Donald Trump, the former US president, won his second straight nominating contest over challenger Nikki Haley, the only other Republican left in the race, by besting her in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.
Ms Haley, who served as Mr Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, was attempting to keep the margin close in order to argue she has a viable path forward.
Meanwhile, US president Joe Biden easily won the Democratic primary, even though he wasn't officially on the ballot.
Here are takeaways from the New Hampshire primary:
A prickly path
It was often said in New Hampshire that Ms Haley needed to keep Mr Trump’s vote share below 50 per cent in order to argue that more Republicans want Mr Trump to go away than win.
But she failed to do that on Tuesday, leaving her as the leader of a no-Trump coalition that is likely not large enough to get her where she wants to be. With votes still being counted, Mr Trump was on track to eclipse her by double-digits.
Before voters headed to the polls, Ms Haley’s campaign argued a path lay ahead for her even if she didn’t win New Hampshire. Campaign manager Betsy Ankney noted that multiple states on the calendar will have setups similar to New Hampshire, where independents can crash the party and vote.
South Carolina, which holds its Republican primary on February 24th, allows any voter who doesn’t first cast a ballot in the Democratic primary on February 3rd to vote. Michigan, which follows, has an open primary and a closed convention.
Then comes Super Tuesday on March 5th, when 874 delegates are up for grabs from 15 states and one US territory. Ms Ankney said roughly two-thirds of those are in states with open or semi-open primaries.
She named Virginia, Massachusetts, Texas and North Carolina among states where Ms Haley could perform well with independent or moderate voters whom the campaign views as persuadable.
Still, all of this could soon become academic. If Mr Trump blows Ms Haley out in her home state of South Carolina, where she served as governor, she will face mounting pressure to quit.
Until then, Ms Haley has a month to campaign, raise money and position herself as the only anti-Trump Republican left.
Red flags
Mr Trump’s victory wasn’t nearly as sweeping as his Iowa win last week, but it was never expected to be in a state with an electorate packed with moderate Republicans and independents.
In fact, the town-by-town map showed Mr Trump fell to Ms Haley in New Hampshire in many of the same areas where he lost to Mr Biden in 2020.
That should concern the Trump campaign because Mr Biden beat Mr Trump in the state by about seven percentage points, a margin that made it hard for even Mr Trump to cry fraud.
According to exit polls by Edison Research, independents flocked to Ms Haley. She won 60 per cent of them, and she dominated among college graduates, 56 per cent to 41 per cent.
Perhaps the biggest warning light of all was on abortion. The issue did not really play in the primary between Mr Trump and Ms Haley, but it will be central to a matchup with Mr Biden.
Among voters who considered the issue their top priority, Ms Haley won 64 per cent to 30 per cent even though she is ostensibly more conservative on the issue than Mr Trump.
Ms Haley, however, has signalled that she would approach the issue pragmatically as president.(Mr Trump otherwise dominated among self-identified religious voters.)
All that suggests Mr Biden can still assemble a coalition in November that can defeat Mr Trump if he becomes the nominee.
Trump strengths
But there was no denying that Trump continued to flex his muscle with the Republican base.
He crushed Ms Haley among working-class voters without college degrees, according to Edison. Among those who said they made less than $50,000 a year, Mr Trump took 66 per cent of the vote.
He won large majorities among voters who said they attend religious services weekly and who said they own a gun.
Perhaps most critical for a rematch with Mr Biden, Mr Trump, unsurprisingly, kept his hold on voters who described themselves as dissatisfied or angry with the state of the country and dominated among voters who said the economy was “not so good or poor".
For voters who said their families were falling behind financially, Mr Trump won 74 per cent of their support.
And for New Hampshire voters who were most interested in which candidate could beat Mr Biden in November, Mr Trump handily beat Ms Haley 59 per cent to 39 per cent.
That means a majority of Republicans still do not buy the argument Ms Haley has been making that Mr Trump is unelectable.
No worries
It is hard to lose to a candidate who isn’t on the ballot, but Democrat Dean Phillips pulled it off on Tuesday.
For Mr Biden, the result brings a sigh of relief that his campaign avoided what could have been a mortifying night that would provided talk-show fodder for weeks. The incumbent president was on track to win the primary by a nearly 50-percentage-point margin after voters wrote his name in on their ballots.
The primary offered Mr Phillips a chance to make a name for himself after the national Democratic Party punished New Hampshire for refusing to follow the more diverse South Carolina on the Democratic primary calendar. Since no delegates will be awarded from the New Hampshire primary, Mr Biden did not bother with qualifying for the ballot.
Mr Phillips, a Minnesota congressman and the only mainstream Democrat challenging Mr Biden for the nomination, aired a surprising number of TV and radio ads in the run-up to the primary while the Biden campaign kept its distance from the whole thing.
Local Democratic officials, looking to ensure their state did not become a political punchline, mounted a write-in effort on Mr Biden's behalf.
More than 30,000 Democrats braved the cold to write in Mr Biden's name even though it meant nothing in the grand electoral scheme, a win that the White House will take. At least among some Democrats, there were no hard feelings about being bypassed in favour of South Carolina, which holds the first official Democratic primary on February 3rd.
Indies to the rescue?
Ms Haley needed a healthy number of independent voters, who are permitted to vote in the primary, to come out for her to offset Mr Trump’s strength with traditional conservatives.
There were early signs that may have been occurring, based on Edison Research exit polls.
According to Edison, 34 per cent of voters who turned out considered themselves moderates or liberals, compared to 29 per cent in 2016, when Mr Trump won the primary handily.
Of the 43 per cent percent who called themselves independents, Ms Haley was winning 60 per cent of their vote compared to 35 per cent for Mr Trump. She was winning 73 per cent of those who call themselves moderates.
On the flip side, Mr Trump was dominating with self-declared conservatives, winning them by a 70 per cent to 28 per cent margin.
More than half the voters (51 per cent) believe Mr Biden did not win the 2020 election fairly, according to the poll. Mr Trump, who has perpetuated that false claim since he lost to Mr Biden, was getting the vast majority of those voters at 86 per cent.
More than half the voters (54 per cent) also said they believed Mr Trump would be fit for the presidency even if convicted of a crime, the poll said.
Conversely, 42 per cent said he would be unfit, and Ms Haley was earning 84 per cent of those voters. That suggests Mr Trump's legal problems could hamper him in a general-election matchup against Mr Biden.
