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.

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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.

Nikki Haley chases an upset in bitter New Hampshire face-off with Trump

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.