Trump Wins New Hampshire Primary; Nikki Haley Still Running

With 60% of the votes received, former President Donald Trump won the New Hampshire Republican primary with 53 percent of the vote, gaining 11 delegates.  His victory comes after the Iowa Republican primary, where he won by a decent margin, as well as former rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspending his campaign and giving his endorsement.

Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, entered today’s primary as Trump’s lone opponent. Voters and political analysts alike regard the New Hampshire primary as one of the most critical events in the election. Many former Presidents, such as Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, won their respective New Hampshire primaries. The margins of victory were closer than expected to that of Iowa, with Trump winning the majority of votes. The next major showdown will occur in Haley’s home state, South Carolina, where her campaign will need a win to sustain a presidential campaign.

As of now, Trump has been charged with over 90 felonies across the nation. He became the first President to be impeached twice, as well as the first President to be criminally charged. He will be in court in New York and Georgia during his campaign.  

Trump’s victory shows a divide in the modern-day Republican party: the Pro-Trump faction and the Anti-Trump faction. Former candidates, like Tim Scott (retired South Carolina Senator) and Vivek Ramaswamy, endorsed him after suspending their campaigns. Trump also has supporters in the House and Senate Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Even those who criticized his actions on January 6, like former Vice President Mike Pence, have endorsed him.

With all this support from the Republican base, the main questions regarding Trump are: will voters continue to ignore the many legal issues he is facing, and can he defeat President Joe Biden in a rematch?

As the campaign moves from New Hampshire, Haley will not be on the Nevada caucus ballot but on the primary ballot. Trump’s campaign in Nevada is the opposite: the Caucus includes Trump on the ballot, while the primary doesn’t. With this decision, Haley will lose the delegates she needs to win the Nevada caucus. Daniel Lee, a political science professor at the University of Nevada- Las Vegas, says that because “…Nikki Haley is running in the primary…she can’t win any delegates. Only Trump and DeSantis can win delegates. The primary election will be totally ignored by the state party, and they’re only going to look at the results of the Caucus.” With DeSantis out of the race, Trump is guaranteed delegates and, therefore, a win at the Nevada caucus. 

Haley represents a more moderate side of the Republican Party. For one, she doesn’t support a total abortion ban, unlike her more hardline conservative colleagues. Even though tonight’s loss will impact Haley’s campaign, she believes her run for the Republican nomination is not over. Haley, in her speech conceding the New Hampshire primary, stated, “The worst kept secret in politics is how badly the Democrats want to run against Donald Trump…You can’t fix Joe Biden’s chaos with Republican chaos.” As apparent in New Hampshire and Iowa, however, Republican voters don’t seem to mind the chaos.

To Trump’s voter base, the chaos surrounding him represents everything wrong with the United States. The immortal, ever-present Swamp, afraid of what Donald Trump is going to do with it, is now doing everything in its power to stop another Trump presidency. His criminal charges? A scheme. The election? Rigged. Donald Trump is the personification of the abandonment felt predominantly by the white working class. A win for Trump is a win for them. Nikki Haley represents the Old Guard, the Mitt Romneys, or Dick Cheneys of the Republican Party. Despite the results being closer than in Iowa, the New Hampshire primary indicates change within the Republican Party, a change that Republicans like Haley are not ready to confront.