Trump is aiming for a victory on Tuesday to secure his front-runner status as the Republican candidate for presidential elections later this year.
ADVERTISEMENTDonald Trump is aiming for a commanding victory in New Hampshire's Republican primary on Tuesday.
Having bagged victory in Iowa, he wants to secure a sweep of the second of two races that would make a November rematch with President Joe Biden look more likely than ever.
The biggest question is whether Trump's last major rival, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, will be able to eat into his margin — or pull off an upset outright.
Haley has dedicated significant time and financial resources to New Hampshire, hoping to appeal to its famously independent-minded electorate.
In the first results released early Tuesday, all six registered voters of tiny Dixville Notch cast their ballots for Haley over Trump. The resort town is the only one in New Hampshire this year that opted to vote at midnight.
Trump’s allies are already pressuring Haley to leave the race and those calls will intensify if he wins New Hampshire easily.
Were she to drop out, that would effectively decide the GOP primary on its second stop, well before the vast majority of Republican voters across the country have been able to vote.
Haley insists she’s in the race for the long run, telling supporters at a VFW hall in Franklin on Monday that “America does not do coronations.”
“This is about, do you have more of the same, or do you want someone who’s going to take us forward with new solutions,” Haley told reporters.
She also said: “We can either do the whole thing that we’ve always done and live in that chaos world that we’ve had, or we can go forward with no drama, no vendettas and some results for the American people.”
“This is a two-person race,” Haley added.
Caucuses are a series of votes where US political parties select delegates who will later represent the party's choice for presidential nominee.
The results contribute to the selection of delegates who will ultimately attend the party's national convention to officially nominate a candidate for the presidency.