New Hampshire
New Hampshire primary live: Nikki Haley says second Republican vote is ‘not a coronation’ for Donald Trump
Haley: this vote is ‘not a coronation’ for Trump
Campaigning last night, Nikki Haley insisted that today’s vote was “not a coronation” for Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.
Interviewed by Leland Vittert, Haley said viewing her performance in New Hampshire as make or break for her campaign had never been fair. She told him:
It has never been fair. I said I needed to be strong in Iowa. We started at 2%. We ended at 20%. I need to be stronger in New Hampshire. I think we’ll do that tomorrow. And then I need to be stronger than that in South Carolina.
The one thing we have to remember is Donald Trump only won with one and a half percent of the vote in Iowa, 56,000 people voted for him out of a state of three million people. That is not representative of the country.
And you’ve got the political class saying, ‘Oh, it’s got to be him. No. This is not a coronation. This is an election.
You go state by state. You are trying to get representation of real normal people. And that is what we are focused on. We’re going to take it one step at a time.
The South Carolina primary, in Haley’s home state, is scheduled for 24 February.
Key events
Joan E Greve Even without a formal campaign presence in New Hampshire, and without his name on the ballot paper, US president Joe Biden is still expected to receive the most votes in the Democratic primary by a wide margin.
An Emerson College/WHDH poll conducted last week showed Biden winning the support of 61% of likely Democratic primary voters, compared to 16% for Phillips and 5% for Williamson.
But a disappointing performance could point to decreased enthusiasm among the Democratic base, which would be a worrisome sign for Biden heading into the general election. Polls already show Biden running neck and neck with Donald Trump, who is widely expected to win the Republican presidential nomination.
In an indication of Biden’s potential vulnerabilities, some of the president’s prominent allies, including congressman Ro Khanna of California, have spent time campaigning on his behalf in New Hampshire. Speaking at a house party in support of the write-in campaign on Saturday, Khanna predicted a “decisive win” for Biden in New Hampshire. “That’s going to propel him to have a big win in November,” Khanna said. “At the end of the day, I am a believer that Americans love this country and love our democracy.”
Some voters, however, outraged over the war in Gaza, are expected to write in “ceasefire” to the ballot paper today to criticize US support for Israel’s military.
We are a way out from the 5 November election itself, but after today’s primary in New Hampshire the election events start coming thick and fast until we reach “Super Tuesday” on 5 March. If you need it, here is a handy timeline of how the process unfolds throughout the year.
Former US secretary of labor Robert Reich has written for the Guardian today, and is scathing about what he says is the way that the media are making a big deal of Trump’s performance in the campaign so far:
Headline after headline offers the same breathless, spellbound story: “Trump is dominating.” “Disciplined.” “Ruthless.” “Hugely effective.” “Remarkable.” Earth to the mainstream media: this is dangerous nonsense.
Why should Trump’s dominance be surprising? He’s dominated the Republican party since 2016. He dominates by ridiculing opponents, blasting anyone who stands in his way, bullying, browbeating, and bellowing. The media eats it up. He’s outrageous and entertaining.
Trump’s success in last week’s Iowa caucuses wasn’t a “stunning show of strength”. It was a display of remarkable weakness. He got just 56,260 votes. There are 2,083,979 registered voters in Iowa. Fewer than 3% of Iowans voted for him.
The danger in the mainstream media’s awestruck coverage of Trump right now – making a big deal out of his winning the Iowa caucuses, dominating the polls, pushing out all rivals except Haley, and almost surely winning today’s New Hampshire primary – is that it creates a false impression that Trump is unstoppable, all the way through the general election.
But no one should confuse Trump’s performance in the Republican primaries for success in the presidential election. Read more of this opinion piece here: Robert Reich – Yes, Trump is dominating the primaries. That doesn’t mean he’ll beat Biden
Mike Allen at Axios has this on why some Biden supporters are, perhaps unexpectedly, hoping for a big Donald Trump win in New Hampshire today that knocks Nikki Haley out of the race. He writes:
Biden’s backers see New Hampshire as a win-win: either Trump wins huge and a 286-day general election campaign begins tomorrow or Trump gets caught in a drawn-out primary until at least South Carolina’s contest on 24 February.
The president’s campaign has internal data indicating that most of the undecided voters Biden is targeting don’t think Trump will be the Republican nominee. They haven’t tuned in to an election that’s more than nine months away.
That leads Biden’s team to believe the dynamics of the campaign will change significantly once those voters realize it really will be a Biden-Trump matchup in November.
Allen does point out one trend in recent polling data though that could prove a worry to the president: A USA Today/Suffolk university poll found 44% of Republican primary voters were “very enthusiastic” about Trump. Only 18% of Democratic primary voters said the same about Biden.
Most places in New Hampshire – if they aren’t called Dixville Notch – will open their polls at 7am EST (noon GMT), although a few places will open an hour earlier than that. Most polls will close at 7pm EST (midnight GMT), and the results in the Republican primary will probably get called about an hour after that.
There will be 24 names on the Republican ballot paper, which obviously has to be printed well ahead of the election, and so doesn’t take into account the fact that a lot of the candidates have already pulled out of the campaign.
The Democrats have 21 names to choose from on their ballots, but not Joe Biden. As my colleague Adam Gabbatt explained:
The unusual situation stems from the Democratic national committee’s decision to ditch decades of tradition this year in choosing South Carolina, a much more racially diverse state, to host the first presidential primary. When New Hampshire said it would host its primary first anyway – South Carolina will vote next week – the Democratic National Committee essentially said it would ignore the state’s results.
This may, however, end up delaying the results of the vote in New Hampshire. Some Biden supporters have been encouraging voters to write in his name on the ballot, which will complicate the counting.
The move hasn’t been universally popular. CBS News reports that yesterday New Hampshire Democratic Sen Maggie Hassan told reporters: The DNC made a terrible decision not to have New Hampshire go first. We care about our country in New Hampshire. We care about democracy in New Hampshire. And we know what the stakes are here. We know Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. And we know the threat that that poses to our democracy.
New Hampshire is so wedded to being the first primary in an election campaign that in 1975 the state passed a law requiring its primary date to be set not by the parties themselves, but by the secretary of state. The law also requires the vote to take place seven days or more ahead of any other.
Campaigning last night, Nikki Haley insisted that today’s vote was “not a coronation” for Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.
Interviewed by Leland Vittert, Haley said viewing her performance in New Hampshire as make or break for her campaign had never been fair. She told him:
It has never been fair. I said I needed to be strong in Iowa. We started at 2%. We ended at 20%. I need to be stronger in New Hampshire. I think we’ll do that tomorrow. And then I need to be stronger than that in South Carolina.
The one thing we have to remember is Donald Trump only won with one and a half percent of the vote in Iowa, 56,000 people voted for him out of a state of three million people. That is not representative of the country.
And you’ve got the political class saying, ‘Oh, it’s got to be him. No. This is not a coronation. This is an election. You go state by state. You are trying to get representation of real normal people. And that is what we are focused on. We’re going to take it one step at a time.
The South Carolina primary, in Haley’s home state, is scheduled for 24 February.
Two New Hampshire polls released in the lasat couple of days didn’t carry as much encouragement for Nikki Haley as she might have hoped, although with Florida governor Ron DeSantis ending his presidential campaign at the last minute, there may be some wriggle room in the numbers.
On Sunday NBC News, the Boston Globe and Suffolk University put Donald Trump 19 points clear of Haley, at 55% to 36% support. On Monday, the Washington Post and Monmouth University put Trump at 52% support in New Hampshire, to 34% for Haley. If you fancy something audio to set the scene, then today’s episode of Today in Focus is about the New Hampshire primary and the 2024 US election race.
The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, speaks to Michael Safi, and explains how New Hampshire could deliver a win that helps Donald Trump seal up the votes he needs for the nomination before his numerous court appearances can seriously dent his candidacy.
You can listen to it here: Today in Focus – New Hampshire primary: the last chance to stop Trump?
Voting has actually begun in New Hampshire, because Dixville Notch traditionally opens its polls at midnight and declares the result as quickly as possible afterwards. It is a tiny electorate – just six people voted. They all went for Nikki Haley
The New York Times notes that “the event is as much a press spectacle as it is a serious exercise in democracy”, adding that “there were more than ten journalists for every voter, including representatives from major TV networks, newspapers, wire services and foreign press from over a dozen countries.” 78-year-old Tom Tillotson told the New York Times “The real message here is ‘get off your butts, get out there and vote.’ Everybody. Republicans and Democrats.”
And no election is complete without pictures of dogs taking part in the democratic process, and thankfully Dixville Notch delivered on that score already.
Lauren Gambino Lauren Gambino is in Manchester, New Hampshire for the Guardian
Republicans are predicting record turnout – and good weather, seen as a possible boon to Nikki Haley who is relying more heavily on voters who don’t typically participate in the party’s primary.
The stakes could not be higher for Haley. She is barnstorming the state, from the “suburbs to the seacoast”, trying to persuade anti-Trump independents and open-minded conservatives to back her long-shot bid.
Donald Trump by contrast has been in and out of the state, holding raucous evening rallies between appearances in court. New Hampshire propelled Trump to the Republican nomination in 2016 after he came in second in the Iowa caucuses. This year, Trump hopes to notch a victory large enough to effectively extinguish Haley’s campaign.
For much of her nearly year-long campaign, Haley carefully avoided Trump, instead drawing implicit contrasts with calls for a “new generation” of leaders in Washington and a proposal to instate cognitive tests for older politicians. But in the final days before New Hampshire’s primary, she went after him more aggressively, questioning his mental fitness and accusing him of cozying up to dictators and autocrats. Trump responded with insults and misrepresentations while accusing her campaign of relying on the support of “globalists” and liberals to win. In an ugly series of social media posts, he revived the birtherism conspiracy that she was ineligible to be president because her parents were not US citizens when she was born. This is false; Haley, the South Carolina-born daughter of immigrants from India, is eligible. Trump also appeared to mock her Indian ancestry by referring to – and mispelling – her given name, Nimarata. Haley has always gone by her middle name, Nikki.
Haley and her allies insist she has a path forward even if she doesn’t pull off an upset. Improving on her third-place finish in Iowa would be enough. But if she can’t win in New Hampshire, with an electorate seen as far more friendly to her brand of Republicanism, analysts said it will be hard to make the pitch to voters – and donors – that she can win anywhere else.
Read more of Lauren Gambino’s report here: Nikki Haley chases an upset in bitter New Hampshire face-off with Trump
Welcome to our live US politics coverage on a milestone day in the race for the 2024 US presidential election, with the opening day of the primary season. Here are the headlines …
New Hampshire will hold its first-in-the nation primary in what may be the last chance Republicans have to stop Donald Trump from running away with the nomination, as Nikki Haley chases an upset.
Just over a week after the former president’s record-setting victory in the Iowa caucuses, he is now locked in an increasingly bitter showdown with Haley, who has staked her candidacy on a strong showing in the more moderate New Hampshire.
Trump leads by double-digit margins but is considered more vulnerable in the state, where independent voters make up nearly 40% of the electorate and can choose to vote in either party’s primary.
A shadow presidential primary is also taking place. Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, and Marianne Williamson, an author and self-help guru who ran for president in 2020, are mounting longshot presidential bids. Joe Biden’s name won’t feature on the ballot paper.
The primary comes with the background noise of intervention against Yemen’s Houthis in the Red Sea rumbling on. The US has carried out its eighth round of airstrikes. A Pentagon statement said the bombing was “proportionate and necessary”.
I am Martin Belam, and I will be with you for the next few hours. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.
Haley: this vote is ‘not a coronation’ for Trump
Nikki Haley chases an upset in bitter New Hampshire face-off with Trump
Welcome and opening summary …
High winds and widespread rain contributed to more than 12,000 power outages Saturday as a low pressure system passes over New Hampshire.
A high wind advisory remains in effect for southeastern New Hampshire until midday.
There is a high surf advisory in effect for the Seacoast area until 8 p.m. Saturday, with large-breaking waves in the range of 6-9 feet, according to the National Weather Service.
The forecast warns of dangerous wintry winds for hikers and campers, with heavy wet snow likely at higher elevations and a foot of snow possible on summits in the White Mountains.
In southeastern New Hampshire, the wind advisory calls for steady winds of 15-25 mph, and potential wind gusts up to 50 mph.
Eversource reported over 10,000 outages as of 9:30 a.m. Unitil had about 1,400 outages at that time.
The Mount Washington Observatory has recorded winterlike weather over the past 24 hours. Weather observers there say over half a foot of snow and sleet has fallen at the summit.
New Hampshire
Opinion: The farm bill passed the House. Western New Hampshire got the bill. – Concord Monitor
In 1794, George Washington wrote that he knew of “no pursuit in which more zeal and important service can be rendered to any Country than by improving its agriculture.” Two hundred and thirty years later, the House just passed a farm bill that proves his successors stopped believing it.
Drive Route 12 through Walpole. Take Route 10 up through Haverhill. Cut across to Littleton, past the diner that has been feeding the town since 1930. The farms are there. Lush land that produces. People who work till their sweat and blood soak the ground they nurture. A region with every ingredient to feed itself.
What is not there is the processing facility that makes it worth raising the animal. The cold storage that keeps the crop from spoiling before it finds a buyer. The regional market that pays a price worth planting for. I want to believe Washington did not forget to build those things. Regardless, it built something else instead — a system that works beautifully for an operation running 10,000 acres in the Midwest and leaves the farmer on Route 12 doing the math at the kitchen table at midnight wondering if this is the last season.
And the 2026 Farm Bill just made that system more expensive to survive. Large commodity operations received a $54 billion subsidy increase over the next 10 years, with individual payment caps that can exceed $900,000 per operation. Is the farmer at your farmers market in position for this kind of payout?
The bill guarantees money, codified by law, for the people who need it least. Local food programs were reauthorized with zero mandatory funding, but plenty of empty words. They exist on paper and nowhere else. It means a farmer in Plainfield cannot count on them. It means Coos County, where one in seven people cannot reliably put food on the table, keeps waiting for help that has been promised and deferred so many times the promise itself has become an insult. Especially when supermarkets and superstores — just 15% of SNAP-accepting establishments — vacuum up nearly 74% of every food assistance dollar, while the local farm stand sees almost none of it.
And that is before the input costs.
Local farmers know this better than most. You buy fuel and fertilizer on global markets you have no vote in and no say over. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, causing record high prices for fertilizers globally, all because Russia is the world’s top exporter and suddenly it wasn’t exporting. And while that news cycle is long buried, remember that the Iran war has closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a third of the world’s seaborne fertilizer travels. Diesel recently crossed $5 a gallon, which large trucks that move food and tractors rely on. Fertilizer went from $500 a ton to $850. One tractor cost $350 more than it did last year. You did not start either of those wars, yet you pay for both of them. And that is not even accounting for the sharp sting of tariffs on the inputs you depend on to plant next season.
Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies rose 55% in 2024. Then another 46% in 2025, and those numbers only count the farms that qualified for Chapter 12, which requires the majority of family income to come from farming. The ones that don’t qualify quietly disappear, not even a balance sheet to mark the years of struggle, labor and community these farmers gave. They just stop. Since 2018, this country has lost more than 158,000 farms, with every size category shrinking except operations over a million dollars in annual revenue. Those are still growing, and will do so as long as the policy is written to grow them. Another example of an unlevel playing field where the rich get richer.
To be clear about something: large-scale agriculture feeds a lot of people and nobody sat in a room and decided to destroy the small farm. But does intent matter when these are the results? The system produces what it was designed to produce. That is exactly the problem. It was not designed with you in mind, and after enough years of that, the results look intentional even when they are not.
I got involved locally here because I believe western New Hampshire has everything it needs to feed itself and then some. Four thousand farms, nearly half a million acres, led by a direct-sales culture that leads the entire country. What is missing is not the land or the people or the will. What is missing is a representative who walks into bill negotiations fighting for the farmer on Route 12 instead of the operation collecting a $900,000 subsidy check in a state they have never visited, and pretending it actually helps their constituents.
I have a specific plan for how existing federal dollars already flowing into this district get redirected toward processing, storage and regional market access that actually serves the farms here. No new appropriations. No new programs. A full breakdown is at livefreenh02.com/food-independence.
Daniel Webster, born thirty miles from where I am writing this, put it in the Capitol: “The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.” Washington and Webster were not just statesmen. They farmed. They understood what was at stake when the land stopped producing for the people who worked it. The authors of the 2026 farm bill apparently do not.
Robbie Mahrou is an independent candidate for U.S. Congress in New Hampshire’s Second District and a Walpole resident. She can be reached out robbie@livefreenh02.com.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Concord on Friday to discuss a new health initiative to prevent and combat Lyme disease.
The visit was part of the “Take Back Your Health” campaign tour, a multimillion dollar initiative to promote dietary changes and exercise as preventative measures for chronic illness. Kennedy has been traveling the country to outline projects, including changing federal dietary guidelines, gut microbiome research, and addiction recovery.
Kennedy said his goal was to reduce Lyme disease by 25% by 2035.
Kennedy announced that over $2 million of federal funding will be up for grabs for projects focused on the prevention and treatment of Lyme disease. The grants, through a program called LymeX, will be available to businesses, scientists, and the public.
At the press conference Friday, Kennedy said the grants will go to projects including education tools and public awareness campaigns, front-line solutions like medication, and AI technology.
“This initiative will harness artificial intelligence and open data to help patients with Lyme disease and other invisible illnesses. Get answers faster and connect to care sooner,” he said.
Lyme in NH
New Hampshire has long been one of the epicenters for Lyme disease. The state has the seventh highest rate of Lyme disease in the country, according to the most recent data from 2023.
Read more: It’s tick season in New England. Here’s how to stay safe.
Tick season is a well-established time of year in New England, with an increase in cases and hospital visits in April and May. Research from Dartmouth shows half of adult blacklegged ticks in the Northeast carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
In a health advisory issued on Wednesday, State Epidemiologist Benjamin Chan pointed out that Lyme disease is one of the most common infections spread through tick bites. Other tick-borne infections include anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and Powassan virus.
Lyme is also the most common tick-borne illness in America, with an estimated 476,000 people getting the disease each year nationwide, according to the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Service.
Kennedy’s record on Lyme disease
In the past, Kennedy has promoted a conspiracy theory that Lyme disease was bioengineered by the U.S. military. Late last year, he advocated for an investigation into a possible link between the military and the disease as part of a provision in a new defense bill, Scientific American and Politico reported.
Around that time, Kennedy said many patients’ claims were ignored, and he announced that “the gaslighting of Lyme patients is over.”
As an anti-vaccine activist, Kennedy launched a bid for the Democratic nomination for president in 2024. He then ran briefly as an independent before quitting and endorsing Donald Trump.
Trump later nominated him for health secretary, and he was confirmed by the Senate in early 2025 on a party-line vote.
Kennedy is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, and a son of Robert F. Kennedy, who was slain during his campaign for president in 1968. In his own bid for the White House, RFK Jr.’s name was never on the ballot in New Hampshire. In mid-2024, a UNH Survey Center poll found he mustered only 3% support among likely voters.
More resources
What to do if you’ve been bitten by a tick: Step one, don’t panic.
Tick season: How not to get bit
-
Michigan4 minutes agoMichigan State Hosts Elite 4-Star Recruit Gideon Gash for Official Visit
-
Massachusetts11 minutes agoMeteor over Massachusetts causes explosion reports, sightings from Delaware to Montreal
-
Minnesota14 minutes ago
If Nolan Teasley is the “primary football executive” in Minnesota, Seahawks will get compensatory picks
-
Mississippi19 minutes agoMississippi Miss Hospitality announces record scholarships for 2026 competition
-
Missouri26 minutes agoMissouri Walk of Neurofibromatosis brings awareness to Columbia
-
Montana28 minutes agoICE sued over “inhumane” conditions at Camp East Montana
-
Nebraska34 minutes agoWhat channel is Nebraska softball vs Alabama on today? WCWS game time, TV schedule
-
Nevada41 minutes agoTraffic incident causes delays along I-15 near Nevada-California border
