting the race was “not over” and touting the next major contest in South Carolina, where she served two terms as governor — though she still trails the former president by double digits in recent polls there.
“New Hampshire is first in the nation, it is not last in the nation,” Haley told supporters. “This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.”
The New Hampshire primary was seen as a crucial test for Haley, who finished in a disappointing third place behind Florida governor Ron DeSantis in Iowa. DeSantis suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump at the weekend, saying it was “clear” that a “majority of Republican primary voters” wanted to give the former president another chance.
Haley’s vow to keep fighting turns the focus on to her campaign finances and whether donors will be willing to fund a protracted primary process that could stretch for months.
After the South Carolina Republican primary on February 24, the race will turn to Super Tuesday on March 5, when more than a dozen states will hold elections and award delegates.
Trump has secured endorsements from almost all major Republican candidates who have withdrawn from the race, including the high-profile backing of Tim Scott, a senator from Haley’s home state of South Carolina. Other leading Republicans have begun to line up behind him in recent days, including senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
Biden’s re-election campaign issued a statement on Tuesday night saying the results in New Hampshire “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”.
Biden himself won an unofficial Democratic primary in New Hampshire, the Associated Press projected on Tuesday night, thanks to a write-in campaign hastily organised by his supporters after the Democratic National Committee moved to change the party’s primary calendar and the president did not submit his name for the New Hampshire ballot.
Additional reporting by Oliver Roeder in New York
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