CONCORD, N.H. — Former President Donald Trump clinched a second win in the Republican primary, defeating his sole remaining GOP opponent, Nikki Haley, in New Hampshire on Tuesday as she made plans to keep battling Trump for the nomination until at least March.
It’s the second time this month that Mr. Trump won a majority in the party’s presidential nomination contest. With 23% of the vote counted shortly after the last polls closed at 8 p.m., the former president had 52.6% of the vote to Ms. Haley‘s 46.5%. The win follows his Jan. 15 Iowa caucus victory, in which he secured with 52% of the vote.
Trump backers quickly began calling on Ms. Haley to drop out of the race.
“Nikki Haley said she’s running to stop the re-election 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.
Ms. Haley said otherwise in her concession speech, in which, 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.”
SEE ALSO: Haley vows to keep fighting for nomination after loss in New Hampshire
President Biden, meanwhile, was declared the winner in the Democratic primary. The Democrat thwarted longshot challengers after local activists led a write-in campaign because of a calendar kerfuffle between the state and the national party.
Amid polls showing the former president with a double-digit lead in the next two GOP contests in Nevada and South Carolina, where Ms. Haley served as governor, Mr. Trump on Tuesday was well on his way to securing the GOP presidential nomination a third time.
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 President Biden, 81.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a staunch Trump foe, campaigned alongside Ms. Haley.
She warned the legally embattled former president would drag down the nation with the “chaos” that follows him everywhere and she blamed him for signing off on massive spending deals that contributed to $8 trillion in debt.
The support for Ms. Haley among Never-Trump and disaffected Biden voters was no match for the enthusiasm among Trump’s supporters. Hundreds of his fans stood in line for hours in frigid temperatures this week for a chance to see the president at one of several night-time 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 GOP primary opponents who have endorsed him: Biotech 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, who announced his exit from the race from Tallahassee on Sunday amid single-digit poll numbers here.
The former president, visiting a polling location in Londonderry on Tuesday, said he isn’t concerned about Ms. Haley remaining in the race and predicted he’ll 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 President 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. “This is organic.”
Mr. Trump said he’ll dominate the Nevada contest on Feb. 8, which includes both a primary and a caucus, and will win in the Feb. 24 South Carolina primary, where Mr. Trump’s lead is 37 points over Ms. Haley despite its being her home state, 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 beating Mr. Biden in November, citing a Wall Street Journal poll taken 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 multi-state Super Tuesday contest on March 5.
She plans to make a stop Wednesday morning at a Republican Steering Committee meeting in the Virgin Islands, which has its GOP caucuses on Feb. 8. Later 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.