CONCORD, N.H. — Former President Donald Trump clinched a second win in the Republican primary, defeating his sole remaining opponent, Nikki Haley, in New Hampshire on Tuesday as she made plans to keep battling for the nomination until at least March.
It was the second time this month that Mr. Trump won a majority in the party’s presidential nomination contest. With 60% of the vote counted after 10 p.m., the former president had 53.4% of the vote to Ms. Haley’s 44.9%. In the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses, Mr. Trump secured his victory with 52% of the vote.
Mr. Trump said Ms. Haley keeps losing but keeps acting like she is winning.
“She had to win. She did very poorly actually,” Mr. Trump said. “She failed badly.”
Mr. Trump’s supporters quickly began calling on Ms. Haley to drop out of the race.
“Nikki Haley said she’s running to stop the reelection of Harris-Biden. Yet, without a viable path to victory, every day she stays in this race is another day she delivers to the Harris-Biden campaign. It’s time for unity, it’s time to take the fight to the Democrats, and for Nikki Haley, it’s time to drop out,” said Taylor Budowich, CEO of Make America Great Again.
SEE ALSO: Haley vows to keep fighting for nomination after loss in New Hampshire
Ms. Haley said otherwise in her concession speech. After congratulating Mr. Trump, she said: “New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation.”
“This race is far from over,” Ms. Haley said. “There are dozens of states left to go.”
“Most Americans do not want a rematch between Biden and Trump,” she said. “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election, and I think it should be Republicans that win this election.”
That could be wishful thinking on the part of Ms. Haley.
For the second race in a row, she failed to punch a serious hole in the air of inevitability that has hung over Mr. Trump’s bid for months.
Mr. Trump is poised to cruise to victory in the Nevada caucuses — indeed he even joked in his victory speech Tuesday night that he had already won Nevada — and is polling well ahead of Ms. Haley ahead of the Feb. 24 primary in her home state of South Carolina.
SEE ALSO: Trump mauls ‘imposter’ Haley in victory speech
President Biden, meanwhile, was declared the winner in the Democratic primary. The Democrat thwarted long-shot challengers after local activists led a write-in campaign because of a calendar kerfuffle between the state and the national party.
Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said the New Hampshire results show Mr. Trump “has all but locked up the GOP nomination, and the election-denying, anti-freedom MAGA movement has completed its takeover of the Republican Party.”
“While we work toward November 2024, one thing is increasingly clear today: Donald Trump is headed straight into a general election matchup where he’ll face the only person to have ever beaten him at the ballot box: Joe Biden,” Ms. Chavez Rodriguez said.
Ms. Haley, 51, placed second in the New Hampshire primary after barnstorming the state for the past week as a conservative — and younger — alternative to Mr. Trump, 77.
She spent days greeting voters at diners and conference centers and staged nighttime rallies that attracted hundreds of people looking for an alternative to Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, 81.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a staunch Trump opponent, campaigned alongside Ms. Haley.
She warned that the legally embattled former president would drag down the nation with the “chaos” that follows him, and she blamed him for signing off on massive spending deals that contributed to $8 trillion in national debt.
The support for Ms. Haley among Never Trump and disaffected Biden voters was no match for the enthusiasm among Mr. Trump’s supporters. Hundreds stood in line for hours in frigid temperatures this week for a chance to see the former president at one of several nighttime rallies.
Mr. Trump, in a bid to send the message that the party should unite around him as the presidential nominee, brought to the stage in New Hampshire a lineup of past Republican primary opponents who have endorsed him: biotechnology tycoon Vivek Ramaswamy, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
Mr. Trump also received the endorsement of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. With single-digit poll numbers in New Hampshire, he announced his exit from the race from Tallahassee on Sunday.
The former president, visiting a polling location in Londonderry on Tuesday, said he wasn’t concerned about Ms. Haley remaining in the race and predicted he would easily win the next round of primaries and caucuses.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Haley’s vow to keep running.
He told reporters his campaign and the Make America Great Again movement had the power to unite the party and go on to defeat Mr. Biden.
“There’s never been a movement like this, Make America Great Again, in the history of our country,” he said.
Pointing to the cheering crowd gathered behind him in Londonderry, he said, “This is organic.”
Mr. Trump said he would dominate the Nevada contest on Feb. 8, which includes both a primary and a caucus, and win in the Feb. 24 South Carolina primary, where Mr. Trump’s lead is 37 percentage points over Ms. Haley, according to an average of polls calculated by the political statistics website FiveThirtyEight.
He has defined Ms. Haley as a “RINO” (“Republican in name only”) candidate who is backed by Democratic donors eager to keep him off the November ballot.
Ms. Haley told voters she stood a better chance than the former president of defeating Mr. Biden in November. She cited a Wall Street Journal poll conducted in late November through early December that gave her a 17-point advantage over Mr. Biden.
Ms. Haley’s campaign manager said Tuesday that she will remain in the race at least through the multistate Super Tuesday contest on March 5.
She plans Wednesday morning to address a Republican Steering Committee meeting in the Virgin Islands, which has its GOP caucuses on Feb. 8.
Later on Wednesday, she’ll hold a campaign rally in Charleston, South Carolina, where she has already sunk money into television advertising.
The upcoming primaries are fertile ground for her to win the backing of independents, just as she was able to do in New Hampshire with undeclared voters who are permitted to participate in the primary and frowned on another matchup between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.
“We aren’t going anywhere,” Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney said Tuesday.
Mr. Trump said Ms. Haley could be politically damaged by remaining in the race.
“I think it’s going to hurt her,” he said, adding that it is up to her to decide to quit. “I would never ask anybody to pull out.”
• Seth McLaughlin reported from Washington.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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