Trump Becomes First Non-Incumbent Republican to Win Iowa and New Hampshire

Former President Donald Trump made history with his Republican primary win in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

With his victory over former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the state, President Trump has become the only non-incumbent Republican to win both Iowa and New Hampshire, according to multiple analyses.

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, now a Utah senator, came close during the 2012 contest. However, while he won New Hampshire, he lost Iowa by 24.

As of Wednesday morning, the former president garnered about 54.5 percent of GOP primary voters in New Hampshire. Ms. Haley, meanwhile, received about 43.3 percent of the state’s vote so far. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who announced he left the race on Sunday and backed President Trump, received about 2,100 votes, while several other candidates who have dropped out received a few thousand in total.

While the final margin was still unclear Wednesday, the result bolstered Republican calls for Ms. Haley to leave the race to unify around President Trump. However, she said in a speech and before the primary that she would persist.

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Her campaign vowed in a memo earlier on Tuesday to push forward until Super Tuesday on March 5, when Republicans in 15 states and one territory vote in the primary.

The next competitive contest is scheduled for Feb. 24 in South Carolina, where Ms. Haley served two terms as governor. Despite her ties to the state, however, President Trump has racked up endorsements from most of the state’s Republican figures, and opinion polls show him with a wide lead.

Among those who called on Ms. Haley to leave the 2024 contest was Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who until now had resisted publicly calling on candidates to leave the race. The party should rally around President Trump for the 2024 general election, she said Wednesday.

“Donald Trump is the first ever to win both [the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary]. I’m looking at the math and the path going forward, and I don’t see it for Nikki Haley,” Ms. McDaniel said during a Fox News interview.

With the results in New Hampshire, “there is a message that’s coming out from the voters, which is very clear,” she added. “We need to unite around our eventual nominee, which is going to be Donald Trump, and we need to make sure we beat [President] Joe Biden.”

One of Ms. Haley’s surrogates, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, pushed back on the calls for Ms. Haley to leave the contest Wednesday. Several months ago, the governor endorsed Ms. Haley, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under the Trump administration.

“With all due respect to Ronna McDaniel, to say that we’re just going to call it after two states … 40 states to go, the head of the Republican Party saying we don’t want to hear from all the other Republicans in the nation because it’s getting too close, that’s nonsense. You got to let the voters decide, not a bunch of political elites out of D.C.,” Mr. Sununu, a Republican, also told Fox News.

‘Impostor’

On Tuesday evening, Ms. Haley told a crowd that she won’t end her presidential bid although some analysts had speculated that she could perform relatively better against President Trump in New Hampshire due to the state’s high number of independent voters.

“This race is far from over,” she said in Concord, New Hampshire. “There are dozens of states left to go and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.”

And she again said that President Trump’s win would mean that Republicans will lose in November. “The worst-kept secret in politics is how badly the Democrats want to run against Donald Trump,” the former governor said. “A Trump nomination is a Biden win and a (Vice President) Kamala Harris presidency.”

She then called on the former president to hold a debate with her.

“She is not going to win, but if she did she would be under investigation … I could tell you five reasons why already, not big reasons, little stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about,” President Trump said.