Although former President Donald Trump’s win in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary was widely expected, the number of voters who showed up to cast a ballot for him revealed just how enthusiastic voters are to support his nomination.
According to a tally on Wednesday morning, with 9% of the votes still uncounted, Trump had received 163,700 votes. That represented 54.5% of the votes cast in the GOP primary, adding 12 delegates to his total and breaking a record set in 2016.
Eight years ago, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders received 152,193 votes, which established an all-time high.
By comparison, Nikki Haley — Trump’s only remaining high-profile rival — received just under 130,000 votes as of the latest count and received nine more delegates.
Although the former South Carolina governor expressed her intention to remain in the race, which she declared “is far from over,” Trump landed a few jabs against her during his victory speech.
“We’ll head out to South Carolina where I think we’re going to win easily,” he said of his campaign’s next focus. “I think we’re 50 points up … on a person that was governor. That tells you something.”
Trump went on to call on Haley to drop out of the race, ominously asserting that “you can’t let people get away with bulls—” and suggesting that she would be “under investigation” for something that “she doesn’t want to talk about” if she were to become president.
In a separate statement he made to Fox News, the GOP front-runner offered another reason he believes Haley should exit the race, explaining that if she “doesn’t drop out, we have to waste money instead of spending it on Biden, which is our focus.”
As for President Joe Biden, who won the New Hampshire primary with a write-in campaign after a feud with the state resulted in his name being left off the ballot, he released a statement highlighting not only his victory, but that of his likeliest general-election rival.
>@JoeBiden in statement tonight: “It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee.” pic.twitter.com/rO6EmkMN01
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) January 24, 2024
“It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee,” the statement began. “And my message to the country is the stakes could not be higher.”
