The New Hampshire Primary Was A Disaster For Trump

Trump is selling power and dominance, but the New Hampshire primary showed the eroded and weakened brand of the former president.

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Trump’s New Hampshire Flop

On the day of the New Hampshire primary, MAGA Republicans looked at the high turnout and speculated that Trump could set records for a margin of victory in the state, get a dominating win, and end the Republican primary.

However, the exit polling was the first sign that something was off in the state. The exit polling showed that voters were evenly divided at 49% on Trump’s claim that Biden wasn’t legitimately elected and that nearly two-thirds of voters were not MAGA.

Trump ended up winning New Hampshire by around 10 points. Considering that the final poll had him up by 11 points, this should have been an expected result, but tracking polls had the former president up by 20 or more points.

Trump did set one record according to NBC News’s Steve Kornacki:

In Iowa, the media compared Trump’s 2016 performance with 2024 and used it to portray Trump as a strong candidate, but if that same metric is used in New Hampshire where Trump won Independents in 2016 by 18 points, and lost them to Haley by 22 points in 2024, it reveals a much weaker candidate.

Haley responded to the defeat by refusing to get out of the primary before Super Tuesday, which caused Trump to lose it, and the fake graciousness and calls for unity that he stuck in his Iowa victory speech were replaced by a temper tantrum.

Trump flopped in New Hampshire and there are big lessons here for the 2024 general election that we will discuss below.