Donald Trump won New Hampshire, but results still signal potential problems for general election

It was another good night for former President Donald Trump, who won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday by about 11 percentage points over his lone GOP rival, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

Although it wasn’t the trouncing that some polls predicted and Haley has vowed to stay in the race at least through South Carolina, the second consecutive win prompted further GOP consolidation of support for Trump.

“They’re falling all over themselves saying, this race is over. It’s not,” Haley said Tuesday night. “Well, I have news for all of them. New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation.”

Trump, in his speech, told voters they wouldn’t regret backing him and then unleashed a rant against Haley, criticizing her for trying to spin an 11-point loss into a positive — and then going after her clothing. “You can’t let people get away with bulls—. And when I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy, I said, ‘What’s she doing? We won,’” Trump said.

New Hampshire leaves the path for Haley extremely narrow, and sets up what could be the longest and least popular general election campaign in history between Trump and President Joe Biden.

Here are four takeaways from the New Hampshire results:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, after dropping out of the race in Iowa, put it this way: “A majority of Republican primary voters want to give Trump another chance.”

That’s been the case in polling Republicans in every early state and it played out in the first two contests — one in which Trump beat his closest challengers by 30 and the second by 11 points.

And among self-described Republicans, Trump won a whopping 75% to Haley’s’ 25%, according to exit polls.

Republican leaders have followed suit, including Trump’s former opponents in the race, such as South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), a member of the leadership team of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), said Tuesday night that he’s backing Trump, an indication that more Senate leaders may follow.

“I have seen enough. To beat Biden, Republicans need to unite around a single candidate, and it’s clear that President Trump is Republican voters’ choice,” Cornyn wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Cornyn had previously said he didn’t think Trump could win a general election and favored anyone but him in the primary. Expect a lot more Republicans who staked a similar stance to soon give in to a Trump endorsement.

Haley’s performance in New Hampshire showed some weaknesses for Trump in a general election — and in swing states such as Pennsylvania.

College-educated voters backed Haley overwhelmingly, while Trump won non-college-educated voters in the state. That’s a warning sign of Trump’s limited appeal among voters in places such as the Philadelphia suburbs.

Another warning sign for swing states is Trump’s weakness with independents. Exit polls showed Haley captured roughly 6 in 10 self-identified independents.

About one-third of voters who participated in the Republican primary said they would not back Trump in the general election if he were the nominee. (About 10% of voters in the Democratic primary said they would not back Biden.)

Biden’s campaign seized on the New Hampshire results — and Trump’s at times unhinged victory speech — to point out what they see as Trump’s weaknesses.

Exit polls showed 43% of Haley supporters in New Hampshire said they’d back Biden over Trump and 88% said they’d be “disappointed” if Trump were the nominee. Where moderate Republicans and independent voters go will be a key question for the next nine months.

Biden has his own popularity problem, of course, but that’s still a troubling sign for the presumptive GOP nominee in what’s expected to be a tight general election race.

Trump could also face some trouble selling a more extreme agenda to voters. The Biden campaign has already started running hard against Trump’s antiabortion record. Exit polls in New Hampshire showed 67% of Republican voters do not favor a federal abortion ban.

And as Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol continues to be scrutinized, along with his attempt to overturn the last election, the majority of voters have said they are concerned about political violence.

“We’ve seen this movie before. Trump and MAGA Republicans’ antiabortion extremism has been nothing but disastrous for them across the country,” Biden deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said on a call with reporters Wednesday.

Haley has tried to run against Trump’s age — 77 — arguing that it’s time for a new generation of leadership. In recent weeks she also questioned his mental preparedness to be president, saying of his fitness: “I think he’s declining.”

Longshot Democratic primary hopeful Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota tried a similar strategy against Biden, 81, who wasn’t even on the ballot in New Hampshire. Biden wound up winning more write-in votes than Obama did in 2012 in New Hampshire when he was running for reelection.

It’s far from the end of the line of attack — particularly against Biden, for whom polls show most voters do think he’s too old to be running for reelection. But it’s an early sign the argument may not be as potent at the ballot box.

Typically, the primary season dominates political coverage and lets the rest of the country take a breather before the general election kicks in to a higher gear in the late spring or early summer.

The pivot toward the general election is suddenly now.

As much as Haley has noted that only two states have weighed in, Trump and his supporters are mounting a pressure campaign to get her to drop out and polling in other states does not look good for her.

Biden has already been running against Trump. The start of his 2024 campaign was all about fighting Trump and MAGA extremism. And while Trump’s speech in New Hampshire was far more focused on raging against Haley (something her campaign relished as evidence the tighter-than-expected win got to him), his campaign will likely soon pivot to Biden.

That also means instead of attention on the early primary states, earlier attention is coming to the swing states such as Pennsylvania. Trump has his first scheduled Pennsylvania visit of 2024 next month in Harrisburg, speaking to an NRA convention. An organizer said Haley was invited but hadn’t responded.

“I’ll end with this,” Fulks from the Biden campaign said on Wednesday’s call. “We’re gonna spend every day until Nov. 5 reminding voters of the choice they face in November.”