NEW YORK — In two national Republican primaries, barely 400,000 votes were cast in eight days. But both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are already acting like their parties’ nominees.
Trump’s double-digit victory Tuesday in independent New Hampshire, where he was seen as more vulnerable than anywhere else, was a rhetorical turning point for both Democrats and Republicans.
“It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. And my message to the country is that the stakes couldn’t be higher,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday evening, hours after Trump’s victory.
Trump’s team largely agreed, even as he fumed over former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s reluctance to quit the race altogether.
“I say the general election starts tonight,” said Trump opponent and attorney Vivek Ramaswamy, who stood next to the former president during his victory speech in New Hampshire. “And this guy will win it by a landslide.”
The fuss is just a small part of what will happen in the next ten months. Both parties are building extensive political operations, backed by billions of dollars in advertising, to shape the almost certain general election rematch between the current president and his predecessor.
It’s a match that many voters and some elected officials didn’t want. Both Biden and Trump have vocal opponents within their parties and glaring political commitments. Yet no other Republican presidential candidate in history has won the first two contests on the primary calendar, while Trump wrapped up his latest election on Tuesday night, failing to win his party’s nomination. And Biden, who won the Democratic primaries in New Hampshire without even appearing on the ballot, faces only token opposition in his bid for the Democratic nomination.
Hours before Biden’s victory in New Hampshire was official, the president moved two key White House aides to his Delaware-based campaign. On Wednesday, Biden will be the keynote speaker at a United Auto Workers political convention as he works to win over workers in critical swing states in the Midwest.
Trump goes to Phoenix on Friday to address Republicans in a swing state that Biden won by 10,000 votes in 2020.
As much as Trump’s team would like to shift its entire focus to Biden, one Republican rival is still standing.
“Can someone please explain to Nikki that she lost – and lost badly,” Trump wrote on his social media network. “She also lost Iowa last week, BIG. They were, as some non-fake media say, ‘BREAKING defeats.’”
Haley’s team vowed Wednesday to keep fighting Trump for the Republican nomination, even facing the prospect of an embarrassing home state primary in South Carolina on Feb. 24.
“New Hampshire is first in the country. It’s not the last one in the country,” Haley declared before leaving Tuesday evening. “This race is far from over. There are still dozens of states to go.”
Primary elections are scheduled in every U.S. state and territory over the next five months, ahead of each party’s summer national conventions. The first time Trump or Biden could gather enough delegates to become his party’s presumptive nominee would be March.
Haley’s campaign launched a new $4 million ad campaign in South Carolina on Wednesday, describing the prospect of a general election between Biden and Trump as “a rematch that no one wants.”
“Biden – too old. Trump – too much chaos,” says the narrator. “There is a better choice for a better America.”
Haley was scheduled to campaign in Charleston on Wednesday evening, which her campaign said was the start of her first-in-the-South swing. She began addressing Republicans on Wednesday via Zoom in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the Feb. 8 caucuses will decide nine Republican delegates.
“Nikki Haley is the lucky warrior,” Mark Harris, who heads the large pro-Haley super PAC, said Wednesday.
Harris said his organization would join the campaign by publishing millions of dollars worth of TV ads in South Carolina over the next month, in addition to sending out mailers, knocking on doors and doing other activities. As Trump tries to expand his coalition among elected officials, Harris said Haley’s team is more focused on voters.
“They won’t be politicians, they won’t be party insiders,” Harris said. “They won’t be campaign officials. They will be voters. Voters get to make this decision. That’s the beauty of American democracy.”
Early next week, Haley is scheduled for a fundraising tour with stops in New York, Florida, California, Texas and South Carolina. She is expected to continue to receive continued support from donors despite Trump’s grip on the nomination, as key forces within the Republican Party do not want him to represent their party in the general election.
Trump’s critics openly fear that he will struggle to win in November and that he will carry away Republican candidates in other elections. Republicans have struggled in every national election since Trump first won the White House in 2016.
Indeed, there were new warning signs about Trump’s broader political standing ensconced in the New Hampshire results, raising questions about his strength in the general election.
Haley defeated Trump on Tuesday among Republican primary voters who identified as moderate or independent, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of the electorate. She also defeated Trump among voters with a college degree.
About half of Republican primary voters also said they were very or somewhat concerned that Trump is too extreme to win the general election. And about a third believe Trump broke the law — in his alleged attempt to interfere with the counting of votes in the 2020 presidential election, his role in what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, or with the found secret documents. at his home in Florida after leaving the White House.
Trump flew back to his Florida estate late Tuesday as he prepared for another round of court hearings.
Still, despite all of Trump’s baggage, after his victory in New Hampshire there were new signs that his party was accepting the reality of his dominance. A new wave of elected officials backed him, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who previously publicly disagreed with Trump, telling reporters in May: “We have to come up with an alternative.”
“I’ve seen enough,” Cornyn wrote on social media on Tuesday. “To beat Biden, Republicans must unite around a single candidate, and it is clear that President Trump is the Republican voters’ choice.”
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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.