The northeastern state, home to just 1.3 million people, sets the tone for the primaries and could shake out a crowded Republican field of candidates pitting Trump and arch-conservative Senator Ted Cruz against more establishment candidates led by Senator Marco Rubio.
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Christie, Bush and Kasich are hoping that Rubio’s rough night halts momentum he built up coming third in Iowa.
The Republican field remains crowded with more traditional candidates, including Rubio.
“When the lights get that bright, you either shine or you melt”, Christie, the New Jersey governor, said at a campaign event in Hudson, New Hampshire, on Monday. “We have to vote”.
New Hampshire is the second state in the process of picking party nominees for the November 8 election to replace President Barack Obama.
FiveThirtyEight’s polls-plus forecast, which considers multiple factors beyond the polls, gives Trump a 70 percent chance to win New Hampshire, with Rubio tied with Kasich at 10 percent and everyone else in single digits.
Trump’s rivals were duelling for second place as the last undecided voters made up their minds. In his final swing through the state Monday, Christie urged voters to pick a candidate who “has the maturity, and the steadiness, and the aggression to protect our country and put us back in the right spot”.
On the Democratic side, the big question appears to be the size of Sanders’ win.
Ted Cruz. In the two-person race for the Democratic nomination, Sanders has held an advantage over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire for weeks. There was some talk among Clinton loyalists of a possible campaign shakeup.
Mr. Trump has insisted Mr. Cruz unfairly won the Iowa caucuses last week because his campaign wrongly said Ben Carson, another Republican candidate fighting with Mr. Cruz for evangelical votes, was dropping out of the race.
Rhoda Goley, 47, backed Clinton, saying she liked “that she’s run on a platform of children and families”.
The incident marked the culmination of a day of vitriol and insults between the Republican presidential frontrunner, who needs a win in the second nominating state to maintain his national lead, and Florida governor Jeb Bush who must finish strongly today to keep his White House hopes alive.
Since Rubio’s woeful performance during Saturday’s Republican presidential debate, men dressed as robots have been trolling the Florida senator on the campaign trail, mocking what they call the GOP hopeful’s robotic rhetoric. Rubio aides insisted no harm was done and that his crowds were as big as ever.
John Kasich, the OH governor, had a tenth of the votes, while Jeb Bush was on seven and Chris Christie on four.
Dante Scala, an analyst on local politics at the University of New Hampshire, said that if Mr Rubio did not do well in Tuesday’s primary, “it isn’t fatal necessarily, but it makes the road to the nomination longer and riskier”. “He didn’t like that he lost in Iowa”. “We can’t afford to have a president who melts”. “Want to get a picture?”
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Primary votes were already counted early on Tuesday in Dixville Notch, a town of about a dozen people that prides itself on being the first in the state to vote.
