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For months, New Hampshire—with its famously independent electorate and its history of upending primary campaigns—had seemed like the best chance for a Republican to stop the MAGA machine. It wasn’t. On Tuesday, Trump defeated his one remaining GOP opponent, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, in the Granite State’s Republican contest, according to media projections.
In many ways, Trump’s continued dominance among New Hampshire’s Republican voters is remarkable. After a second-place finish in Iowa eight years ago, he easily won the 2016 New Hampshire GOP race, setting him on a path to the nomination. But he lost the state’s general elections in both 2016 and 2020. Recent polls suggest that this coming November, Haley would be a far stronger candidate there than Trump in a race against Joe Biden. But none of that seems to matter to the GOP electorate, which once again rallied around the aging, twice-impeached, four-times-indicted former president.
Trump isn’t the nominee yet, but the list of events that could derail his bid is rapidly shrinking. A 2020 rematch, it seems, is likely.