Former President

Donald

Trump won the first Republican primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday, against his closest competitor, the former governor of South Carolina. Nikki Haley

, according to an Associated Press projection. although

The outcome was expected, but was still significant.

Here are some takeaways.

It is over

Yes, Haley will remain in the race for now. But Trump’s victory in the first primary state, which happens to have one of the more moderate and least Trump-friendly voters in the Republican Party, all but seals his party’s nomination, setting off an expected

rematch with President Biden.

The not-terribly-competitive

Republican

nomination competition is underlined

how much the GOP has become Trump’s party.

Trump left office with low approval ratings and two impeachments that followed an unprecedented attempt to overturn a legitimate election. But he entered the nomination battle

with many of the advantages of an incumbent,

And

then scored

enormous

wins

in both Iowa and New Hampshire, a rare achievement for a Republican presidential candidate.

Recommendations tell part of that story. Often they don’t matter, but two recent nods from former opponents show why Trump has been the default choice from the start.

shaper

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott both backed Trump shortly after leaving the race.

Neither man had much personal reason to embrace Trump.

Trump The former president

targeted DeSantis mercilessly, who entered the race with high approval ratings, calling him “Desanctimonious” and mocking his

staff

appearance, among other insults. But both men supported Trump for the same reason they refrained from attacking his vulnerabilities during the race:

Their GOP

voters still love him.

The two believe that

if they want to have a future in the party, at least in the short term,

they believe

they should stick with Trump.

Will Haley stop looming over her home state?

Haley has repeatedly said recently that she will not drop out of the race for New Hampshire.

America doesn’t do coronations, she said Monday as she campaigned in the state, a promise echoed in a campaign memo

on

Wednesday.

Most candidates make similar statements right up until the moment they leave the race. Haley’s underdog strategy hinges on winning New Hampshire, which is loaded with

highly educated Republican and independent voters

whose

Haley was searching.

The race then heads to Nevada and the Virgin Islands, where Republican caucuses will take place on February 8.

Poll show

Haley here

down nearly 40 percentage points against Trump in South Carolina, her home state, where the Republican primaries will take place on February 24. A major loss there would be detrimental to her

future

prospects, although not fatal. Florida Senator.

Marco

Marco Rubio polled just 27% against Trump in his home state in 2016 and was easily re-elected in 2022.

But many candidates, including

Deputy Director

Kamala Harris

of California when she was a California senator,

choose to avoid the potential stain on your resume that would result from losses in your home state. They dropped out before voting took place in the 2020 race. In Harris’ case, this has paid off with a nomination for vice president, although Haley seems unlikely to get Trump’s nomination.

Another historic moment for a twice-impeached president

The Trumps win on Tuesday, combined with last week’s caucus

It

The victory in Iowa marked another historic moment. It was the first time

Hi

has since faced voters

left, he left

They still refused to accept the election results while cheering on an angry mob that stormed the Capitol.

He faces 91 criminal charges and has threatened, among other things, to terminate the Constitution and give himself dictatorial power for a day, while claiming that presidents enjoy absolute immunity from prosecution even for acts that cross the line.

The question is a dividing line for many voters. In the network’s preliminary exit polls, 85% of Haley’s voters said Trump, if convicted of a crime, would be unfit to be president. Only 11% of Trump voters said so. At least among Republican voters, he has strong support. But it’s all unprecedented.Democrats hope voters will compare Biden to the alternative President

Biden has been repeating the aphorism for months: Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative. He claims his low

function

approval

judgement

in polls now below 40% will matter less once people focus on the binary choice between him and Trump.

That process is likely to intensify as Trump gets closer to securing the nomination.

The big question is whether the election, now expected to be close, will shift in Biden’s favor as voters take a closer look at Trump. Historically, Trump’s approval rating has declined in polls as he has gained more public prominence.

Turnout for a Trump-Biden rematch could decline

Voters turned out in large numbers in 2018 and 2020 and in some states

in

2022, in part because Trump evokes such strong positive and negative feelings

of voters

. Abortion also played a major role in 2022,

nextwhichfollowed

the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a constitutional right to the procedure.

Will that fervor continue in November, or are voters too tired and uninspired for a likely rematch that has turned off many?

That’s one of the biggest questions and one that both parties will pursue as the general election takes shape. Biden must win the support of younger and black voters, key groups for him in 2020 whose excitement has waned according to polls.

Trump must minimize losses in the suburbs, where educated Republican women have defected.

What happens to third parties? Will they fade out or play spoilers as usual?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is polling double figures as an independent candidate. A centrist political group called No Labels has launched its own third-party ticket, though no one has signed up to join.

History shows that these candidacies tend to fade by the time voters cast their ballots. But they have had an impact, including in 1992, when Ross Perot received 19% of the vote. The debate continues over which of the two main candidates he harms the most:

Bill Clinton defeated George HW Bush with only 43% of the vote

. In 2000, Ralph Nader may have prevailed for George W. Bush in his race against Al Gore.

Conventional wisdom holds that Biden will be hurt by a third-party candidate because Trump’s core is so passionate and loyal. But that remains unclear, especially in the case of Kennedy, whose conspiratorial views on vaccines and other topics align

that of

many Trump supporters

.