Donald Trump’s commanding win in the nation’s first primary of the 2024 election included a strong showing in the crucial suburbs where the presidency may be decided in November.
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley finished second in the New Hampshire Republican primary. While she pledged to continue fighting, this victory combined with last week’s Iowa caucuses maintain Trump’s status as front-runner.
Equally important for Trump may be that he held off Haley in New Hampshire’s large suburban counties, which are part of the Boston metropolitan area in neighboring Massachusetts. A weak showing in the suburbs could have been an indication that Trump would struggle to recapture those critical voters in areas that swung heavily to Joe Biden in 2020.
But New Hampshire’s suburban voters supported Trump. His winning margin in the major metro suburbs adjoining Massachusetts was slightly higher than his performance in the rest of the state.
In the last presidential election, the suburbs around the nation’s largest metro areas pushed strongly to the Democratic side. Biden won those counties by almost 2.4 million votes, compared with margins of about 400,000 for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. If Biden maintains that bulge in the suburbs this year as the Democratic nominee, Trump will need even more votes from smaller cities and rural areas.
Nationally, Trump won medium metropolitan areas of less than 1 million people decisively in 2016, by a margin of more than 1.1 million votes. In 2020, however, Biden blunted that advantage. On Tuesday, those voters in the New Hampshire primary joined suburban voters in favoring Trump.
The general election may hang on whether suburban and medium-metro voters return to Trump, giving him the boost he received in 2016, or whether they maintain the shift that drove Biden’s victory in 2020. The pattern for 2024 is far from decided, but at least in the New Hampshire Republican primary, voters in those areas gave Trump strong support.
Trump won his biggest margin’s in the less dense portions of New Hampshire’s northern region and southwest. He won just about 50 percent of the vote in the denser cities and towns closest to Boston and around the state capital, Concord. Although rural areas have generally favored Trump, he also decisively won in New Hampshire’s largest city, Manchester, and the surrounding region.
The only county that favored Haley was Grafton, home of Dartmouth College in Hanover. It was Trump’s worst county in 2016, as well.
Cities and towns that have the smallest share of residents with college degrees favored Trump. Voters in counties with about half of the adults holding college degrees favored Haley over Trump by 55 percent to 43 percent. But in counties where about a quarter or less of adults have four-year degrees, voters favored Trump by 56 percent to 43 percent.
Data from the U.S. Census and state election results via the Associated Press. Numbers as of 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, with 85 percent of the votes counted.
Editing by Anu Narayanswamy and Samuel Granados.
Illustrations by Ben Kirchner for The Washington Post.