Sanders, Trump take New Hampshire
February 9, 2016
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders powered to victory in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, avenging their Iowa losses to keep the mad scramble of the 2016 presidential campaign alive with dozens of contests to come.
Sanders, the independent socialist senator challenging Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, and Trump, the political neophyte, billionaire and provocateur of the Republican race, tapped New Hampshire’s occasional indulgence in political insurgencies to prevail in the nation’s second election for the nomination.
Together they are would-be slayers of the political establishment, and a loss for either one would have been potentially devastating to their hopes.
As it is, Sanders, from Vermont, moves on to tougher territory in South Carolina, where Clinton has been favored and where a racially diverse population serves up an electorate that looks more like America than rural, small-town and mostly white Iowa and New Hampshire.
Trump, too, will be tested on whether he can run a truly national campaign, despite preference polls that find him on top, and whether he can unleash the organizational skills needed to slog toward the nomination state by state.
A look at the New Hampshire primary:
The Mainstreamers
Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie struggled over who among them could consolidate the support of moderate or establishment-minded Republicans and rise up to be the prime challenger to Trump and Cruz, winner of the Iowa caucuses.
Until his famously flustered debate performance, Rubio was seen as the man on the move, probably not able to defeat Trump in New Hampshire but with a strong chance to outdistance other rivals and perhaps drive some from the race.
Among Democrats, Clinton’s 2008 win in New Hampshire set her back on course after a dispiriting third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, won by Barack Obama on his way to the presidency.
This time, she fell short in New Hampshire after an unsatisfying hair’s-breadth win in Iowa.
Woodward reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Alex Sanz, Holly Ramer and Philip Marcelo in New Hampshire contributed to this report.