Trump, Sanders post resounding N.H. wins
MANCHESTER, N.H. — For Donald Trump, for one night, there was so much winning.
The billionaire political novice Tuesday posted a decisive victory in the New Hampshire primary, a once-unthinkable first for an enterprise built on the promise of putting America on top and turning politics on its head. Restive Democrats had their own act of anti-establishment defiance, lining up behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, while delivering a broad rejection of Hillary Clinton's second bid for the White House.
“We are going to make our country so strong,” Trump told a raucous crowd in Manchester, with typical bombast. “We are going to make America so great again. Maybe greater than ever before.”
With votes still being tallied, Trump led with 34 percent of the vote. In his wake was a field of Republicans still-struggling to break out of the pack. With about 16 percent, Ohio. Gov. John Kasich surged from relative obscurity to second-place, a feat his poorly funded campaign will struggle to replicate. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio jostled for third place, while a disappointed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie trailed behind.
The results offered little clarity to the nomination battles likely to stretch on into the spring — giving the parties' establishment fits and testing voters' commitment to the outsider excitement. Republicans head to South Carolina, a hotbed of tea party groups and evangelical voters that will test Trump's staying power. Democrats move on to Nevada, where Sanders will leave his New England neighborhood and try to prove his mettle with a more diverse and urban electorate.
Sanders was leading Clinton by 21 percentage points, with roughly 90 percent of the vote tabulated.
“We have sent a message that will echo from Wall Street to Washington, from Maine to California,” he told a cheering crowd in Concord, later asking viewers to log-on and send cash to fuel his next steps. “The government of our great country belongs to all of the people and not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors,” Sanders declared.
Clinton tried to show she'd heard the message.
“People have every right to be angry,” she said, as she conceded to Sanders. “But they are also hungry. They're hungry for solutions. What are we going to do?”A night of victory speeches from a reality TV tycoon and avowed democratic socialist was all-but unimaginable six months ago, before outsider fever gripped both parties' search for a president.But the outcome had been brewing for months. Trump's campaign seized the top slot in New Hampshire and never relented, despite rivals dumping millions into advertising and late signs that Rubio's strong third-place showing in Iowa had earned him a second look. In remarks Tuesday night, Rubio acknowledged his bungled debate performance Saturday night hurt him: “It's on me,” he said.Ted Cruz, the Iowa winner and a favorite of social conservatives, proved unable to win over New Hampshire's more moderate brand of Republican.Those voters went to Kasich, who staked his campaign on New Hampshire, and declared his second-place showing an affirmation of his largely positive campaign.“Light overcame the darkness,” he said.A subdued Christie was heading back to New Jersey to “take a deep breath” and review whether to keep at it, he told supporters.Sanders' win was also telegraphed for weeks, as his indictment of Wall Street and big money in politics caught fire in a state that was once considered a reservoir of good will for both Clinton and her husband. Eight years ago, Hillary Clinton won the state by 2.5 percentage points in a late comeback over then-Sen. Barack Obama.But on Tuesday Sanders' coalition was strikingly broad, cutting across both ideological and demographic lines, according to an exit poll conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and the television networks.
