New Hampshire primary: Joe Biden wins despite not campaigning; Haley vows to stay in campaign despite Trump win – live

Donald Trump never misses an opportunity to repeat his false claim that he won the 2020 election, and today is no different.

“We won in 2016. And if you really remember, if you want to play it straight, we also won in 2020, by more,” he said, to cheers from the crowd. “And we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016.”

In 2013, then South Carolina governor Nikki Haley appointed a congressman from the state, Tim Scott, to fill a vacant Senate seat – one he still holds to this day.

But the long history between the two Palmetto state politicians has led them on separate paths, and Scott is on stage right now with Trump, whom he endorsed after dropping out of the presidential race.

The former president remarked on this dynamic, saying to Scott: “You must really hate her.”

The senator then came over the podium, to tell Trump: “Oh, I just love you.”

Trump is now casting his victory in the race for the GOP nomination as inevitable, pointing to his victory in the Iowa caucuses last week, and tonight in the New Hampshire primaries.

“If you win both, they’ve never had a loser. Let me put it that way. When you win Iowa, and you win in New Hampshire, they’ve never had a loss,” he said.

Trump is the first Republican since then president Gerald Ford in 1976 to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. Ford indeed went on to win the nomination, but lost in the general election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Donald Trump never misses an opportunity to repeat his false claim that he won the 2020 election, and today is no different.

“We won in 2016. And if you really remember, if you want to play it straight, we also won in 2020, by more,” he said, to cheers from the crowd. “And we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016.”

Donald Trump opened his speech with an attack on Nikki Haley’s claim that she’d be a better candidate against Joe Biden.

“We’ve won almost every single poll in the last three months against crooked Joe Biden, almost, and she doesn’t win those polls,” Trump said.

Trump is fibbing, as he often does. While some polls have shown him ahead of the president, others have not.

Meanwhile, in Nashua, Donald Trump has taken the stage at his watch party.

“God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood was playing as he arrived to chants of “USA! USA! USA!” from the audience. It looks like Senator Tim Scott and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy – both Republicans who withdrew from the race and endorsed him – are by his side.

Dean Phillips took the stage at 8.30pm to congratulate Joe Biden, but said that Biden’s margin of victory was “by no means” what should be expected from an incumbent president.

“Joe Biden is a good man. He’s a fine man … But I gotta tell you, everyone, he cannot win. The polls are saying he cannot win, his approval numbers are saying he can’t win,” Phillips said.

“And the fact that an unknown congressman from Minnesota, who two weeks before the election [Phillips actually entered the race in October] said ‘I’m gonna come up here and run for president’ just got 21% that says something, too, my friends.”

Flanked by supporters and campaign staff, Phillips gave out high fives from the stage. In the days before the vote, Phillips had suggested that winning 20% in New Hampshire would represent success, and he appeared delighted with the result.

“I’ve had so much darn fun I don’t know what to do with myself,” he said.

Phillips urged his supporters to “go and have a little fun tonight” – there’s an open bar here. He said he will remain in the Democratic primary race, even though he has missed the filing deadline in states including Florida and North Carolina.

“We’re going to go to South Carolina, then we’re going to Michigan, then we’re going to 47 other states,” Phillips said.

The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, has called on the GOP to support Donald Trump after his victory in the New Hampshire primary tonight.

“Our House Republican leaders and a majority of Republican Senators support his reelection, and Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire have strongly backed him at the polls. It’s now past time for the Republican Party to unite around President Trump so we can focus on ending the disastrous Biden presidency and growing our majority in Congress,” the speaker said in a statement.

It’s not a hugely surprising statement from Johnson, who endorsed Trump in November, not long after Republicans elected him leader of the House of Representatives. After the 2020 election, he was an architect of a failed attempt by lawmakers to support Trump’s attempt to get the supreme court to disrupt Joe Biden’s election win.

Beyond just vowing to stay in the race, Nikki Haley also made one more attempt to coax Donald Trump to the debate stage.

The former president has refused to debate any of the other Republicans who challenged him for the party’s nomination, Haley included. That didn’t stop her from challenging him to a parley, saying it would prove that he is fit to serve:

Joe Biden’s re-election campaign appears to be welcoming a rematch with Donald Trump.

In a just-released statement, campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez said:

Tonight’s results confirm Donald Trump has all but locked up the GOP nomination, and the election denying, anti-freedom Maga movement has completed its takeover of the Republican party. Trump is offering Americans the same extreme agenda that has cost Republicans election after election: promising to undermine American democracy, reward the wealthy on the backs of the middle class, and ban abortion nationwide.

Joe Biden sees things differently. He’s fighting to grow our economy for the middle class, strengthen our democracy, and protect the rights of every single American. While we work toward November 2024, one thing is increasingly clear today: Donald Trump is headed straight into a general election matchup where he’ll face the only person to have ever beaten him at the ballot box: Joe Biden.

A groan just went up at Dean Phillips’ election night party, after TV networks announced Joe Biden had won the Democratic primary.

Phillips wasn’t expecting to win tonight. At campaign events, he had suggested that garnering 20% of the vote in New Hampshire would be a success.

His supporters will now be watching for more detailed results, after a write-in campaign for the president was clearly successful.

Bill Barry, a retired law enforcement officer, said Phillips, who entered the Democratic race in October 2023, just hasn’t had time to reel in Biden.

“Unfortunately, he got in late,” Barry, 64, said.

“But, you know, you got to give the guy credit for three or four months. He’s been out there on the campaign. He’s been doing it the New Hampshire way: getting out there meeting the people, going into town halls, going to restaurants and shaking hands and meeting people.”

Phillips is showing no signs of dropping out of the race. A member of his campaign told the Guardian that tomorrow about 12 campaign staff are flying to South Carolina, which has its primary on 3 February.

Speaking at her campaign headquarters in Concord, Nikki Haley congratulated Donald Trump on his victory.

But she says she’s staying in the race.

“New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last,” she said.

Donald Trump’s win in New Hampshire has made one Republican senator who was holding out on endorsing him change his mind.

Texas Republican John Cornyn had not weighed in on the presidential race, but made clear last year that he thought someone besides Trump should the party’s nominee. He has now endorsed the former president, after his win in New Hampshire this evening:

The Dallas Morning News reported that on a call with reporters last May, Cornyn said, “I think President Trump’s time has passed him by and what’s the most important thing to me is we have a candidate who can actually win.”

At Nikki Haley’s watch party, the playlist is upbeat and supporters are dancing and cheering.

It’s not the scene you’d expect at the headquarters of a campaign that just lost in New Hampshire. But nevertheless, team Haley is jamming to “Proud Mary” and “Eye of the Tiger”.

At Donald Trump’s election night watch party in Nashua, several cheers went up in the crowded ballroom, and some hats were thrown in the air, when two big screens announced: “Trump wins New Hampshire!”

Kari Lake, a candidate for Senate in Arizona, gleefully told reporters: “Maga! Make America great again!”

Meanwhile the Beatles song “Revolution” is playing outside the ballroom for no obvious reason.

Joe Biden has won New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary, the Associated Press reports, despite the president not campaigning in the state.

New Hampshire had in years past held the first primary in the nation, and the second contest of the Democratic nomination calendar after Iowa’s caucuses. But under Biden, the Democratic National Committee has changed its schedule, and South Carolina will be the first state to vote for the Democratic nominee on 3 February.

Biden’s name did not appear on the ballot in New Hampshire, but his supporters organized a write-in campaign to show support for his presidency, and also to remind him of their desire to remain the first state to hold a primary. That campaign appears to have paid off.

The biggest outstanding question now is how big Donald Trump’s victory in New Hampshire was.

The greater the gap between him and Nikki Haley, the more pressure the former South Carolina governor will be under to abandon the race – though she has previously said she will continue her campaign, no matter what.

Donald Trump has won New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary, the Associated Press reports.

This is Trump’s second victory in the two states that voted in the GOP nomination process. Last week, he won overwhelmingly in Iowa’s caucuses.

The next state to vote is Nevada, where the Republicans will hold caucuses on 8 February. Polls show Trump is ahead there.