Trump and his team pressure Nikki Haley to drop out of the race
‘I don’t do what he tells me to do. I’ve never done what he tells me to do,” Haley said Tuesday morning about the matter.
The next competitive contest is the South Carolina primary.
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Donald Trump won the first national primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, giving him his second consecutive victory in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination.
The Associated Press called the race shortly after polls closed at 8 p.m. ET. The victory came about a week after his victory in the Iowa caucuses. Trump is the first Republican candidate in nearly 50 years to sweep both races, an indication of his tight grip on the Republican Party.
He and his team have been using their victories to pressure Nikki Haley to drop out of the presidential race.
“I think we’ll see the end of the primary, hopefully later tonight,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greeene said Tuesday morning while campaigning for Trump at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester. ‘It would be a good choice for Nikki Haley if she retires after this election. She’s not going to do well.
Haley, however, has vowed to keep fighting.
‘I don’t do what he tells me to do. I’ve never done what he tells me to do,” he said Tuesday morning of Trump’s calls for him to drop out of school.
Donald Trump campaigning at an event in Londonderry NH.
The former president downplayed it.
“I don’t care if she stays. Let her do what she wants, it doesn’t matter,” Trump said of Haley while campaigning in Londonderry on Tuesday afternoon.
Most polls closed in New Hampshire at 7 pm and all polls closed at 8 pm.
Trump is having his election night party at the Sheraton Hotel in Nashua, NH. The run-up to the polls closing was jovial with campaign staff mingling with guests. There was an open bar and snacks.
Eric Trump and his wife Lara joined the campaign team for dinner at the hotel restaurant. They met Vivek Ramaswamy on their way out and stopped to attend a meeting.
Other guests took photos in front of flag backdrops as giant television screens broadcast cable news as the countdown to results continued.
About 40% of New Hampshire’s registered voters are unaffiliated with any party and can vote in either primary.
With Tuesday night’s victory and his victory in the Iowa caucuses last Monday, Trump set a new record.
He became the first Republican presidential candidate to prevail in open races in Iowa and New Hampshire since both states began leading the electoral calendar in 1976.
The victories show her control over the party and cast further doubt on Haley’s ability to make a dent, even as an Associated Press exit poll found that more voters in New Hampshire had doubts about Trump than voters in Iowa.
About half of New Hampshire Republican voters said they were very or somewhat concerned that Trump is too extreme to win the general election. Only about a third said the same about Haley.
Trump was leading the polls by double digits in the run-up to Election Day. But Haley maintains that there is a large swath of independent voters who do not want to vote for the former president.
‘About 50 percent of Republican primary voters want an alternative to Donald Trump. “Seventy-five percent of the country wants an option other than Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” his campaign wrote in a memo Tuesday morning.
They point to the Iowa caucuses as evidence of their argument.
The 110,000 voters who participated in the 2024 Iowa caucuses represented just under 15% of the state’s 752,000 registered Republicans, according to the results. And it is a much smaller number than the 186,000 who came out in 2016.
But Trump’s double victories are creating a growing sense of inevitability that the 2024 general election will be a repeat of the 2020 contest: Trump versus Biden. Polls show that most Americans don’t want a rematch even as the country moves toward one.
Eric Trump and Lara Trump talk to Vivek Ramaswamy while awaiting New Hampshire results
Donald Trump leads by double digits in polls ahead of New Hampshire primary
Nikki Haley says she won’t drop out of race despite pressure from Team Trump
After winning the Iowa caucuses by 30 points, former President Trump called on the Republican Party to unite behind his candidacy.
Many Republican presidential contenders dropped out of the race and endorsed him: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump will head west after the primary to campaign in Nevada. He also continues to deal with Jean Carroll’s defamation trial in New York.
Haley has announced that she will hold a campaign event in Charleston on Wednesday, the day after the New Hampshire primary, ahead of the South Carolina primary. Haley’s home state will hold her nominating contest in a month, on February 24.