Why Donald Trump won New Hampshire

Nashua, New Hampshire

Former president Donald Trump won the GOP primary contest in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, dulling any perceived momentum behind former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. A crowd of supporters at an election night watch party in Nashua cheered as Fox News called the race for Trump shortly after 8 p.m. The Associated Press pulled the trigger a few minutes earlier for the former president. The Beatles’ “Revolution” played on speakers (“You know it’s gonna be alright”) as the group celebrated.

After practically tying for second in Iowa with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Haley declared that it was a “two-person race” and set her sights on New Hampshire, where undeclared voters can participate in the GOP primary; the deadline for Democrats to change their party affiliation was in October. Haley dropped $31 million since the start of 2023 on ads in New Hampshire, attempting to convince voters that the country needs a new generation of leadership and that Trump, with his multiple indictments, is too surrounded by chaos and drama to win a general election.

A CNN exit poll showed that turnout was nearly split evenly between Republican and undeclared voters, which, while significant, wasn’t enough to push Haley over the edge. In 2016, independent voters were a boost to Trump. Forty-two percent of GOP primary voters that year were undeclared, and Trump won a plurality of them. This time around, Haley needed to win almost all of them in order to defeat the former president. That didn’t happen.

One complication for Haley is that immigration was the top issue for New Hampshire voters. Forty-one percent said it was their most important issue, compared to 31 percent who said the economy was most important. New Hampshire voters are worried about the northern border, which gets less attention than America’s shared border with Mexico, but which nonetheless has become a hotbed for the human and drug trafficking trades. Fentanyl is a particular issue for folks here, most of whom have seen the impact of addiction among their friends, families, and neighbors.

Trump has a proven track record on immigration compared to Haley. He launched his campaign on it in the 2016 race and when illegal encounters at the southern border topped 100,000 in the spring of 2019 during his administration, he immediately signed a slew of executive orders disincentivizing illegal crossing and fraudulent asylum claims. Illegal encounters dropped significantly in the year following. Team Trump capitalized on this issue by running nonstop ads hammering Haley for 2015 comments in which she said that the GOP shouldn’t talk about illegal immigrants as “criminals — they’re not.” 

“Illegals are criminals, Nikki. That’s what illegal means,” the pro-Trump ad mocked.

Trump officials told me they expect Haley to stay in the race until her home state of South Carolina, even though she has spent significant sums of money for little return — and can’t rely on independents to give her a respectable finish like in New Hampshire. What is her end goal? No one seems to think she has any chance of defeating Trump. DeSantis dropped out when it became clear he didn’t have a path to victory. Will Haley’s establishment donors flee after tonight’s failed effort?