But was there a difference in how the candidates fared in the more rural parts of New Hampshire?
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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former business executive Carly Fiorina ended their presidential campaigns today, narrowing the field challenging front-runner Donald Trump in the race for the 2016 Republican nomination.
Marco Rubio praised the “talented” Chris Christie Wednesday, but said the New Jersey governor’s debate attack on him did little to help his own chances.
He scored perhaps his most triumphant moment on the campaign trail last weekend, when he skewered Republican rival Marco Rubio during a debate for robotically repeating his talking points. SC will be the first primary state with a large proportion of African-American voters, a demographic that tends to lean toward Clinton.
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.
Cruz highlighted the “significant glaring differences” between the two on health care, stressing that Trump was keen on “adopting Bernie Sanders-style socialized medicine”, a reference to the independent senator challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Ted Cruz, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and Rubio.
Christie campaign spokeswoman Samantha Smith said the governor shared his decision with staff at his campaign headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey, late Wednesday afternoon, and was calling donors and other supporters. “We have a lot of people who have been promising money if we perform”, said Kasich senior adviser Tom Rath.
Rubio, in an interview with CNN on Monday, dismissed the torrent of criticism that has come his way since the debate and said his potential to be a strong candidate against the Democrats made him a target.
Polls show that Donald Trump is poised for another big win in SC, which hosts the next Republican primary on February 20. With Kasich’s second place win, all four of these candidates will now continue their race into SC.
Meanwhile, according to NBC News, Christie is bowing out of the race after receiving 7 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, placing one spot above Fiorina at sixth place. She also has benefited from husband Bill Clinton’s popularity in the black community during his presidency, although that became strained during her fierce 2008 primary battle with Obama.
Both Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, and Trump, a real estate mogul who has never held political office, have tapped into the public’s frustration with the current political system. Those Republican leaders who fear that Trump is unelectable in a general election – and there are many – publicly suggest they have until mid-March to coalesce behind a viable alternative.
“I can’t explain it other than we’ve done everything we need to do here and it’s in the hands of the voters”, he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “So I’m really cool with whatever happens here”, he said.
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Bush has also hammered Rubio as a backbencher in Congress and a gifted speaker with no leadership record. Ted Cruz courted evangelicals and hard-line conservatives and Florida Sen.
