Former United States President Donald Trump is one step closer to becoming the Republican candidate for the White House for the third consecutive time. With 54.9% of the votes and a margin of twelve points – much narrower than the polls predicted – the magnate won the New Hampshire primary tonight, the second date on the electoral calendar. After his overwhelming victory in the Iowa caucuses, which forced three candidates to abandon the race after confirming their lack of support, this victory over the only standing alternative, Nikki Haley, brings him even closer to the Republican Party nomination. .
"The race is over," the tycoon celebrated in a publication on his social network, Truth Social, when barely 20% of the votes had been counted. Half an hour later, he took to a stage in Nashua (New Hampshire) with a serious face and focused his victory speech on attacking Haley and the state's electoral process, which allows citizens registered as independents to vote. "Haley has had a very bad night," he said, accompanied by former candidates Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy, and encouraged by the shouts of his followers, who repeated "knucklehead", the derogatory nickname with which he refers to the former governor
Shortly after, he lied when he claimed that he had won the elections in New Hampshire "three times", when he lost in the 2020 presidential election: "We have always won. We won the primaries and we won the general elections. This is a very special place for me." . And she has insinuated, without giving evidence, that her competitor has committed an illegality, which she has not specified either: "she is not going to win, but if she did, she would be investigated for things that she does not want to talk about." .
Although Trump has won with a much smaller margin than the polls indicated, the result also leaves Haley's campaign very shaken, which came to the elections with the hope of surprising and beating the tycoon. With an intense campaign in the northern state, more moderate than Iowa, he won the support of popular governor Chris Sununu, but it has only earned him 8 of the 22 delegates from New Hampshire.
The former governor of South Carolina, who served in the Trump administration as ambassador to the UN, has recognized the magnate's victory and has assured that she will not give up: "This race is far from over. We are the last ones standing together with Trump and today we have obtained about half of the votes," she said in a speech in Concord, the capital of New Hampshire, silencing the rumors that in recent days predicted her withdrawal if she were defeated.
But the comeback will be an almost impossible task: all the candidates who have won in the first two Republican primaries have secured their party's nomination. And everything seems to indicate that this is the fate that awaits the former president in July, when delegates from each state will vote for the Republican candidate for the White House in Milwaukee (Wisconsin). If that happens, everything indicates that he will have the same adversary in the November general elections that he had four years ago: President Joe Biden.
At the moment, the two electoral events have distributed 62 of the total of 2,429 delegates that will be sent to the Republican National Convention. But Trump's two consecutive victories, with which he has 32 delegates, pave his way to the nomination: he has won in the two states in which the campaigns of his two main rivals, DeSantis, who withdrew the most money and effort, had invested on Monday, and Haley, who still sees options.
"There are dozens of states left to go. And the next one is my sweet home, South Carolina," the candidate said, recalling her time as governor in that state between 2011 and 2017. However, the polls give her a poor 25 there. % of voting intention, compared to the tycoon's 62.2%, according to the FiveThirtyEight model. In the next primary elections, if she manages to maintain the support of her donors – which as of today is called into question –, Haley will continue trying to unite the vote of those opposed to Trump, made up of moderate Republicans and registered citizens. as independent.
"We will not be able to fix Biden's chaos with more Republican chaos," he stated, directing his attacks against the former president: "With Donald Trump we have one outbreak of chaos after another. This court case, this controversy, this tweet..." And He recalled that, after the magnate's victory in 2016, "we Republicans have lost almost all the competitive elections. We lost the Senate, we lost the House of Representatives and we lost the White House: we lost in 2018, in 2020 and in 2022", has said, in reference to the two midterm legislative elections (2018 and 2022) and the 2020 general elections, that Trump still maintains without evidence that he won.
The winner of the Republican race will face – barring a major surprise – Biden, who has hardly any competition in the Democratic primaries: Congressman Dean Phillips and writer Marianne Williamson have only obtained 25% of the votes in this year's elections. Tuesday. And Biden's name was not on the ballots.
The Democratic National Committee decided in February, against a tradition dating back to 1920, that the northern state would not be the first to hold primaries: its official calendar begins in South Carolina on February 3. However, New Hampshire Democrats opposed the change, in accordance with state law, and everyone who voted for the president yesterday (66%) had to do so by writing his name by hand.
After learning the results, Biden has issued a statement in which he already considers the magnate's nomination settled. "It is clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. My message to the country is that the stakes could not be higher." In the letter, he thanked "everyone who wrote my name tonight in New Hampshire. It has been a historic demonstration of commitment to our democratic process."
After tonight's victory, Trump has already begun the campaign to beat Biden in November and return to the White House. But he won't have it easy: the latest survey, published yesterday by NewsNation, gives Biden 46% of voting intentions compared to 39% for Trump. Although, perhaps, the most relevant data is the disenchantment that a repetition of the confrontation between the two would produce: 59% of Americans are "not very enthusiastic" about this scenario.
