An Important Victory

Is the Republican presidential primary over already?

Not quite, but it’s a reasonable question after New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary delivered a clear victory for Donald Trump last night. And if your definition of “over” is whether Trump is now on track to win without a serious contest, the answer is probably “yes.”

With nearly all the counting done, he won 55 percent of the vote. His only remaining rival, Nikki Haley, won 43 percent.

Trump’s 12-point margin of victory is not extraordinarily impressive in its own right. In fact, he won by a smaller margin than many pre-election polls suggested.

What makes Trump’s victory so important — and what raises the question about whether the race is over — is that New Hampshire was Haley’s best opportunity to change the trajectory of the race. It was arguably her best opportunity to win a state, period.

If she couldn’t win here, she might not be able to win anywhere — not even in her home state of South Carolina, where the race turns next. And even if she did win her home state, she would still face a daunting path forward.

Trump leads the national polls by more than 50 percentage points with just six weeks to go until Super Tuesday, when nearly half of all the delegates to the Republican convention will be awarded. Without an enormous shift, he would secure the nomination in mid-March.

Haley’s best chance

Why was New Hampshire such an excellent opportunity for her?

The polls: New Hampshire was the only state where the polls showed her within striking distance. She trailed by a mere 15 points in the state, compared with her 50-plus-point deficit nationwide. She isn’t within 30 points in any other state, including her home state of South Carolina.
History: The state has a long track record of backing moderate and mainstream Republican candidates, including John McCain and Mitt Romney. Trump won the state with 35 percent of the vote in 2016, but mostly because the moderate vote was divided.
The electorate: Haley fares best among college graduates and moderates, and the New Hampshire electorate is full of those voters. The state ranks eighth in the college-educated share of the population, and unlike in many states, unaffiliated voters are allowed to participate in the Republican primary.
The media: New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary receives far more media attention than later contests. It offered the possibility — if only a faint one — that a win could change her fortunes elsewhere.

Haley made good on all of these advantages yesterday. She won 74 percent of moderates, according to the exit polls, along with 58 percent of college graduates and 66 percent of voters who weren’t registered Republicans.

Conservative votes

But it wasn’t close to enough. Haley lost Republicans by a staggering 74 percent to 25 percent — an important group in a Republican primary. Conservatives gave Trump a full 70 percent of the vote. Voters without a college degree backed Trump by 2 to 1.

In other Republican primaries, numbers like these will yield a rout. Conservatives, Republicans and voters without a degree will represent a far greater share of the electorate. There is no credible path for her to win the nomination of a conservative, working-class party while falling this short among conservative, working-class voters.

Worse, Haley’s strength among independents and Democrats will make it even harder for her to expand her appeal, as Trump and other Republicans will depict her campaign as a liberal Trojan horse.

If Haley had won New Hampshire, the possibility of riding the momentum into later states and broadening her appeal would have remained. Not anymore. Instead, it’s Trump who has the momentum. He has gained nationwide in polls taken since the Iowa caucuses. Even skeptical Republican officials who were seen as Haley’s likeliest allies, like Tim Scott or Marco Rubio, have gotten behind the former president in recent days.

Whether the race is “over” or not, the New Hampshire result puts Trump on a comfortable path to the nomination. If he’s convicted of a crime, perhaps he’ll lose the nomination at the convention. But by the usual rules of primary elections, there’s just not much time for the race to change. If it doesn’t, Trump could easily sweep all 50 states.

Related: “It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee,” President Biden said in a statement. “The stakes could not be higher.”

More on the Republican primary

Trump called Haley an “impostor” who “had a very bad night” and urged her to drop out. “I don’t get too angry, I get even,” he added.
Haley vowed to continue through the South Carolina primary next month. She said the race was “far from over” and challenged Trump to a debate. Read about her options.
The old guard of Republicans — families like the Bushes and Romneys as well as Wall Street donors — have become largely irrelevant. See more takeaways from the race.
Watch a video of Shane Goldmacher, a Times political reporter, explaining what happened in the primary.
Most New Hampshire Republican primary voters said Trump would be fit for the presidency even if he were convicted, The Washington Post reports.
A woman with an RV full of Trump merchandise and a man with Trump tattooed on his calf: The Concord Monitor profiled Trump supporters in New Hampshire.

More on the Democratic primary

Biden won New Hampshire’s Democratic primary, despite not being on the ballot, after his allies organized a write-in campaign.
Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman who campaigned heavily there, placed second.
Biden criticized Trump at a rally for abortion rights, calling him “the person most responsible for taking away this freedom in America.”

Commentary

Trump isn’t a sitting president, but he “is functionally an incumbent and voters are reacting to him as such,” Josh Kraushaar of Jewish Insider posted on social media.

“The battle is now between the former president and the current one,” The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty writes. “The slog between now and November will be long and grim and bitter.”
Still, the New Hampshire results were close enough to suggest “that we were only a few what-ifs away from a more competitive campaign,” Ross Douthat argues in a Times Opinion column.
“Trump’s attempts to dismiss Haley might serve to make her more committed to staying in,” Monica Potts of FiveThirtyEight writes.
Late night hosts processed the primary.

THE LATEST NEWS

Israel-Hamas War

Israeli forces said a blast that killed around 20 troops came after militants fired on them while they were demolishing a neighborhood to create a buffer between Gaza and Israel. The U.S. opposes a buffer zone.
Palestinian detainees recounted being stripped and beaten by Israeli forces. A U.N. office has said Israel’s treatment of Gazan detainees might amount to torture.
U.S. forces again struck the Houthis in Yemen as well as other Iran-linked militias in Iraq.
The war has given the Houthis an international audience for their anti-American and anti-Israeli message. Read how the Houthis became an effective militia.

International

Turkey’s Parliament approved Sweden’s bid to join NATO, leaving Hungary as the lone holdout.
In Colombia, gangs are targeting foreign men on dating apps. Dates drug the men so accomplices can rob them.
Archaeologists found remnants of sprawling ancient cities in the Amazon.

Politics

Senator Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat facing corruption charges, said the F.B.I. “ransacked” his home in a 2022 search that found gold bars and half a million dollars in cash.
Lawmakers in at least 10 states — including Vermont — have introduced or are planning bills to tax wealth. (Separately, more than 250 billionaires and millionaires recently asked world leaders to tax them more, Quartz reports.)

Opinions

Benny Gantz, a centrist former general who has argued that Netanyahu has damaged Israel, could become his replacement. Anshel Pfeffer has a profile.

The growing practice of “swatting” public officials — using false emergency calls to draw armed police to their homes — threatens American democracy, Barbara McQuade writes.

The allegations against District Attorney Fani Willis jeopardize her case against Trump. She should step aside, Clark Cunningham argues.

Here are columns by Bret Stephens on Gaza’s tunnels and Thomas Edsall on Trump.

MORNING READS

San Giovanni Lipioni: A small Italian town has the oldest average population in an aging nation. It’s trying to lure new residents.

An eternal question, answered: How much potato must a chip contain?

Rise and dine: Not a morning person? These 24 recipes could help you get out of bed.

Look up: Walking with your face buried in a smartphone affects your mood — and your stride.

Lives Lived: Charles Osgood hosted “CBS Sunday Morning” for 22 years. But his passion was radio, where he told unconventional stories in unconventional ways, often in rhyme. Osgood died at 91.

SPORTS

N.B.A.: The Milwaukee Bucks shocked the league by firing their head coach, Adrian Griffin, just 43 games into his tenure, which he finished 30-13. The former Celtics and Sixers coach Doc Rivers is a leading candidate to replace him.

Baseball: Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton and Joe Mauer were elected to the Hall of Fame, the organization announced.

A unique donation: The former Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud, who now plays for the Houston Texans, gave a large sum directly to the school’s name, image and likeness collective, the first publicly known contribution of the sort.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The race begins: Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” leads the Oscars pack this year, with 13 nominations. “Barbie” earned eight, including for best picture — though its director, Greta Gerwig, and star, Margot Robbie, were notably overlooked. The best picture nominees are an eclectic mix, with foreign films — “Zone of Interest” and “Anatomy of a Fall” — alongside smaller independent movies like “Poor Things” and “The Holdovers,” and epics like Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

See the full list of Oscar nominees.

More on culture

The Los Angeles Times, losing money, is laying off more than 20 percent of its journalists.
A fire in Abkhazia, a Russian-backed breakaway region of Georgia, destroyed thousands of paintings.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Simmer cherry tomatoes and raw pasta to make this one-pot spaghetti.

Try a power-building workout.

Improve your meal prep.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was toothpick.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections.

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