Donald Trump appears to be cruising to the Republican nomination after another thumping victory at the start of the primary season. But dig a little deeper and his victory over Nikki Haley on Tuesday night contains some warning signs for the former president’s looming rematch with Joe Biden.
The results show Mr Trump comfortably owns the Republican Party, winning 54.4 per cent of the vote to Ms Haley’s 43.3 per cent – but they also exposed the limits to the former president’s appeal.
Ms Haley won self-declared “moderate” voters by a three-to-one margin, according to a CNN exit poll. She also won a large majority of university graduates and voters opposed to a national abortion ban, which Mr Trump’s pick of Supreme Court justices has paved the way for.
It is these groups of wavering voters that could be crucial in November when the election is likely to be decided by narrow margins in a handful of swing states.
Most worrying of all for Mr Trump, almost half of Republican primary voters on Tuesday night said the former president would not be fit to re-enter the Oval Office if he was convicted of a crime.
Mr Biden’s circle believes Mr Trump is the easiest Republican to beat and is already campaigning on the prospect of a re-match.
Ms Haley is fond of pointing that out, arguing after New Hampshire’s results that nominating the indicted former president would mean “a Biden win”.
She closed her speech by declaring that the Republican race is “far from over”.
“The first party that retires its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election,” she said.
Ms Haley has vowed to fight on at the next primary in her native South Carolina, where she was a two-term governor, on February 24. But she trails Mr Trump by a larger margin than she lost to him in New Hampshire and repudiation by the voters who know her best would tarnish her prospects in 2028.
Her campaign has noted that there is more hope further down the line in states which allow unaffiliated voters to participate in the Republican polls, like in New Hampshire.
More than two-thirds of the states voting on “Super Tuesday”, for example, could produce less flattering results for Mr Trump and further highlight splits in the party.
More nights like Tuesday could further underscore that a significant minority do not want Mr Trump to be the party’s 2024 candidate.
Ms Haley, 52, insists she can grow the coalition of support she has assembled, saying: “In America, we have elections, not coronations.”
The exit polls in New Hampshire do not make for happy reading for Mr Biden either: eight in 10 expressed dissatisfaction with the state of the country.
Most national polls show Mr Trump level pegging with Mr Biden or narrowly beating him in battleground states.
But Tuesday’s results suggest Mr Trump may have a greater problem uniting his party behind him than the incumbent president.
Whether America likes it or not, the country is now bracing for a rerun of 2020.
