As soon as polls closed Tuesday evening, multiple news outlets called the New Hampshire primaries for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Both candidates went into the first-in-the-nation primary as the heavy favorites, with polling averages showing wide leads for them in their respective races; and they came out victorious without much of a fight.
With less than a quarter of the state's votes reported at 8:40 p.m. ET, projections showed Sanders and Trump with commanding double-digit leads over their party rivals. In the Republican race, the secondary narrative becomes whether John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz will take second-place, each fighting it out with low-teens percentages of the vote.
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Trump's victory comes on the heels of a surprising loss to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucuses—a defeat which many saw as a sign of the reality TV star's impending political decline. By winning the Granite State, Trump will head into the South Carolina primary (Feb. 20) with renewed confidence and a RealClear average polling lead of 16.3 percent. The Donald's victory in the northeastern state comes as a result of appealing to the state's business-minded conservative populace, which is less concerned with the social conservatism that propelled Cruz to a Hawkeye State victory last week.
Sanders's win over frontrunner Hillary Clinton gives the self-described "democratic socialist" some momentum headed into next week's southern primary. However, because his New Hampshire win was predicted
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