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tv   Decision 2024 Primaries Caucuses  MSNBC  January 23, 2024 3:00pm-9:00pm PST

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>> as the indicted front-runner continues to plight his time, new hampshire goes to the polls. >> we're tired of losing. >> with a fate of the republican nomination in its hands.
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>> the president has to have immunity. >> america doesn't do coronations. tonight, special election coverage with rachel maddow, joy reid, chris hayes, alex wagner, ari melber, jen psaki, lawrence o'donnell, stephanie ruhle, plus msnbc's campaign experts and steve kornacki with results and analysis at the big board. >> it is now officially a trump-haley race. >> special coverage of the 2024 new hampshire primary begins now. back so soon. i know. it's like we never left. you never even had time to miss us. iowa was just last week. tonight is new hampshire. after this you are going to miss us. after tonight the next republican primary isn't for another month. good evening from msnbc, i'm rachel maddow here with my be loved colleagues lawrence o'donnell and joy reid and ari melber and chris hayes. great to have you all here.
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we'll be joined by alex wagner, jen psaki and stephanie ruhle as the night goes on. the republican primary is winnowed down to two candidates, one the front-runner and one the underdog. the great steve kornacki is with us tonight. as always, he is our compass and our guide. we'll be also checking in live with our correspondents across new hampshire where most polls in today's presidential primary will close just one hour from now at 7:00 p.m. eastern. the very last polls in new hampshire will close at 8:00 p.m. eastern. you're used to seeing big blowout new hampshire primary coverage every four years. tonight is no exception. but, as with so many other things in 2024, this year does have to be a little bit different. president biden and the democratic party decided not to hold the democrats' first primary this year in new hampshire. instead they're letting south carolina go first. the state of new hampshire insisted nevertheless on holding
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their democratic primary today. a purely symbolic affair. no delegates at stake on the democratic side. registered democrats who want to vote for joe biden in new hampshire tonight will have to write in his name. on the republican side, donald trump's last remaining rival is nikki haley. she may have her best shot at a primary win in famously independent-minded new hampshire. she does, as everybody can see, face tough odds. if donald trump finishes tonight with the margin of victory the latest polls predict, haley says she won't drop out, but it will start toing loo like trump has knocked up the nomination which, of course, is what you would want if you, too, were facing 91 felony charges and four criminal trials, such civil trials up the wah zoo. you, too, would want to lock in your nomination before potentially being convicted anywhere and before any of your various trials could reveal more to the american people about your alleged crimes.
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a not inconsiderable number of republican voters tell pollsters that if donald trump is convicted in one of his trials, they will not vote for him in the general election. if trump locks up the nomination before his trials start, the republican party will find itself between a rock and a hard place. they may be locked in to not giving those voters any other republican choice. if that's where tonight leads up, if the joe biden/donald trump rematch is set, this will be the earliest a general presidential mafrpup has been decided in modern political history. in other words, that would be us facing the longest general election of our lives. it already feels so long. here we go. we're going to start tonight by heading over to steve kornacki at the big board. steve, as i understand it, the exit polls, the first wave of exit polls had some surprisingly interesting and substantive results. what can you tell us about what they had? >> i first preface this by saying this is the first wave of
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the exit poll. what's been happening is all day you've had folks at poll sites in new hampshire administering the exit poll to folks as they leave the polls. that's continuing. the polls are still open in much of new hampshire until 7:00, some until 8:00. there will be further exit poll data that comes in. we'll have two more batches of it that come in later in the night. you're getting your first read out here. that means these numbers are subject to change. that being said, what we can show you from this first wave is what we're learning so far about the composition of this republican primary electorate in new hampshire. we've talked so much about what role would independents play, ideology, these sorts of things. here are a few findings that jump right out. let's start on the second payable here. party identification. this gets to the question of the role of independents and even democrats. what you're seeing here in the first wave of the exit poll in a -- i stress -- republican primary. a minority of the voters
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identify as republicans. >> wow. >> 45% identify as independents. this is the number that we are not used to seeing. 8% actually identify as democrats, meaning that a majority in the first wave -- can change. that's the key question here, will it change -- a majority right now 53% do not identify as republicans. typically in the past this number for democrats is trivial. it's 1%, 2%, 3%. it was 3% in 2016, the last competitive republican primary in new hampshire. this independent number, the highest it's been in the modern era is 45%. it is in its first wave 45%. we have not had in the modern era a minority republican electorate in a new hampshire republican primary. again, first wave -- again, the other thing to point out, this is asking folks how they identify. if you're actually a registered
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democrat in new hampshire today, you can't participate in this primary. you're asking how they identify. again, we ask that every primary. usually the percentage in a republican primary are identifying as democratic, as i said, is minute. that's one thing we're learning from this first wave. the key question, is that first wave a red herring or is it showing us something? what else can we show you about the early wave? let's move over to ideology. right here what jumps out is this. 6% in this republican primary right now call themselves liberal and 31% call themselves moderate. that's a combined total of 37% saying moderate or liberal. in 2016, last competitive primary in new hampshire was 29%, eight percentage points higher. if you're having far more non-republicans participate, it
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might follow that the ideology would move a little bit away from the conservative side. that's what you're seeing. again, key question. is this a red herring or are the numbers going to remain like this? other things we can show you here, we talked so much in iowa last week about the role of evangelical christians. they were an outright majority of the caucus electorate, 55%. they went overwhelmingly for donald trump. they were the backbone of his iowa landslide. what share in new hampshire identify as evangelicals in the first wave? 19%. we knew it would be far lower than iowa. also, new hampshire is one of the most secular republican electorates you're going to find. eight years ago it was 25%. it's down even from that. i keep saying this, broken record, but it's important, in the first wave. other key findings we can show you here, one more from the second payable. we asked this question in iowa and asked it again tonight, do you consider yourself part of
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the maga movement. and the answer here in this republican primary in the first wave is 64%, basically two-thirds, say they do not consider themselves that, consider themselves part of the maga movement. i'm searching to make sure i get the right number here. in iowa last week, the number of nos was 50. it's jumped up double digits in the first wave. a couple other quick ones i think are important to show. we asked folks, would you be satisfied -- republican primary voters, would you be satisfied if nikki haley won the republican nomination? here is what we find. 55% in the first wave say they'd be satisfied with haley as the republican nominee. 43% say they'd be dissatisfied. asked the same question about donald trump, satisfied or unsatisfied if he's the nominee. 55/43 for haley. for trump, 56-43. again, early, first wave. two more waves to come. i think, frankly, we're not
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getting the next wave until later in the 7:00 hour with polls in the majority of the state closing at 7:00 and results being reported then. the exit poll has raised some very interesting questions. i think i might not be the next wave of exit polls that start to give us answers, but the actual returns which will start any time after 7:00 p.m. eastern. >> steve, i'd like to go back to the first metric, the self-identified partisan affiliation of the people voting tonight in new hampshire. i know you stated this. i want to be quadruple clear for viewers so nobody misconstrues this. that 8% of self-identified democrats, none of them are people rent centered as democrats in new hampshire. >> yeah. we're asking folks how do you think of yourselves, regardless of how you might technically be registered. there's a couple things on this
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democrat number. if you're a registered democrat and decided six months ago i want to be in the republican primary, i want to vote against trump, that kind of thing, you had to october to get away from your democratic registration. maybe there were a large number of actual registered democrats who took advantage of that. they could register as republicans or register as independents to participate today. it might reflect some of that. it might keep folks who are independents already. but they're rent centered independent but they generally vote democratic. if you ask them, they'll say i'm a democrat. it's some combination of those two things i think. again, it jumps out, again, in the first wave, 8% -- i don't know if that seems like a small number to folks. but that's a big number who identify with the other party in a republican party primary, especially in new hampshire by any historical standard. >> according to the state, it's
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less than 4,000 people who had been registered as a democrat who before october, before the deadline unrent centered as a democrat and reregistered either as an independent or republican. they're expecting 300,000 people to turn out in this electorate tonight. that's an unexpectedly large number even the numbers we had from the state about the number of registered democrats. >> absolutely. that's one of the realities. bigger picture about politics. we talk so much about the number of independents. it's a huge number. it's grown. more and more people say i'm not a democrat, i'm not a republican. the reality is even with people who are independents and registered that way, they tend to vote primarily for one party or the other. i think you've got a lot of independents in new hampshire who, if you really ask them the question, i think people will say, yeah, i'm basically a democrat. that's how i think of myself, even if they don't want to be
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registered with the democratic party. or they say i'm basically a republican even if they don't want to register with the republican party. >> that's so important. a big chunk of people who identify as independents are voting in a fairly partisan way even though they do that. i think these numbers are fascinating for a few reasons. one is, to contrast with iowa, we know the two states have been very different, picking different winners early in the republican primary for multiple cycles. last week we were getting the distilled essence, a kind of demi glauz of republican voters from the 750,000 rent centered statewide to the 100-plus-thousand coming out in 20 degrees below to come out and caucus. this is going to be a different thing. ist has been for a different thing. we might be seeing, and again we don't know, as much as donald trump has been a turnout driver for republicans and his base, he
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has been a turnout driver in the opposite direction. that's one of the stories of donald trump. it was certainly a story in 2020. it was why he lost the election in many respects. he is a profoundly polarizing figure. within the republican primary, they're sort of detached from the mechanics you see in the broader electorate, but because of the distinctness of new hampshire, the nature of its republican party which is considerably more secular and different than the makeup of iowa, that dynamic may be much more at play tonight than we saw in iowa. >> looking ahead at the course of the night, we obviously are looking just at xirs-wave exit polls, there's a long way to go. joy, let me put this to you, with what tooef is putting out there, that looks like the best possible electorate for nikki haley. what's her sort of pie in the sky best hope for tonight?
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>> it's interesting. going through some of the findings in these exit polls are fascinating. it's obviously a much more secular electorate, 67% oppose a national abortion ban. it's something that's actually been a good talking point for her. she still says she would sign an abortion ban, but she soundless caustic on that issue. her voters are more optimistic about the economy. there's also a really quite good economy in the state of new hampshire. in a way, yeah, this is a rorschach test for her strength among independents writ large. i don't know how much you can replicate that and how many states replicate it, but to extent she has a chance to make a case to go further, absolutely this is her best chance. going through these exit polls, this is not an overly pessimistic angry electorate she's facing in new hampshire. she's facing a more norm yfrments electorate. >> kind of an anti-trump electorate. >> the question is there enough
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passion among anti-trump republicans. you know there is among democrats. what she's testing now, what is the level of passion that anti-trump republicans have? do they have enough to put her close. >> to put their money where their mouth is. >> yes. >> go ahead. >> the new hampshire primary and all primaries at the beginning were invented not to nominate candidates. they were invented simply for candidates to possibly demonstrate to convention delegates later in the year their appeal to voters. look, i did well in the new hampshire primary which didn't matter in any way at all except when you'd go to chicago, you'd tell the delegates i did well in new hampshire. that indicates i can win votes. what i'm always looking at, i'm looking at it from the convention standpoint, looking at new hampshire primary, who is this a good night for? there's two front-runners here, trump and biden. you can look at what's happening
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to these two front-runners in new hampshire. you always say to yourself tactically, which campaign would i rather be? leave the issues aside. just in terms of trying to get to the winning margin, which campaign would i want to be? i'd like to be the campaign that is facing no primary challenge that matters in new hampshire at all. that's the one i'd like to be, and donald trump is not that campaign. >> ari. >> one other point here, when you look at it like you say, just on the politics of it. if this were a fantasy draft or sports, you want the best possible team you can assemble, right? for the republican party that's not donald trump. you see how often he comes in less. we talked about it. fewer votes in most of these elections every time he's on the ballot and most of the midterms. steve cautioned it's a first wave. but they remind you against the kind of electorate you need in the general election, he may not do as well. i think that's a theme across
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the numbers of what we've just discussed. then you have the possibility -- the reason why tonight matters, not just saying that because it's a big night -- if it's really close or she pulls off the upset, there's a part of a republican party, we're getting beaten again in the face because our fantasy team sucks. do we want to put other players on or -- here is a wild idea -- give it a couple weeks before the d.c. insiders who used to be dubious of trump in the republican party in '15 and '16, now they benefit, to say nothing of the possible trials. >> the fact is that the republicans on the trump-supporting side are saying nikki haley can only win because this isn't an electorate that looks like a maga electorate. america is an electorate that doesn't look like a maga electorate. i want to go to dairy, new hampshire where jacob soboroff is at one of the state's largest
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polling locations. jacob, what are you looking at at dairy? >> this is pin ter ton academy in dairy. local officials tell me they can't say for certain, but they believe it could be the largest polling location based on the amount of registered voters, not just in new hampshire, but in the entire nation. as many as 20,000 people are eligible to show up and participate. they're already seeing an incredible turnout. hey, lisa -- i want to get you the latest numbers. they're track these in realtime. lisa is the town moderator. lisa, the town moderator, rachel in new hampshire, is the person who -- your only job is elections. you're like the county clerk recorder where i come from in los angeles? >> i suppose this could be right. this is my job. i just do elections. >> is it true this is the
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biggest polling place in new hampshire? if so -- if not, what's the turnout look like so far? >> we are the largest single polling place in new hampshire. our entire town, all four districts come here to vote. >> you have registered voters on top, 18,000 -- >> can we show this to them? >> no, you can't. >> 18,971 the amount rent centered. howell have shown up? >> 8,265 have checked in today. >> how many break down between republicans and democrats? >> i won't have that information until the end of the night. i can tell you that we've already had 496 absentee ballots that have gone through, but all of the rest of those folks showed up in person. >> you have quite a large turnout, approaching 50% turnout already here tonight. we're open until 8:00 p.m. in
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dairy. so is there going to be a surge? >> i'm expecting there is a lot of folks stopping on their way home from work, and they like to vote on their way home or go home and have dinner and come out afterwards. it's been very steady throughout the day. we've had a couple of good bumps throughout the day where we processed about 800 to 850 votes an hour. >> you're seeing a lot of interest? >> yes. >> when it comes to process, let me show you rachel, come with me, lisa, people will come here and check in. you have to present your id. >> right. >> if you don't have an id, you get what's called a challenge voter affidavit form. is that right? >> that's correct. >> can we look at that? >> yeah, sure t. reason we added this law in new hampshire is because you're rushing and you left your id on your desk, nobody wants to go all the way back to boston to get their id. they're able to come in here. we have the challenge voter
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affidavit. basically it's super high tech. we use a polaroid camera. >> this is amazing, rachel. >> i want to show them something. if you forget your id, you take one of these -- recognize this guy? they attach it -- am it right, you attach it to the form. >> we attach it to the form. you swear an oath that you are who you say you are. >> i swear it's me. >> you check which election you came to and you sign it. one of our folks signs it to say they watched you take the oath and sign it. then this becomes your id. you will get contacted by the secretary of state's office. >> just to make sure it's you. >> they do some cross-checking, make sure your photo was the photo on your driver's license. >> before we go, i want to show them one last thing. you'll take that, rachel, that form with you. you come up and re-check in. the part of the process i find so fascinating. you're an unaffiliated voter,
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there are more unaffiliated voters in this state than any -- you participate in the process in one of the polling booths. dana, come over here. this thing here is called a change back station. what's a change back station, lisa? >> when somebody comes in and they're undeclared, during the primaries you can only vote in the party you belong to. they come and declare themselves to a party temporarily and they're able to participate in the elections. once they've cast their vote -- >> change back literally means -- they come in, unaffiliated. they change to republican or democrat. by the time they walk out of the building, they're back to unaffiliated. >> in new hampshire we call it undeclared. they walk in the door undeclared and they have the right to walk out undeclared. >> it's an incredible. process. i'll continue to check in with you throughout the night. you have one of the most important jobs in new hampshire
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politics. back to you. >> jacob, that was fantastic. that was a lot of information in a short period of time. jacob is in derry, new hampshire, one of the sites open until 8:00 p.m. a lot of polls close at 7:00 p.m. eastern time which is less than aur hour from now. but a number close at 8:00 p.m. we'll be covering it all. we'll be going back in the field to hear from some more voters just ahead. steve kornacki has been guiding us the first wave exit poll data that we have which is going to be my back of the envelope analysis, fantastic news for nikki haley's campaign and what she's thinking about in terms of her chances tonight. a lot to come. it's going to be an exciting night out of new hampshire. stay with us. ting night out of new hampshire stay with us >> this country needs a fighter. this country needs a proven record. we need him. he's a divine intervention from god. i really believe that.
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>> anything but trump. >> that was your priority. >> that's my priority. >> is that the biggest reason you supported nikki haley? >> yeah, i'd say. >> because of donald trump? >> yeah. of donald trump >> yeah. let's find the right investments for your goals okay, great. j.p. morgan wealth management. rsv is out there. for those 60 years and older protect against rsv with arexvy. arexvy is a vaccine used to prevent lower respiratory disease from rsv in people 60 years and older. arexvy does not protect everyone and is not for those with severe allergic reactions to its ingredients. those with weakened immune systems may have a lower response to the vaccine. the most common side effects are injection site pain, fatigue, muscle pain, headache, and joint pain. i chose arexvy. rsv? make it arexvy.
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this has always been a marathon. it's never been a sprint. we're going to be strong in iowa. we want to be stronger than that in new hampshire. we're going to be even stronger than that in south carolina. we're running the tape. >> stronger than iowa. not setting the bar high. but the question is, how well can nikki haley do in new hampshire? how will that change the course of the primary from here on out? that was nikki haley speaking in hampton, new hampshire. let's go to milford, new hampshire. nbc correspondent shaq brewster is there. good to see you. tell us what you're seeing in milford. >> reporter: let me say milford is right on the border, not far from the border between
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massachusetts and new hampshire. this is one of the largest polling locations in the state, not as big as where you just saw jacob soboroff. i talked to the town moderator. he says we're approaching about 50% of the registered voters, registered as of this morning, approaching about 50% of them already casting their ballots. one thing i've been surprised about is how many people waited until the last minute to make the ultimate decision. i don't know if these two have waited until the last minute. rachel and sam, when did you make the final decision on who to vote for? >> inside the ballot booth. >> literally inside the ballot booth. >> who did you end up supporting? >> i ended up going with haley. i think she's a fresh face to see in the oval office. both of them have very similar policies. i just feel like haley would be a good choice. >> was this a hard decision for you? why did it take so long? >> it was. like i said, they're so similar. i'm just thinking, what do i do?
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do i go with someone i know already, trump? i made a split decision and went with haley. >> what did it come down to? >> it came down to the policies on the southern border -- >> immigration? >> yeah, immigration. that's what it basically came down to. i think she's going to crack down on that really hard. >> rachel, i told you i was trying to start a family fight. who did you support? >> i voted for president trump. >> why? >> i thought the way his presidency ended was unfair. the state of the economy before was much better. also, i went to the march for life in 2020 and he was there. the only president to ever go to the march for life. i appreciate his support in the pro-life movement. i'm very pro-life so. >> you said you decided a couple weeks ago. what helped you make your final decision? >> i don't know exactly what it was. i kind of always knew i was
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going to vote for trump again. like i said, the way it ended before, it was unfair. so give him a second chance. >> did you ever consider haley? >> not too much. i don't really have a reason why. yeah, i don't know. >> back to you. if we were talking about the general election, would your support transfer over if haley doesn't make into over to the general election? >> yes, i think it would. i'm still behind trump because he did a really great job in the past. so it's not just -- i wouldn't just vote for someone like haley. if haley can't make it, then i would still back up trump. >> there were a lot of other candidates initially in this process. >> yes. >> talk to me about your process of how you got down to haley. >> i heard recently that desantis dropped out. i was bummed out about that. i heard some really good things about him. i saw the primary from september, i believe, and i
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saw -- heard what he had to say. >> at the debate? on the debate stage? >> yeah. he seemed like a really good choice. if he was still running -- unfortunately, it is what it is. >> thank you two so much. i was joking about the family fight. you guys know that. thank you for sticking around and talking with us. rachel, that gives you a sense of what voters are saying, a lot of it coming down to the very last minute. >> nbc's shaq brewster in milford, new hampshire. thank you. >> brother and sister voters there. not fighting. clearly going to fight later. but i mean to me this is actually a great reset, because i think all of us who cover this stuff all the time and spend all our time reading about it think that everybody understands the overall arc of the process that we're in. they know what's going on with all the candidates, they know the trajectory of these things. those young people are deciding at the very last second on the
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bases -- on bases i think you would never predict in the abstract. >> can i just say one of the things the two of them said that also is reinforced by the exit poll which i think is an important number, and it goes to something that chris says. the substitutability of anybody else for trump. 55% said they would be satisfied if haley is the nominee. 56 said trump. if trump were not the nominee, the next republican that came in would get roughly the same amount of votes. it's not as if -- it doesn't sound like at least in this small tiny microcosm of people, and i have not seen a whole lot of evidence that the whole party would fall apart without donald trump. that sort of is what that told me. >> yeah, i agree. he said, they're partisan republicans. i'm a republican, i'm going to vote for the republican on the ticket. which again, that's what most people in both parties are. the other thing i thought was so interesting about him is whatever context you're talking about when you're talking about
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a swing voter, there's this sense that there's some sort of matrix across pressure that produces the swing voter. the classic example is, well, there was a profile -- i think in "the new york times" today, i'm pro abortion rights and also super pro gun. i'm torn, right? most swing voters are just like, i don't know, these same kind of the same. at the last second there's something that pushes them in one direction or the other. him saying in the end it was the southern border because haley is going to crack down. now, she has been pretty hawkish on immigration. he's not wrong on that. i don't think either of those people are mistaken about what their principles or values are. she went to the march on life. she's right about that. he deliver the justices that overturned roe. but i don't think -- most people would be like, the southern border is what decided it for haley. a way of thinking about this both in this context in the
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primary and more generally, there's a slim portion of people who are swing voters and persuadable. the things that will get them in one direction or the other are more heterodox and unpredictable you would imagine through the sheer calculation -- >> that's what i mean by it's the reset of all of us. campaigns matter, ads matter, what you wear in the debate matters. whether or not the bumper stickers you pick have good phrases on them. you never know who is going to move somebody in a tight race. >> i want to be really clear about that. we're politics junkies and do this for a living. the way i think about it, if one said to me who should be mvp of the nhl this year, i would be like, i don't know. >> is wayne gretzky -- >> a lot of people don't spend a lot of time thinking about american national politics. you're not going to have these
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incredibly sharp opinions about who is better than who if you're not spending a ton of time thinking about it. >> that's why one of the most pivotal words we heard was president. presidents usually win re-elections. in donald trump's case you had a pandemic and you had donald trump and the voters did make a choice then. now, in a primary he's a bit of a quasi incumbent. republicans and people friendly to that republican perspective, whether they self-identify as maga or not, they count that president thing a lot. he made it once. they've heard him counted out before. >> they know his name. they know what he looks like. >> that's right. i think it cuts both ways. on the one hand there's a lot of momentum behind a president winning his own primary back. on the other hand, in a two-person race, if she does decent, you have to start to ask how she without his level of fame, money and white house behind her is doing so well in a party where she beat all these other guys.
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>> all but an incumbent. >> you stack it all up and it cuts both ways and suggests she has at least some energy. >> the fresh face thing is notable, radio it? we need a fresh face. that's been a huge message of her campaign. that worked with him. >> one of the things that one of the voters talked about was the idea that donald trump was treated unfairly in 2020, the way that ended. she was effectively saying that she didn't think that donald trump actually lost the election in 2020. there was exit polling on that as well. we'll take a quick break and come back and hit that. two-thirds of the electorate in the iowa republican caucuses said joe biden wasn't the legitimate president right now. you'll be interested to see what they say in new hampshire. more of that on the other side of this quick break. in case it doesn't work out for her, and it is another
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i don't want some guy that leaves classified documents lying around, his own club where millions of people go in and out. i don't think he's a real competent person. >> new hampshire voter today in laconia referencing the subject of one of the criminal trials that former president trump will be subjected to, whether that one is before or after the election is anybody's guess at this point. before the break we mentioned that one of the interesting exit polls telling you about the different type of voter that's turning out in new hampshire tonight versus iowa last week,
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one of those interesting polls was do you believe that president joe biden legitimately won the election in 2020? the left side of your screen in purple, that's iowa. the iowa electorate, the iowa republican caucuses last week, two-thirds of the electorate said no, president biden didn't legitimately win. meaning the electorate thought president biden wasn't really the president and was just pretending today. tonight in new hampshire, the electorate in the primary there is evenly split on the issue which is still remarkable but is also a significant change from the electorate that we saw last week. ari melber, you have a guest for us. >> boston globe reporter james pindel reporting from manchester. i understand you have some news. what can you tell us? >> i've been out on the polls
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for the last two or three hours because i'm a political junkie like you all and i love to talk to voters. the turnout has been strong and steady. we're learning tonight from the secretary of state in new hampshire that at least a dozen more communities have requested extra ballots. there's not a shortage of ballots or anything like that. they've gone through about 80% of the ballots statewide. about a dozen communities have or are about to receive more ballots heading into the final minutes here. of course, most of the state closes their polls at 7:00. it's the commuter zone towns, those right on the massachusetts border, 50% of the state lives basically in two counties that are bedroom communities to boston. those close at 8:00. so some of those communities down there are requesting more ballots which could be a good sign for nikki haley. >> you think that helps her more. i'm curious what else you can tell us from your reporting and
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experience in the region on the ground, steve has been walking us through the numbers. we've been looking at some of the numbers not only to iowa, but years past, what jumps out to you about the emerging electorate in tonight's primary? >> when i was talking to voters today as they walked out of the polls, a few things jumped out. number one, people are making up their minds in the last two days. some made up their minds as they were walking in. the people who did not make up their minds are donald trump supporters. they are definitely for trump. if you're not for trump, you had sort of a decision to make and you weren't really thrilled with it. there are some people who were happy with nikki haley. i talked to a number of women, particularly independent women, who were happy to vote for a woman for president. others were simply voting against trump. remember there's a democratic primary and a lot of them had complicated feelings as well. >> we've heard in past years and seen the precedent where iowa
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acts and new hampshire is seen as reacting, certainly helped hillary clinton, helped donald trump. do you see any indication of that mood, whether it ultimately takes haley over the top or not, that there was a response to iowa and the field has narrowed, or just too early in the night to tell? >> as rach 'em pointed out, these are two completely different lech torts. i've been here for 20 years covering the new hampshire primary, they're totally different. there's a reason why. since the duopoly of iowa and new hampshire, no republican has ever won iowa and new hampshire in the same year if they're not an incumbent president. now, that may hold here. we may break history if donald trump does end up winning. clearly there's a different vibe. i don't know if they're reacting the the iowa response other than the field shrunk, but this is not feeling like a blowout today like we thought. feels like it might be a lot
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closer. >> that's one of our favorite things to cover, the vibes in the air. james pindell, thank you. joining us from a polling location in bedford, new hampshire is nbc news senior washington correspondent hallie jackson. the couple of places we've been so far, places that close at 8:00, this is a place that closes in just a few minutes, 7:00 closing there. >> it sure is, rachel. this is the most floor i've seen all day being here. i want to show you who has voted so far. it's not steve kornacki's big board, but it is a big white board. they've been keeping track of how many republicans and democrats every hour have come in to vote. this particular location, this is a red-leaning place. undeclared voters have the edge over republicans as far as registrations, but just barely. you can see where the numbers are as of 6:00. 5,500 republicans have voted compared to some 1,500
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democrats. roughly 7,000, half of the registered voters in bedford. things are dwindling, things are winding down. this has been packed all day. obviously hundreds of people have come through. we've talked to a lot of them. some nikki haley voters who say they don't want to see trump in office again. i spoke with one woman who came in and and said she wants another four years of donald trump. bill klein is one of the elections moderators. this is your 40th year running this location, right? >> do i look that old? i don't know. i've been through a lot. you asked me a question. the last four years have been a little more stressful than they ever have been before. our first couple years i moderated, from that standpoint in my history, the first meeting i conducted which was in merrimack, new hampshire, we had three gymnasiums full of voters for a town-style meeting. this is where they come and vote
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on the budget, all together, all at once. there's no paper ballot, like an official ballot like we do tonight. this is an official ballot. the people show up, they have a chance to speak. they can change the amount of money, they can add money, subtract money, add programs, all kinds of stuff like that. things have changed. but this has been -- it's fun. i came on board because of the fact that i was a sports official and have a lot of respect. people came and approached me, you do such a good job as a referee, we think you'd do a good job with this. >> essentially refereeing. >> have to learn the rules, make quick they're happy and accept the results at the end of the match, the game, whatever. >> are you finding it easy to get other elections workers like yourself in these days? >> the news has been there on the national basis and here in new hampshire. recently, we had one moderator who quit, said i can't deal with you anymore.
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we have had some clerks that actually quit in the last couple weeks, right before this election. that's huge. >> why did they quit? >> pressure. pressure, and very often it's not from the public. not necessarily from the voters but the staff in that town, city area that they're infighting, getting upset with stuff, i would say not playing nice in the sandbox, or if i had a yellow card in soccer, i would put it up and say i'm giving you a caution because you're not -- you're being unsportsmanlike. >> thank you so much. 40 years. you have seen it. and it's amazing to be able to have your perspective. you can see, like i said, it is democracy in action or at least what will soon be democracy in action once the polling location shuts down. we have been all over the state today talking with folks, talking with various candidates and surrogates, et cetera, looking to see what is potentially this last best chance here for nikki haley to
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try to stop or slow down donald trump's march to the republican nomination. rachel, i'll toss it back to you and the gang back there. >> thank you so much. that was fascinating. to have that guy who has been working 40 years in election administration in bedford, new hampshire, and to hear him say that there are clerks and other local officials who have just quit, just in weeks leading up to this moment when new hampshire takes its so seriously, takes their civic responsibility so seriously. loves voting so much, has huge voter turnout, very well run elections. to hear him saying it's unsportsmanlike conduct and people have been dropping out because they can't take how terrible people are being to each other, it just breaks your heart as a citizen. >> yeah, and this is, again, he was oblique enough that i don't want to put words in his mouth in terms of what the source of that friction was. might have just been purely interpersonal, but we also know and this has been well documented and reported and covered by all of us.
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there has been this insane upsurge in threats, harassment, intimidation, and pressure on local election officials in the wake of 2020 and after. the attorney general of arizona the other day basically saying he didn't think the department of justice was doing enough for the poll workers and election officials in his state of arizona because it had gotten so bad. it's touching all sorts of communities and often in places, we have seen in texas, for example, examples of places where these are sometimes totally dominated by the republican party. these are not swing counties in some places and it still reached those areas. >> the 2020 election results in new hampshire was not close, but 49% of the people turning out in this electorate in this new hampshire primary today telling the exit pollsters they do not believe in the results of the 2020 election. what the republican party has conon this issue is a powerful thing. >> steve kornacki is back at the big board with new information plus a preview of what he's
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watching for when the polls close and results start coming in. we'll see some of the polls in new hampshire start closing in the next few minutes. all of the polls will close in the state by 8:00 p.m. eastern. stay with us. it's primary night in new hampshire. >> yeah, the line was crazy. i made my decision today. >> today you made your decision. >> yeah. walking in? >> overnight. i decided on nikki haley. >> why? >> because i think she's going to hopefully bring the rest of the republicans together, across the nation, and we'll have a woman president, and i think it's a little better than trump right now. i was thinking about how far right trump is, and i don't really like that. i think nikki has a better chance of carrying the country. and jen z. each planning their future through the chase mobile app. jen x is planning a summer in portugal with some help from j.p. morgan wealth plan. let's go whiskers. jen y is working with a banker to budget for her birthday. you only turn 30 once. and jen z? her credit's golden.
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close in new hampshire. when those polls do close, we'll start getting a look at the first results from today's voting in new hampshire's presidential primaries. i will tell you, this is important. some polling places in new hampshire are open for another hour. they're open until 8:00. because of that, nbc news will not be making any sort of projection or characterization of the race until all of the polls, all over the state, have closed. once all of the polls have closed, which is again, not until 8:00 p.m. eastern, nbc news decision desk will be able to start working toward its first characterization of the races. the decision desk bases their characterizations on analysis of exit poll data, they look at precinct level and county level vote returns. there are three main characterizations that the decision desk may make tonight. the first one is usually the first one, too early to call. this means there isn't yet enough data to determine any margin between the candidates. or there may be a significant
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margin for one of the candidates but the decision desk hasn't met its statistical standards to predict that race. that's too early. then there's too close to call. this means the decision desk has determined with statistical confidence that the final margin between the candidates will be less than five percentage points. that's what they mean when you hear too close to call. and then finally, the big one, the one we're working toward over the course of the night, projected winner. that means nbc news is making a projection a candidate will win the race. those are the three levels of characterizations we'll be getting tonight. again, do not expect characterizations once all of the polls close in a minute and 8 seconds. you're only expect all of the first characterizations once all of the polls close an hour from now. first, steve, let me ask you to fact check me on that, and second, to ask you what you're looking for once we get first closings at 7:00. >> it's true, not everything is closed until 8:00.
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a lot closes at 7:00. when he towns and cities start lighting up, i want to give you a sense of how we're measuring this. this is a city and town map in new hampshire. unlike most other states, the vote is reported out by city and town, not reported out by county. so we had 99 counties in iowa last week. we have more than 230 incorporated communities in new hampshire, so we can do this at more of a microscopic level. each one of them, we have a target that's assigned for nikki haley, just in terms of understanding. we have an assignment for trump or haley. this is a number we think roughly she needs to be hitting in each city and town if it's going to be a competitive race. this is designed for like a 50/50 race state-wide. based on the demographics of the town, based on median income, based on education, educational attainment. we have seen some very specific demographic patterns in terms of her appeal and trump's. we'll measure the results as they come in with those
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benchmarks and i think getting a sense of whether haley is meeting the benchmarks and maybe making this a real race or if she's falling short and this is an outcome we see resembling in the polls in trump's favor. as we come to the closing, you just heard james pindell mention, our own ama barnett has sent a list of communities, more ballots, and i will tell you, they fit a very clear pattern. i'll read you some of them. hollis, new hampshire. amherst, new hampshire. hopkinton, new hampshire. these are towns, they are higher income, these are towns with high educational attainment. and these are towns when just based on our estimates here, where nikki haley is supposed to do pretty much her best in the state. also, city of manchester, biggest in the state, which closes at 7:00. manchester and concord close at 7:00. nashua will close at 8:00.
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manchester requested more ballots as well. you're seeing here some of these towns, wyndham is another one of them, wyndham is a town that haley basically needs to be running even in, in southern new hampshire. it has a high median income. new market is another one. higher median income, higher educational attainment. haley needs to be doing very well there. these are the places, i'm reading off names here, cities and towns that requested more republican ballots. they are much more from the haley, what should be the haley side of things than from the trump side of things. also, i will show you again, any minute, we could start getting results from these cities and towns. i told you what we're looking for. another thing to keep in mind is this, this is the current nbc news decision desk estimate of hot the turnout will be in the republican race. 330,000 is what we have it at now. i can tell you that number has been raised twice today. based on reports coming back
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from the polls, based on what we're seeing in terms of foot traffic and reports from the polls themselves. so again, higher than we were expecting, it looks like turnout. you see some of the -- i have gone through the areas that are requesting more ballots, and again, just in terms of what to expect, a couple big things here. again, the bulk of the vote in new hampshire roughly is going to be coming in this region, southeast new hampshire. you have got border communities that are basically bedroom communities of boston. you have, this is interstate 93 going right through there. this is route 3 going right through there. i-95 goes right through there. a lot of these are bedroom communities for folks who work in massachusetts or work in boston. one thing i would caution as they come in, we think of the suburbs in the trump era as suburbs are the heart of the trump resistance. the suburbs are the places nikki haley will do the best. that's not probably going to be the case in new hampshire. the suburbs here vary quite a
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bit. in terms of the demographics and results we have seen. a good example is right here, take a look. sorry. we have to go to -- i grew up ten miles from there. salem, new hampshire, the sixth largest municipality in new hampshire, right on the massachusetts border. shopping mall right across the border, home of chris sununu. john sununu, his father, is from there. this is one of donald trump's best towns in the state in 2016. has high income, high educational attainment but a very pro-trump town. we mentioned two of the towns that requested more ballots. hollis, new hampshire, west of nashua on the border. north of that is amherst new hampshire. these are places john kasich did well in 2016 and where nikki haley is expected to do well. again, these communities along the massachusetts border or just north of the massachusetts border, there's going to be variance there. a lot of them are going to close at 8:00, but not all of them.
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hollis closes at 7:00. there are a couple right along the border here, salem notably closes at 7:00. the city of portsmouth, right on the coast there, that's one haley needs to be winning, winning huge. closes at 7:00. dover, that's one haley needs to be winning. rochester should be a strong trump area. kind of old industrial city. concord, the state capital, closes at 7:00. haley probably needs to be getting about 60% of the vote here, close to 60% in concord if she's going to be on pace to make this a close race state wide. those are some of the benchmarks. we're looking at key new hampshire in cheshire county. that needs to be a haley stronghold, and one of the other towns that requested more ballots is hanover, home of dartmouth college, one of the most liberal towns in the state, but also the single worst town in new hampshire in 2016 for donald trump.
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haley, if she's having a good night, is probably breaking 70% in han over. as we have reported here, they asked for more republican ballots in that town this afternoon. >> can i just reflect on what we're looking at on the screen while you're talking? can we put up that shot of steve at the big board. can we point out, just so people know this isn't a typo. nikki haley does have 100% of the tabulated votes in new hampshire, but the total number of tabulated votes in new hampshire at this point is six. so do not let your eyes deceive you and tell you she's won 100% of the vote in any meaningful sense. since that's onscreen, steve, that's important. now, i just was in communication with the control room. do we have jacob? okay, we're going to go back to jacob in a minute. sort of unexpectedly which is why we're trying to get his camera. what's going on is with jacob right now, remember, he's in dairy. that's the largest polling place
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in the state. and steve was just going through the name of all the different communities that have had to request more ballots. talking about how they tend to be -- you would guess they're going to be more haley friendly, less trump friendly places. in derry, again, the largest polling place in the state, they have apparently just run out of ballots, which we did not know was going to happen. so joining us now is nbc news correspondent jacob soboroff at derry, new hampshire. am i right? have i teased you correctly? is derry about to run out? >> about to run out is exactly right, rachel. that's why i'm joined by teeny, the town clerk. she's working with lisa, who we met earlier in the broadcast. what's the latest with the amount of ballots you have. almost 10,000 people have voted, and i think you said you have about 1,000 ballots left. >> about 1,000 republican ballots left. about an hour to go. >> are you worried that you might run out of ballots?
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>> well, so we did call the secretary of state. >> what did they tell you? >> they asked if we had absentee ballots that had not been used, which we do, and we have quite a few. so we have brought them to the polling place. and i will start the process about 7:30 initialling them if we need them. >> in other words, am i correct, again, correct me if i'm wrong, does that mean the secretary of state's office is not sending you ballots that you requested? >> well, they may not have them for us. >> in a normal process, instead of using absentee ballots, they would send you ballots. >> it really depends if they have them, if they have print overruns. sometimes you have to use photocopies. we have a supply of absentee ballots that were not used that we will use as election day ballots if needed. >> my understanding is listening to steve kornacki talk to me
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colleagues on msnbc, there are a lot of requests similar to the ones you're making to the secretary of state all throughout the state of new hampshire, and the secretary of state is getting ballots to those other places. >> so from what i understand, when i talked to the secretary of state, it has to do if whether they have print overruns. >> what does that mean? >> they printed more than they ordered. >> what's the implications for potentially moving to absentee ballots? is that going to affect the speed with which you won't? >> no, because they'll go right through the machine just like any other ballot. >> as far as the process, you feel like everything is on track here. >> yeah, our problem would be if we needed photocopies. >> you have to keep us posted. >> yep. >> thank you very much, tina. rachel, you heard it from the town clerk. they have enough absentee ballots in case they run out of actual ones with 51 minutes to go, they have about 1,000
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ballots left on the republican side. and we got people still coming in. >> let me ask you about that last point. first of all, it looks from what we can see talking to you like things are running very smoothly and calmly there. are there lines? is there a backup, a lot of people still coming in? >> that's the way that it feels here. so now, i'm on the other side of the fieldhouse, the gymnasium from where i talked to you before. it does feel like things are operating -- i think it will be like a 10, 15 second walk outside. let's quickly show rachel if there is a line that's forming outside. i'm going to sneak around. here's lisa doing another interview now. >> she's cheating on us. >> i know. she's busy. tina did a solid. tina did a solid, so thank you to tina as well. let's go right outside. come this way, dana. there are definitely still people coming in. there's definitely still people coming in. the parking lot is across the
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street. you can see people coming this way. but it isn't a crush. so hopefully what tina said, you know, they don't want to have happen is not going to happen. but lisa also did tell us that before the polls close, there's generally a bump. we'll keep our eyes on the situation. >> fascinating. thank you very much, jacob. state's largest polling location in derry, new hampshire, where again, we have just heard from the town clerk of derry that they have requested additional ballots. they have about 1,000 ballots left with just under an hour to go still to vote at that large polling place. and we heard from steve kornacki moments ago about lots of large polling places in the southern tier of new hampshire requesting additional ballots. all of these stories that we're hearing, all of this anecdotal information, all sort of pointing in the same direction, which is that they're getting a lot of people turning out right now in new hampshire. the secretary of state, you guys, had said heading into voting tonight that they were expecting a record. the previous record for a
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republican primary was 288,000. secretary of state said heading into today that he expected 322,000. so that would be a big bump over the record. now, nbc's estimate is that more like 330,000. and as steve said, that's been bumped up twice over the course of today. so i mean, turnout isn't the same as proportions. it doesn't tell us who is going to win, but again, it's heartening in terms of civic participation what we're seeing happening. >> you have to wonder what is driving turnout in an election that the news media certainly tried to convince new hampshire voters was already decided. and that the polls tried to convince new hampshire voters was already decided. and more than anyone else, donald trump tried to convince new hampshire voters was already decided. this is clearly a trump turnout, as chris mentioned earlier. he's very good at creating negative turnout against donald trump. >> and the thing is that's so
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fascinating, i think, to your point, and even what you said earlier about new hampshire kind of being a demonstration, sort of a statement of values rather than necessarily the decider in terms of who is going to be the nominee. it is a mood check state. i mean, it is sort of, you know, if you win iowa, i will never forget the speech that barack obama gave when he lost in new hampshire. it is what catapulted him ultimately to the nomination was his reaction to losing new hampshire. because new hampshire is a place where you can create incredible drama, as did hillary clinton in winning the state, the tiers. it was the state that kind of was the most dramatic sort of opening. it wasn't really iowa, it was new hampshire. the other thing i think is interesting about this large turnout, we have to remind ourselves, donald trump is a former president of the united states. and he is in -- he is not mowing down nikki haley, who was the governor of a state, the governor of the state of south carolina, but she is a woman,
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brown woman, you know, daughter of immigrants, probably the most unlikely final player in the game of survivor that was the republican primaries that started with all of these other players that were much more ostentatious, much more like trump. it's kind of a remarkable story and a story of his weakness that he's now facing a much more interesting finish in new hampshire than he at all expected or any of us expected. >> i feel like you're a better political observer in terms of hot the human beings are involved than i am. i'm more of a robot and you're more of a human. i love you, joy. but i feel like everything you're saying about nikki haley is true. i also feel like again, sort of heartened about the game of politics which is that of everybody who was running in the republican primary, i feel like nikki haley is the best campaigner. she's the best speaker. she does the best ads, the best events, the best debater. so that makes me feel like, oh, you know, no matter what you look like on paper and how
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likely this is going to happen, according to the statisticians, ultimately, how you play the game matters. >> in the end, what people who work in campaigns for a living will tell you is political talent trumps everything. the ads, the spending. what really matters is whether you have raw political talent. it is how somebody named barack obama could beat a clinton. if you have raw political talent, it's such a metric that is so far and away above everything else. yes, money and other things matter. but whatever you think about nikki haley's positions or her politics, she actually is, she's got retail political talent, communicative skills. she was excellent in the debates. we always agreed consistently that she won the debates. she was the winner, so she actually used very old fashioned almost quaint strategy for getting this far. she's just good at it. >> it still matters. >> it still matters. >> and the opposite of political talent is how spe $150
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million and end up being ron desantis. joining us from a polling location in nashua, new hampshire, is nbc news correspondentdasha burns. how are things looking in nashua? >> reporter: well, nashua is one of the places that pretty reflective of the state. it's a bellwether because in 2016, the results here really mirrored the results state-wide. we have been seeing a steady stream of folks. polls close at 8:00 here. folks are coming in, getting their ballots, voting in these very old school voting booths. i love the ones with the curtains that are really reminiscent of something out of a carnival in the '50s or something. let me bring my cameraman over here because we also have a table here that is for new voters, people have been coming in and registering to vote here today. and grace, how many people did you say you guys have had? >> at least 100 for sure. >> at least 100. are they more undeclared, republican, democrat. >> mostly undeclared.
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>> mostly undeclared. if we come out here, this is where we have to stay ten feet from the ballot machine. this is where folks are given their ballots. how many ballots do you have right now? what's the count? >> 3222. >> 3222. there are just under 7,000 registered voters in this area, in this precinct, so we're at close to 50% or so turnout. and then, jacob was talking about this earlier, the reregistering as undeclared voter. this is the table where undeclared voters come after they have taken a republican or democratic ballot. they come back here and reregister as undeclared. i want to talk about one of the dynamics we have been seeing here because we have been talking about the conservative vote, the exit polls. hard core conservatives, moderates, and democrats. the factor that we're seeing at play here that wasn't at play in iowa is the democrats.
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is joe biden and the write-in campaign. you have people, both undeclared and democrats coming here today who are writing in joe biden, one of them i want to introduce you to catherine, waiting patiently with us, a fourth grade teacher. you camhere today to write in joe biden's name. why did you do that? >> i tell my students and my own kids that democrat, process is the most important thing, as u.s. citizens. you have two very important rights. one is to vote and one is to run for office. and if you're not going to run for office, you definitely need to vote. >> why write in biden? >> i think he's done a pretty good job this year, and the last three years. and i'm looking forward to what can come next. and the other candidates i'm not really happy with what they're saying. >> why not consider reregistering as undeclared and going for nikki haley, for example? >> um, i think as an educator, disagree with some of her morals
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and growing up with educators, the democratic process is important. and i think being a democrat means something to me, and so it's in my blood. >> now, there has been a concern for the biden campaign, right, that there's kind of a lack of enthusiasm from democrats, people are worried he's too old. people are kind of not so thrilled with the potential of a biden versus trump rematch. how do you feel about that looking ahead to the general? >> let's see what happens. >> all right, catherine, thank you so much for taking the time with us. there you have it. this is what we're watching, the dynamics here, because like i said, there are folks who are moderate and lean democratic who have come out and voted for haley, but there are folks like catherine, i also met an undeclared voter who voted for dean phillips. we have the exit polls of the different ideologies of voters,
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but what they put on the ballot is a question mark and we'll be thrilled to see what happens when polls close in less than an hour now. >> dasha burns, thank you very much. i have to say, i can completely sympathize with catherine there, happy to talk about what she knows and why she's doing what she is doing, but completely unwilling to be a pundit. i understand. i know the feeling. nicely done. i am told and i may be wrong, but i am told and i think i understand we have some of the first results coming in. steve, is that correct? >> from two cities here. one, the third largest in the state, concord, where the state capital is. remember how we said we would be monitoring the results as they come in. i have, i'll show you again on this map, these are benchmarks, numbers we think that nikki haley needs to be hitting in each one of these cities and towns. these are basically what you would call tie, toss-up numbers. if she's hitting them consistently, it probably means the state-wide vote is a toss-up. that's what we were kind of looking for in putting the
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benchmarks together. so, what do we have in concord so far? not all of the vote, but a chunk of the vote in, in concord right now. haley is running at 57.5%, with what we have in. what is the target based on the demographics, based on what we know about the voting history of this town? it's up to 60% now with a quarter of the vote in in concord. what's the target number we have established for haley that we think she needs to be hitting for this to be a real race state-wide. the answer is 57%. she's running at 60% with a quarter of the vote in. this is a city she's got to win. keen in southwest new hampshire, a small city here. this is a college town, keen state college is here. again, a little more than a fifth of the vote in, haley, 54%, trump, 45.5%. what is the target we established for nicky haley? the answer, oh, that takes the suspense out. the answer is 54%. she's running right at her target. concord, keen right now check
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out with what haley would want from them. more to come in both of those places though. the city of dover, you have portsmouth, she needs to win it by a huge margin tonight. dover she should win, too. rochester is the one where trump is strong and you would expect trump to have a good performance. what is haley's target number? she's at 53%. her target number we have is 54%. okay, so we're starting to get, and i think we have some -- might have some numbers here. let's see if i can get in to new castle. no, okay. so we have three. these are all decent sized cities. now we have another one, laconia coming in. you have small amount here in laconia. 65, trump, 35 haley. this is one where haley's target is goo%. she's running below the target, 9% in here.
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that said, when you get initial reports, see how it's 9% of the expected vote here. when we get an initial report in the single digits, there is a possibility, not a lot of this in new hampshire, but they have absentee voting. you have to be out of the county on the day of the election. it's a process, so it's not very common, but they did have more than 10,000 democratic votes. excuse me, i think more than 16,000 republican votes state-wide as of the last report that were absentee. one thing that means is when you get a small initial batch, it could be the absentee vote for that county. we'll look for clarification. in that town. we'll look for clarification there, but that's one place where haley in the initial report is not meeting her number. in dover, in concord, in keen, these are not insubstantial in size. she's running right where she needs to run so far. add that all together state-wide, this is what we have with less than 4,000 votes in. remember, ron desantis's name is still on the ballot, christie's
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too, we'll also be getting votes throughout the course of the night, but this is how we're tracking it. these are numbers in every city and town as they come in, where if haley is hitting them, it indicates a very close race state-wide. that was the question, will she hit the targets and make it a close race or would she fall short? that would indicate the polling showing trump with a lead, maybe a wide lead was correct. in the three biggest sources of vote we have received so far, haley is hitting those targets. we'll keep looking. 7:00 now. most, not all, most of the state is closed. more reports should be coming in minute to minute now. >> we're starting to get in as steve said the first results in new hampshire. most places in new hampshire have closed their polling places at 7:00 p.m., but a significant number of places including well populated places are open until 8:00 p.m. that means we're not going to have any characterization of the race overall until 8:00 p.m., but we are going to start getting results in.
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trickling in over the course of this hour, and they are very interesting so far. the nikki haley campaign has to be happy thus far with what they're seeing. we'll take a quick break and go to another polling place in new hampshire. we're also going to show you what the ballots look like in new hampshire tonight. about two dozen people on the ballot both in the republican and democratic primary. you'll be surprised by some of the names on there. we'll have all that ahead. stay with us. >> oh, just because honestly i think he's doing a better job than people give him credit for. he's got a lot done on infrastructure. i believe climate change is real. he's done something on it, which almost nobody else has. and of course, the alternative, although he is the type of guy that might juice the economy a little bit with a tax cut, but it's always temporary, and he's also basically a criminal in my mind.
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i voted for joe biden. >> you wrote it in. >> i did. i think he actually has a lot of experience. i don't think he's gotten enough credit. the economy has gotten some traction. it seems to have come back. that's really important to people. i like his social policies. >> as you can see there, it's not just republican voting tonight in new hampshire. democrats are as well on this primary night. although it's a little strange the dnc changing the rules so that new hampshire's primary tonight does not award delegates. new hampshire is going ahead with it anyway, so joe biden won't be appearing on the ballot but instead will be there to be written in. i want to go now to manchester to talk to democratic congressman chris pappas of new hampshire. and congressman, sort of a strange night for new hampshire democrats. this is the first time in decades you have had this situation. how have you been navigating? >> it is truly unprecedented.
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there's some positive news in terms of the record turnout that we're seeing across the board here. and we're actually going to see increased turnout here in 2024 in new hampshire versus when president obama was running for re-election unopposed in 2012. so i think that the dnc handed new hampshire democrats a bunch of lemons and we tried to make the best out of it. we made the lemonade. it appears president biden is getting a strong result in some of the first unofficial returns i'm seeing from some cities across new hampshire. and look, people want their voices heard. i think we're seeing people motivated by a variety doff factors today, but at the end of the day, new hampshire is not an ultra maga state. we're not a right-wing state. we're a state where undeclared voters, independent voters are somewhere in the middle. they split their ticket. so this is both an opportunity and a challenge beyond today to continue to make sure that democrats understand what's at stake in terms of a woman's right to choose, threats to our democracy, the ability to get things done and deliver results. and also how we appeal to those
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nikki haley voters, those undeclared voters who are free agents in a general election who we need to win key races up and down the ticket in november. >> congressman, yeah, joe biden carrying the state in 2020 by about seven points. your district is an interesting one. it's a genuine frontline swing district. it is considered one of those races where we're going to see a real competitive race. it went for donald trump in 2016 and for joe biden in 2020. it also went for george w. bush and then barack obama. given the fact that you live in the kind of ecosystem of genuine swing voters. not just an 80/20 district, what do you see as the top issues in the folks you're talking to in your district that you're going to be thinking about for re-election? >> we have to be talking about the future. we need a forward looking vision for this country, and we need to be thinking about and listening to people's lived experiences. this shouldn't be about a victory lap over bills we have
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already passed, over economic numbers that i think maybe miss the mark with a lot of voters. we should think about how we lower cost with respect to housing and child care and health care and college. how we work on issues like addiction and mental health. how we stand up for our allies around the world, protect our national security, and ultimately, how we protect our personal freedoms. i think it's really telling in the exit polls tonight that you have nearly two-thirds of republicans who are rejecting a national abortion ban, but you still have republican candidates for office who are saying that they would support this and we know there's a great contrast with respect to november between where democrats stand for a woman's right to choose, where republicans stand, cheering on the dobbs decision and wanting to go further. this is a real gut check moment for our democracy. and this is about bringing people together and showing how we can work together in a bipartisan fashion. we have done some of that over the last few years. that can continue with joe biden as president. i think a lot of that stops with donald trump if he's re-elected. think about what he's done over
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the last year where he's told congress to default on our debt, to close the government down, and to, you know, not come to the sort of bipartisan consensus we need on immigration and so many other issues. this is about what we can get done, making sure our democracy is functioning for the people that are coming out and voting. >> congressman chris pappas of new hampshire, thank you very much. rachel, over to you. >> while we have been talking with congressman pappas and sort of getting settled in terms of what we know in the state, it's clear we have quite a bit of new vote in. not every polling place in the state has closed but a lot closed at 7:00. all the rest of them will close at 8:00 p.m. there won't be any characterization of the race at all until everything is closed, but steve kornacki as you have been watching more vote totals coming in, what are you learning? >> we're starting to get more in here, and a couple things to take you through. another city reporting out. this is portsmouth here, a very wealthy area, very democratic area. you see between a fifth and a quarter of the vote is in.
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haley running at about 69% right now. again, we thought she needed to be in the low 60s here in portsmouth to have the kind of night she wanted. at least so far she's running ahead of that number. we have shown you what looks like good news so far for haley in places like portsmouth, in places like keen. concord is interesting, the state capital, because the initial with half the vote in, haley was getting exactly what she was looking for. now almost all of the vote in is in again, we thought she needed to be in the high 50s, close to 60 here. she is sitting at 54%, so that might be a little under what she wanted to get out of concord, again, with almost all of the vote in. then what you're seeing is we're showing you cities, small cities, sometimes some of the concord is the third largest in new hampshire, but when you get to the town level, just about all of the vote is in here in hillsborough right now, trump, 63, hallie, 34. again, we thought haley needed to be around 40% here. you know, just about all of the vote is in in bristol. haley is running at 42%, we
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thought she needed to be in the high 40s here. so, and we also now have a little bit of vote, not much, but we have 17% in, in the city of manchester. manchester, the largest city in new hampshire, about 115,000 people here. you see trump running at 56/42, and basically, we thought as manchester goes potentially so goes new hampshire. we looked and said if haley is running even with trump, that signals basically an even race. if she's ahead, advantage haley, if trump is ahead, that portends well for him. only 17%. we saw how the numbers can change. initially that's a good number for trump and not so good for haley. initially looking at what we're starting to get in here, and again, it looks like rochester, again, this is a strong trump area. okay, this is an older industrial city. you go portsmouth, dover, more money down here. you get rochester, more working class, and just take a look at what we thought haley needed to
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get out of here. again, we thought she needed to be at about 40%. she's at 36%. we'll see how she does, but there does seem to be a divide as the votes come in that in these cities, in these more liberal areas, haley right now is close to, in some cases exceeding the numbers we thought she needed to get. when you get to the more rural, to the more working class areas, only a couple reported so far, but she's falling short in those areas of what we thought she needed to have. it is a mixed bag for haley, and again, it's early, but that was a dynamic, remember, that we saw in iowa. they were both, desantis and haley, 30 points behind trump in iowa. the reason haley was not able to get past desantis in iowa is again the suburbs and urban areas of iowa, she was performing well in. when you got to the rural areas of iowa, the bottom fell out for her and she was runging i
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single digits in almost two dozen counties. this raises the question is a similar pattern playing out here in new hampshire where she's going to get what she needed on paperering going to do well in a place like concord, in a place like portsmouth, but start missing because these smaller rural, small towns, they are many. they start to add up, not individually, but collectively they add up. if she is going to fall 5, 10 points there from what she needs to be getting, that will take a toll on her as more come in. that's what we've got so far. we'll see as more come in. laconia, we just checked on. again, now we have about a fifth of the vote here. laconia, she's falling so far well short, double digit short of where we thought she needed to be. again, you're seeing a mixed bag for her, and we wanted to see -- we also got new boston is a small town. new boston came in, to give you a sense of what we thought she needed. this is basically exactly what
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we thought she needed here. again, that one is good news for haley, but she needs good news across the board. if she's getting bad news kiptly in the small towns she needs to make up for it by significantly overperforming in the cities. concord a good example. if she's running poorly in the small towns this number would need to be closer to 60%. we'll see more coming in. the initial pattern we're seeing, small as it may be, is a pattern maybe that we saw a little bit in iowa. that hurt haley. is it going to hurt here? more to come. >> keep watching those results as they come in. we're about 22 minutes from the rest of the polls closing in new hampshire. let's just take a second here to talk about what we're playing for. what the game is for here in new hampshire. the last tracking poll heading into the voting tonight, i believe it was trump plus 22. it was trump plus roughly 30 in
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iowa. if nikki haley wants to be able to tell a story coming out of new hampshire about momentum, about plausibility, about places she can compete, about a general election prospect against biden that looks better than what trump would offer against biden, i mean, how much can she lose by in new hampshire and still tell that story? >> because the challenge is what she has to prove out of new hampshire, the message she needs to send here is there is a passionate, particularly independent voter base out there that wants trump gone. and she that to show not only are they numerous but they're passionate enough to vote for her. donald trump's rural more evangelical voters are willing to come out in blinding snow and blizzards for him. and even though it was a relatively small turnout in iowa, she needs it show there's some passion for her, not just an interest in something. >> isn't it important that this is the primary? this is the first primary, the first open vote we have had.
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the caucuses are very small. this makes a caucus look like a family zoom reunion meeting, right, and you say oh, but look who we have? but it's all extended family. that was a smaller sort of winter snow storm core of the republican party. this is republican plus. as we have discussed, this open primary. now that we're getting the first actual voter turnout in a primary, of this whole election cycle, what do we find? turnout is up, that's interesting for a couple reasons. haley is, again, we don't have a characterization so we're careful to say what we don't know, but haley is hunting a plus 40% coalition of both, you know, curious or anti-trump republicans. and a wider set of independents or democratic leaning indies. that could look like a general election coalition for her if she had the time to build it. >> so the most important thing for our listeners right now on sirius radio in their cars in
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new hampshire who are headed toward a polling place, the most important thing steve kornacki has told you is this is a night where it's really worth voting. you should really get in there. you have about 15 minutes left. keep going. and what nikki haley has shown is that there is a very serious demand and support for her candidacy in the republican party. what she needs to continue is simply the fact that she has been certified by this very significant vote in new hampshire. and it's a candidacy that is so diametrically opposite to the front runner that it seems a worthy candidacy to present to other republican voters in other states. give them a chance. this is one small state. voting on the question of these two candidates. and one of the things i find so powerful about what her campaign has demonstrated to voters that
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matters a lot, joy has talked about talent, and i get that. that's the onstage performance ability. experience is also a major factor. and she went into this campaign with more relevant experience in governing for the presidency than any other candidate, including donald trump. you had a few governors in there. this is the united nations ambassador. there's only been two who left the united nations and then were elected to anything afterwards. it's a rare thing to have a united nations ambassador in a campaign like this. and she has brought that experience with the talent that you mentioned, onto the campaign stage every time, including in the debates. these are voters who are rewarding that experience and it feels like something that voters in other states should get a chance to do. >> the results coming in so far in new hampshire are super interesting. legit open question as to whether nikki haley is making a fight of this thing. we're going to go to haley
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campaign headquarters live right after this quick break. we'll talk to voters there. stay with us. >> what about you? >> the same. >> why did you vote for nikki haley? >> we need change. it's not good. >> we need a change. plain and simple, i can't go back to the craziness.
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welcome back to our special coverage of the new hampshire primary. just wanted to make sure you see this. this is a sample ballot from nashua, new hampshire, ward one. just want you to just take a moment to recognize how many names are on this ballot. it's not hard to get on the ballot in new hampshire. basically, it takes $1,000 and a pen. so every voter who is going into the polling place tonight, can we scroll down so you can see all the names there? thank you. has a lot of choices. do we also have the democratic ballot? on the democratic ballot,
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there's been a lot of discussion about how president joe biden is not in the ballot, but paper boy love prince is. and a lot of other people there. there's a person whose name is listed as his or her first name is president. but that is not president joe biden's name. so there is a little of sort of a gremlin in the mix factor just with the length of the ballots. again, not difficult to get on the ballot in new hampshire. the democrats have decided new hampshire's primary will not allocate any delegates tonight. they wanted new hampshire to go next month, they said we're going now. so the democratic party punished them. people will be writing in joe biden's name tonight on the democratic side. but long ballots will be confronting the voters in both of these primaries that are being held tonight. we're now going to go to hanover new hampshire, where alex tabt
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is there. as far as i understand it, the polls have actually closed where you are, but you were able to wrangle a voter and convince him to stay with you. >> reporter: that's right, rachel. polled are closed here in hanover which is a liberal stronghold in new hampshire, actually the town where a former president donald trump did the worst in back in 2016. i have been speaking to voters all day and there's been two types of voters. generally, who i have been speaking to. one, registered democrats writing in joe biden as a show of solidarity with the president. and the other which is an undeclared voter who has a more liberal leaning ideology and who seems to be voting for -- and who seems to be voting for nikki haley, almost hugely. one of those voters is with me right now. christian, a freshman from dartmouth college. christian, who did you vote for, and why? >> so, thank you.
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i voted for nikki haley, certainly a strategic vote. i think the dnc is fairly resolute in their nomination for joe biden, and while i wouldn't vote for her in a general election, particularly on differences with climate change solution and women's rights to bodily autonomy, and incarceration rates, i think a vote for nicky haley helps diminish trump's influence in the rnc, and their nomination. and also a vote towards democracy. >> christian is emblematic of so many conversations that i have had here throughout the day. which will? >> alex, christian, thank you very much. appreciate it. it's good to have that perspective from hand over. again, if you are registered democrat, you can only vote in the democratic primary. if you are a registered republican, you can only vote in the republican primary. but there is a lot of voters who are not registered in either party, and they can cross over. people could also change the registration as long as they did it by october, to cross over, and vote in the other parties primary, if they wanted
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to. there won't be another primary for a long time yet, in which voters from the democratic party can cross over, and decide to register in order to cast a ballot in the republican contest. that won't happen again in this primary process until i believe michigan. and it is a unique experience tonight, in new hampshire, and gives us a very unique snapshot in terms of the voters of that state. now, ali vitali is at nikki haley's campaign headquarters, which is in beautiful concord, new hampshire. ali vitali, how are things at nikki haley hq? it seems to us a very open question as to how she is going to do tonight. >> i think that hope is the palpable emotion i feel here among the nikki haley supporters gathered in the room. it is a very different sense here than what i felt in iowa. i think the general mood of that caucus night party was that they knew she was going to do okay, well enough to come to new hampshire, but here there is a real sense that she could
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make this an actual, race closer than many people had anticipated. it does sort of prove haley's point she's been saying all week that this is not a race that has been done, just because donald trump won dominantly in one state it. something that nikki haley herself has said to me when i have asked her about a second place is enough to say that she should continue running in this primary. in my conversations with my sources in haley world tonight, it's clear they are feeling good and it's clear they are looking at key places on this map and seeing margins that give them a reason to think that they're defiant tone has been worthwhile, specifically looking at places like portsmouth and like exeter and like rye. all those key places on the map are places that the haley campaign is watching closely and hope that they can run up a margin there. it tracks closely where she has spent her time in this last week of the campaign, campaigning arm in arm with the popular new hampshire governor chris sununu here. he has been running this
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campaign all over the state. my understanding is he has been a driving force in the stop that she has been making, changing the campaign style from one that has just been standard town halls and q&as to one that has been much more dynamic, with retail stops at diners and coffee shops. and you can hear the crowd here, guys, as the results keep coming in. they are liking what they are seeing, especially as they see haley campaign hq pop up on the screen. because this is a race now we, are especially if haley comes within single digits of the points, it becomes very difficult for the republican party really large to argue that she should be dropping out, or at least dropping out immediately. the campaign is already fighting against that, especially in light of a statement from the rnc chair woman, ronna mcdaniel, which effectively said that, if trump runs away with it tonight, the next thing the party has to think about is unity. nikki haley is still defined in the state face of statements like that, campaign sources telling me their campaign general mood is let's take up
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-- only two states will have voted, more people need to. chance rachel, it's important you bring a place like michigan. because the idea of an open primary is one that the haley campaign is really banking on. yes, here in new hampshire. but also down the stretch and their campaign manager betsy released a memo today. what caught my attention is the way they explicitly call out semi open or open primaries going down through super tuesday, and states that they feel are fertile territory for them. and you look at the vote demographics here in new hampshire, the number of independents and undeclared that came out. that is why they are making that point. and especially, if we see results here, that are closer than people anticipated, it only gives more credence to their theory of the case. >> yeah, and closer than anticipated, again, is the key, ali vitali. i'm glad you put it that way. because it's an expectations game. with the last polls after ron desantis dropped out of the race, the last tracking police 20-plus point margin. if you are talking about the haley campaign, hoping for a single digit margin between
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herenda trump, that is setting the expectations game, potentially, in a way that trump is going to find hard to push back against. >> i think, certainly, that is true. and look, the real expectations game they're playing as with their donors. because, of course we know that all candidates want to stay in. they want to run these races through to the finish line and what nikki haley has to do next, is issues, going back to south carolina. i will be upright and early trying to get to that campaign event. so, we will be live with you tomorrow. but she is also going to be doing a slew of donor meetings throughout the major cities that we know, donors tend to congregate in. i'm talking new york. i'm talking texas. she is going to have to be making the cell. and a cell is much easier. we all know, if you are within single digits, and striking distance of the former president, i think the thing that is going to be tough is, a month is an eternity in politics. we all know that. south carolina is a month away. and we know that it is less fertile territory for hailie than it used to be, when she ran statewide. now, her campaign has reminded
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me time and again that this is a state that knows what it is like to be under nikki haley's governance. but this is also a state, i remember being in the ballroom in greenville, south carolina, in 2016, when we watch trump just utterly sweep the math, and the bush era of republican politics, and really establish himself atop the republican party -- that was in 2016. south carolina was the state that, at least for many of us covering that campaign, really felt like a sea shift. it is unclear that it is going to do the reverse, this time, for haley. but it is a much tougher climb there. but then again, we were saying that about new hampshire. it remains a tough climb. we will keep watching these polls coming in. but at the same time, it is something that they are looking at that, if it is closer than people expected, they feel that they have a leg to stand on, and that they can keep pushing forward through this campaign. >> ali vitali, at nikki haley campaign headquarters in concord. ali, i know we will be back with you. right now, there's about three minutes until polls close in new hampshire. secretary of state's office has
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told us, explicitly, anybody who is still in line when polls close we will be allowed to vote. if you are in the sound of my voice right now, within the sound of my voice right now in new hampshire, and you are just getting to your polling place, as long as you are in line when polls close, in two and a half minutes, you will be allowed to vote. now, basically what we have, got as we have been watching the results come in from polling places that closed in the last hour, at 7:00, it's been sort of a mixed bag, for nikki haley's prospects. as steve kornacki has been explaining, the reason there was a lot of hope for nikki haley's prospects is because of the first wave of exit polls. now, we have just had the second wave of exit polls come in. and steve kornacki, looking at that second wave of exits, is in keeping with the first wave or is it telling us a different story? >> it's moved a little, but i think that will could be significant here. we talked about 8% of the electorate identifying as democratic in the first wave. that number, with the second wave, we have a bigger sample size, now it comes down to six.
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given that nikki haley -- that's a group that we, you know, expect her to do very well with, they lower that number gets -- in the republican chair of the electorate, it's up now. it's still not a majority. but it's up to 49%. and so, again, talking about haley leaning to independents, this electorate a little bit skewed now towards the republicans more than it was before. moreover, though, it is the result that we have coming in now, we have the complete results from the city of concord. third largest in the state. and again, this is a place that haley did not just need to win. she needs to win this big. she wins it. but i think she -- we thought a benchmark for her would be 57% or higher in terms of to make this a real race statewide. so, she falls a little short in concord. but she is falling short -- she's falling much shorter when you get outside of a place like sanbornton, a place -- three quarters of the votes are in. a benchmark he would be someone the low to mid 40. she is sitting there at 38%. here is one. the city of clermont. again, we talked about rochester, on this side of the state being sort of an old
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working class trump city. clermont, a bit of its equivalent on the -- river here. again, she would want to be somewhere about 45%, here running around and the bottom line is this. there is a pattern that is clearly developing here with these results so far. in areas with high concentrations, relative to the state average of college degrees, and we talk about the college non-college divide in those areas, haley, on average, is running three points better than the benchmark we establish for her. but, in areas with low college -- running nine points short. >> that noise, and that big guillotine coming down on steve kornacki means that polls are about to close. we are less than ten seconds away from the polls closing in the new hampshire primary. both in the democratic primary and in the republican primary. and now, at eight pm eastern time, i can give you the characterization of the race. we are going to start with the
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republican primary in new hampshire. nbc news, at this hour, can characterize the new hampshire republican primary as much. it is too early to call, but donald trump leads. again, too early to call, but donald trump leads. that is the characterization in new hampshire at poll closings at 8:00 pm eastern. for now, a look at the democratic primary. nbc news now projects that the winner of the democratic presidential primary in new hampshire is joe biden. now, this is interesting for lots of reasons. this has no delegates associated with it. the democratic party told new hampshire you cannot be first in the nation this year. you can only go later in the process and democrats decided to hold their primary in new hampshire anyway. joe biden was not on the ballot. but even as a write in candidate with 21 of the people whose names were on the palette
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ballot, president biden is projected, when the -- that the steve. >> yeah, and just picking up on that here as well, look. the sort of the biggest one in the state is the queen city, manchester. the largest city in the state here. and we now have more than half the vote in for manchester. and i'll trump continues to lead. here he is it about ten or 11-point lead for downtown manchester. and this, i mean, it's obvious to say. but it is the largest in the state. it really is one of the swing east in the state. we thought, coming into the night, nikki haley is going to have a chance, here statewide, to have -- this would be a city that would be a jump ball. it would be 50/50, pretty. much and they're still more vote to come in right here. but you see halle is running short of 50/50 with nearly 60% of the vote in. if she is going to be falling short in a city the size of manchester, if that ends up being the case, here she has to make up for somewhere. where can she make up for it? again, an obvious place we just told you is concord. but basically, all the votes in
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in concord. and it is a good night for her. but we think, especially if she is coming in short in a place like manchester she needs better than this. she needs 57, 60%, somewhere in that area. here might be an interesting, a telling one as well. here let's go down to peterborough. picturesque peterborough. it is the setting for the play our town, and gene wilder was right up the road, i think, when he wrote it. i think this is supposed to be the heart of haley country here. and a benchmark here where -- wishes winning statewide would be probably close to two thirds of the vote. -- peterborough, and she's not quite hitting that number. we're seeing her do well in -- she's doing well and conquered, well in peterborough. for that matter we can go over to the city of portsmouth. he's doing well in portsmouth, with nearly 50% of the vote. and but again -- to win, to be in position to win statewide, it would need to be more at about two thirds of the vote in portsmouth. so, even in those areas, the sort of core areas where we
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expect her to run up the number, she is doing well but she is not quite hitting those benchmarks. and then, again if you compare it to, just as we start to get more of the small town new hampshire, and here's a good one, anteroom. we start talking about towns that are sort of socioeconomically different then portsmouth and one of the wealthiest -- here in antrim you are talking about, with the medium median income is, lower you are talking about lower college degree attainment. those are demographics that have not been good for hailie. they were terrible for her in iowa. and those are demographics at, for eight years, now have been terrific for donald trump. so, here, small town. but in antrim uc trumpeting, basically it's 58 to 40, or -- a half to 40, and we talk about, again, going to, élysées a great -- a -- her number would have be closer to 50 here. high 40s. so, again, we are just seeing, we see here, in antrim, we see it in hillsboro. we talk about this one earlier, she wants to be in the 40s. here we talk about it in the city of clermont. she would want to be, probably, made forties there. we are waiting, i, think more
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on the cone yet, we have not gotten much more, but this is what you would want to be doing much better than the third but the statistic we have been tracking here, is it is so crucial to any story about the republican party -- and really, in the general ossian as well, is that college non-college divide. okay? so, voters with a college degree, the places that have reported in new hampshire, where the concentration of college degrees is higher than the state average. okay, in those areas, haley is actually surpassing the benchmarks that we set for her by about three points on average. in the areas of the state, though, where the reporting, where the college attainment rate is lower than average, haley is nine point shorts of the benchmarks we established for her. and that is becoming a very clear pattern here, as more of these cities and towns report. you take a look at east kingston here, matt, we have all the vote in here. we are getting into that southeast corner. a lot of these other 8:00 poll
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closing times. and i just want to look here to see what we have. yeah, again, this is -- haley, again -- she did well. 48%. we thought she would be in the low 50s. you notice a pattern? in the good air, is she is not quite getting there. and in those smaller towns, those rural places, lower median income, lower college attainment rates, she is following farther short. so, we add that all up together. here she's got 14% in statewide. and trump has a lead here about six points over nikki haley. for hail, you saw the characterization for our decision desk and for haley to overcome that what would she need? look, in the remaining vote in manchester she needs to get it closer. we've now gone up over 60 inches fallen a little bit further behind in manchester. a core, core area for nikki haley is going to be these four cities and towns right here. city of lebanon, directly north is hanover and -- orford, a tiny, high income, high college, all of that. this was john kasich's best section of the state in 2016. handover was trump's worst
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town. so, haley, she can run up the big numbers here. there are some college towns. we are waiting on durham, with a noon adversity of new hampshire. is again, expect a big daily number there. hanover, a college town, keen, itself, the city of keene. keene, keene state college -- 20% of the vote in here. -- again, to be winning statewide, to have shot to win statewide, we thought she needed 54, 55% of the vote here in keene. so, it is a win it. is a good showing. but i am not seeing places here where she is just blowing through that number that we have established for. and on the other hand we are seeing in some of these rural smaller towns we are seeing her mr. targets as fremont -- we start to get a little bit of fremont in. here i can just quickly cross check. again, yeah, this is one, haley, we thought would be 45 year, 39%. and she's at 48.48 point. five again, that's a little different. oh, yeah, things, it's littleton, we've got. now littleton, one of the largest areas in northern new
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hampshire. it's not a ton of, vote but in that part of the day, it's a lot of. votes all of littleton's. and you see trump, 56, haley, just a touch under 40. and i just want to look at the numbers here. i think she is low again, and littleton. yeah, we thought she needed to get an outright majority and we thought we needed to be about 51% here. and again, what are you talking about when you are talking about -- you are talking about lower median income. you are talking about lower college degree concentration. so, the pattern, absolutely, continuing there in littleton. again, you factor this stuff in statewide. that is what you are looking at in terms of the results so far. , so there are some -- durham, lebanon, hanover, yves got some big halle air is, relatively speaking, and we don't know if she will do very big. yet to come. we've also got a lot a little small towns, hear what the pattern that is quickly emerging is that halle's fallen short in those areas. and if that continues, the numbers just are not going to be there for her. and again, as you can see the trump number here, it is up over seven point statewide right now now. and it could get, potentially, higher. the big thing here, 8:00, is
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that the polls have no closed in nashua, second largest city in the state. and not all, but most of these towns right here along the massachusetts border, our eight pm poll closing times, and there's a lot of population down there. so, we will get good readouts. they are but again, some of these, again, do not just assume it is a bedroom community. it is a suburb. don't assume that means haley country. because, some of these, we told you sailor, new hampshire, earlier. some of these were donald trump's vest towns in new hampshire in 2016. and we expect them to be among his best year in 2020, a town like pelham nearby. as we say, salem is one of them. it's a little bit different, and it defies a bit of our conventional thinking about how the suburbs lineup. when you are talking about this part of southern hampshire here. >> steve, let me ask you. can you show us -- like, give us the biggest tallies where nikki haley could make, up not even necessarily to overtake, trumpet where she could actually run up enough of the vote total that she could
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close that gap even a little bit. what are the biggest places that you can actually score some votes? >> right here, in this region here. the city of lebanon, we expect her to win, even if she is losing statewide. we expect her to. winds are, the question is, what is the margin she can get out of here? and over, where dartmouth is, again, we say this is downtown forest town in 2016. there are far bigger towns in new hampshire than hanover. but this is a place where, even on a bed, night haley was going to win it. so, the question is, can she just drive up an astronomical number forehand? overhand over, remember, one of those towns where they asked the secretary of state for more ballots earlier in the day. that trend would continue in line,, smollett would continue right up to orford, this section of the connecticut river valley here. very, very liberal. very, very anti trump. it's not a huge number of votes. but you would expect haley to be driving big numbers there. again, coming into the night, we also have some of these communities in the sea coast that should be among her best. portsmouth, is among them. i'm guessing of more vote came in in portsmouth. , again she would want to be in the high 60s. but whatever comes in in portsmouth is going to benefit
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her. some of these -- some of these other towns, again, this is durham. this is where the university of new hampshire. is we go down here and this is exeter. exeter academy, a prep school town. again, you expect big numbers for her there. nashua, for that matter. you take a look, second largest city in the state. i think haley -- you know, we said, in our estimates for this, she would want to be winning it by 5 to 10 points. and i still suspect she will do pretty well in nashua, and have a chance to win it. it is just a huge number of votes there. so, even if she is only winning it by say, two or four points, you would be making some gains there. you look right outside nashua and you look at merrimack. this could be a decent place for her. this could be very good for her. amherst, a town of about 11,000. it's very wealthy, among the wealthiest in the. state it's among the highest concentrations of college degrees in the state. so as well. hollis. we saw nikki haley have a rally and hollis the other day. that is where the late senator, warren rahman, actually spent his retirement.
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hollis, has actually been -- it has been growing. it's extremely wealthy, median income, high college degree concentration. so there are places like that where she can -- some votes, but -- >> sorry to have to interrupt. you but, we have an important projection to make. nbc news, at this hour, at 8:11 pm in the east coast -- nbc news can now project that the winner of new hampshire republican primary is donald trump. earlier, the project your had been that it was too early to call. but that trump was in the league. 11 minutes after poll closing, trump has been projected the winner. steve, forgive me for interrupting you there. but that's the only reason i would. that does -- it seems like everything that you are coming up with, when you were talking about those benchmark numbers, you had in mind for nikki haley. that was about her pulling out a win and not hitting those benchmarks in town after town after town, pretty much all telling that same story. >> yeah, exactly. so, now, i think really, the
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question for haley becomes, and you guys have started talking about this, it is that, what can she take and say, try to win, but it's progress. it gets me to south carolina. and, i don't know. to my, eyes it is, at the very minimum, if she wants to keep this in single digits. >> right. >> now you see trump with a margin of eight points right there. and again, nashua, almost 100,000 people in nashua. she could win nashua. i think even on a bad night here she would probably break even in nash. what so, she can get some substantial votes out there. we talked about the connecticut river valley and there are some decent sized places out there where i think she's going to run up a lot of the vote. the question is, what she gains in those places. and again there are a number of them, population wise. what she gains is it going to be offset by what we have been showing you in places like clermont? and what we have been showing you in places like littleton, and in hillsboro, and antrim. is going to be offset?
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because those they all start to add up individually. here -- 600 votes are. so by, there is a lot of them around the. state here is a small one. milton, new hampshire. again, i will give you a sense here, of what we saw the number here needed to be here to get competitive statewide. we thought she needed 36%. she's not quite at 30%. she just continue to see that pattern. if it falls, if she's falling further than this in a lot of the small towns, that is getting -- clermont is a small city. but she is double digit short of her benchmark in clermont, and that's where you start to get in danger if you are her, of this thing going into the high -- single it is in the high single digits right now would've actually getting double digits. there are some bigger size places to come to relative to this, the favor of trump, and i see the city of berlin up here, nor the new, hampshire we expect that to be a big win for donald. trump we will check in on rochester. , again trump, two thirds of the vote, here here is -- he needs close to two thirds of the vote. and the big, one really, the big one left is, what --
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and again, this is bad news for nikki haley. now you have got two thirds of the vote in manchester. and she is has fallen almost 13 and a half points behind donald trump, in manchester. i am not sure which wards, and many precincts still to come in manchester -- but if that remaining one third of the vote in manchester sees trump's lead expand even further, again, those votes have we'll fast in a place that size. >> so, again, the big news is that nbc news has projected that the winner of the democratic primary in new hampshire is joe biden. and the winner of the republican primary in new hampshire is donald trump. what that means is that all eyes now turn to nikki haley. how will she react to this loss? what we will be more qian b? and how will she characterize the margin in terms of what it means for the prospects of her campaign? going forward? the closest we can get to laying eyes on nikki haley right now is to lay eyes on ali vitali, who is at nikki haley headquarters in concord, new
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hampshire. ali, we have just had a call here from the nbc news decision desk, that donald trump has won in new hampshire. we've got to check in with you as to how that news is or his not being received in the room. >> look, i gave up on candidate impressions along time ago, rachel, so, i'm just going to give it to you straight reporter style. this is a room that is starting to fill, and that is starting to feel the excitement, despite the fact that there was big news of us calling this race for trump, that was not the shocking thing that voters in here we're waiting for tonight. instead, there is still a hopeful and excited attitude here. in large part because the margins are just not what people expected them to be. i have run into several senior campaign advisers, and allies tonight. many of them are just walking around and getting me to sign and crossing their fingers and hoping that those closer than expected margins are what sticks. again, we will look at a lot of the areas that steve was talking about. but places like exeter, where
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she campaigned in the waning days of this campaign, hollis, lebanon, all those are areas that have been told to expect to keep a close eye on, and as far as what is going on in the room here, you can see that it's started to fill in. but you can also see that, onstage behind, me they're starting to check the podium. we have got people onstage. they are filling in. and my sources in the campaign tell me, soon, however ominous or non precise of an expectation that is for you guys there in the studio. but until then, they are going to try to keep high hopes in there, as they wait to see results coming. i do think we can read into the fact that nikki haley could speak earlier in the night then, as opposed to, waiting for more of these results to come in. speaking early, i am expecting her, anyway, to declare a victory that, at least, allows them to push ahead, because as we were talking, about at the end of your last hour, that was really the only thing that they wanted to prove tonight and they wanted to prove that they could make a go of it in a
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one-on-one race with donald trump. they want to argue that her trajectory over the last year has been the only person to challenge trump who has seen their stock rise in the eyes of the electorate, as opposed to all these other rivals. the so-called fellas, as haley would often call them, who have dropped out, and now turn to endorse the former president. that is a big current for her to fight. against by that is when we are watching haley and her campaign continue to push against as they continue to be defiant, i think, is the best word i can use to describe my conversations with these group of people, who feel like they are fighting the establishment here, and even if we don't agree that trump's establishment, or that haley does not qualify that, they are trying to get hot cast haley as the outside here, perhaps the ultimate irony, going in, someone like donald trump, who rode away that cider status into the presidency in 2016 -- >> ali, watching the room, hearing you talk, hearing you describe what you have been told, it seems clear that, if nothing, else we are going to hear soon from nikki haley.
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i have a feeling we are going to be back with you sooner rather than later. we will take her as soon as she hits the podium. thank, you ali. and nikki haley campaign headquarters in concord, new hampshire. now let's zip over to nashua, new hampshire, to another campaign headquarters, where nbc news correspondent vaughn hillyard is with the trump campaign at their hq. vaughn, let me ask you how things are in that room, whether there has been any response to the nbc news projection, and how things seem tonight. >> just about three minutes, ago rachel, they -- hear inside of the room, and it was met by cheers, of course. so, this is the expectation at this point, and what the folks in this room, as well as the server get to our, hear everybody from vivek ramaswamy, to kari lake, to george santos all at wanted the primary to come to an end tonight. and for donald trump, over the course of the last several days, he has continually been up on stage, made the statement that the republican party should unite. it's resources around taking --
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>> vaughn hillyard, i'm sorry. i'm sorry, i have to cut you off. i hate doing that. but nikki haley is just starting her remarks. and we are going to take them. we will be back with you, vaughn, at trump campaign headquarters. here is nikki haley, live from her headquarters in new hampshire tonight. >> [applause] >> what a great night! god is so good. >> [applause] >> thank you, new hampshire, for the love, the kindness, the support, and a great night here tonight! thank you so much. i want to first say, thank you to my husband who i know is watching right now. i love you. we are excited to have you. i want to thank my kids who are here rena and nalin and josh --
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i am incredibly blessed by their support. i have my parents at home. and i will always say that the way they raised me to know that we lived in the best country in the world, but to also know that the best way you appreciate your blessings is to give back. thank you, mom and dad, i love you so much. >> [applause] >> to my siblings, to my in laws, to everybody back at home, to vicky for helping mccarrick take care of mom and dad. thank you. it feels like it has been a lifetime. but it has been almost a year that we have been campaigning in new hampshire, touching every hand, answering every question, being the last person to leave.
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and we had the most amazing thing happen. is the second that we got the endorsement from governor chris sununu -- >> [applause] >> i mean, a true governor that does not stand behind a podium. he shows up at a diner. he shows up at the brewery. he loves the people of new hampshire. he has been with me every single day, at every single event. chris, i could not have done it without you. and i want to thank someone who is with me on day one. he is a patriot and he is a hard-core conservative. and he is my friend, general don bolduc and sharon.
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thank you so much. i want to congratulate donald trump on his victory tonight he earned it. and i want to acknowledge that. now, you've all heard the chatter among the political class. they are falling all over themselves, saying this race is over. >> [applause] >> well, i have news for all of them. new hampshire he's first in the nation. it is not the last in the nation. >> [applause] >> this race is far from over there are dozens of states left to go. and the next one is my sweet
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state of south carolina! at one point in this campaign, there were 14 of us running. and we were at 2% in the polls. well, i am a fighter. and i am scrappy. and now, we are the last one standing next to donald trump. >> [applause] >> and today, we got close to half of the vote. we still have a ways to go. but, we keep moving up. for a lot of people, politics is way too personal. it is not personal for me.
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i voted for trump twice. i was proud to serve america in his cabinet. i agree with many of his policies. i decided to run because i am worried about the future of our country, and because it is time to put the negativity and chaos behind us. >> [applause] >> we have an economy that is crushing middle class americans. we have a border that is totally open, and dangerous, creating a disaster in our country. >> unbelievable! >> we have schools that are failing to many of our children, and we have a world on fire, with a war in europe, and the middle east, and a huge and growing threat from china. and then, if you look at washington d.c..
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we have a congress that fights about everything, and accomplishes nothing. and we have joe biden in the white house, making one bad decision after another. when he is making any decisions at all. our country is in a real mess. >> [crowd chanting] nikki, nikki, nikki! >> and the question is, who is going to fix it? weight donald trump, republicans have lost almost every competitive election. we lost the senate.
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we lost the house. we lost the white house. we lost in 2018, we lost in 2020, and we lost in 2022. the worst kept secret in politics is how badly the democrats want to run against donald trump. they know trump is the only republican in the country who joe biden can defeat. you can't fix the mess if you don't win an election. a trump nomination is a biden win, and a kamala harris presidency. i defeat biden handily.
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>> we want, you nikki! >> with donald trump, you have one bout of chaos after another. this court case, that controversy, this tweet, that senior moment. you can't fix joe biden's chaos with republican chaos. the other day, donald trump accused me of not providing security at the capitol on january 6th. >> [laughter] >> i've long called for mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75. trump claims he would do better than me in one of those tests. maybe he would, maybe he would not. but if he thinks that, then he should have no problem standing on a debate stage with me.
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>> [applause] [crowd chanting, nikki] [crowd chanting, nikki, nikki!] >> most americans do not want a rematch between biden and trump. the first party to retire its 80 rolled candidate is going to be the party that wins this election. and i think it should be the republicans that win this election. so, our fight is not over. because we have a country to
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save. in the next two months, millions of voters in over 20 states will have their say. we should honor them. and allow them to vote. and guess what roy? in the next two months, joe biden is not going to get any younger or any better. >> [laughter] >> we will have all the time we need to defeat joe biden. when we get to south carolina, donald trump is going to have a harder time falsely attacking me. the great people of south carolina know i cut their taxes. they know i signed the toughest illegal immigration bill in the country. they know we passed a voter i.d., and tort reform, and ethics reform. and they know we moved 35,000
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people from welfare to work. every time i have run for office in south carolina, i have beaten the political establishment. they are lined up against me again. that is no surprise. but south carolina voters do not want a coronation. they want an election. and we are going to give them one. because we are just getting started. thank you for the energy! >> [applause] [crowd chanting, nikki, nikki!]
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>> thank you! thank you for the love, new hampshire. we are going home to south carolina! >> nikki haley, with an energized speech to her campaign headquarters in concord, new hampshire tonight. she congratulated former president donald trump on his victory, in new hampshire, and said he earned it. she said the political class says it is over. the crowd than screamed, it's not over. nikki haley then said, it is not over. new hampshire's first in the nation, not last in the nation, it is not. over there are dozens of states to go. she then went on to give her standard some speech against both president biden and former president trump. but notably, she says, she is looking forward to the contest moving next to her home state of south carolina, and she says that, if it takes a few months, takes a couple of months for the republicans to pick their
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nominee, they will still have, in her words, plenty of time to take on joe biden thereafter. now, when nikki haley began her remarks -- we were speaking with vaughn hillyard, who is at donald trump's campaign headquarters in new hampshire. vaughn, i am sorry to have had to step on you. i hate doing that. you were giving us, before nikki haley started her remarks, there you were giving us a sense of what is happening in the room there are trump hq, and what you are hearing from the campaign. >> right, rachel. at this point we are waiting for donald trump to take the stage now that nikki haley has given her remarks here for donald trump and his campaign, they've maintained that a win would be a win here. they clearly wanted to end this tonight. donald trump, onstage, at his closing primary valley in laconia new hampshire, saying that he sought to end this republican primary today so that they can focus the parties resources around beating joe biden november. tim scott, vivek ramaswamy,
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doug burgum, all former rivals joined him onstage last night. this was a moment that the campaign wanted to avoid here. and it is clear that nikki haley does not intend to go anywhere. but when you look at the calendar, this is where trump senior advisers have continually continuously told me these last days, that they are in good shape. if you fast forward to nevada, there is a primary in february 6th. but no delegates are actually coming out of that primary. nikki haley's name will be on that primary ballot. but, because of some party rules in that state, the only delegates that will be awarded out of nevada come from the nevada caucus two days later on february 8th. and donald trump is participating in the caucus. not nikki haley. so, he is going to win those delegates out of nevada. then you fast forward to south carolina. when we are talking about those independent voters, that anti trump, even, republican resistance. this is a moment, where, when you look at south carolina, yes the polling numbers are not great. she has a month long to make inroads. but that is the state where joe biden and the democrats of focus their attention on
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turning out democratic primary voters for the first time, to come take part in the democratic primary. because unaffiliated voters and democratic voters could take part in the republican primary in south carolina on february 23rd if they so choose to. but the democrats are telling their voters to go take part and vote for joe biden. and so that is, where you look at the map here, comes super tuesday on march 5th, another state, california, if donald trump gets 50% or more of the votes in the state of california, he wins all of the delegates out of california, because of new gop rules in that state. california is also a closed primary, meaning no independence can go and vote in the republican primary. you also have the state of florida. it is also a closed primary as well. this is where the math becomes complicated. i was right here in new hampshire eight years, ago rachel, when, at the time, i was covering ted cruz's campaign. we heard time and again that south carolina would be the southern wall for him. but what happened? donald trump survived surprised with the m evangelical
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evangelicals. he got the endorsement of jerry falwell junior. he won big, and overwhelmingly, throughout the south, was able to win states like alabama and south carolina, and send a message that the republican party was much greater than the northeastern part of the state. or northeastern part of the country, but that he had mobilized movement around the country. that is what nikki haley is going to be up against here. because there is questions around that energy, among independent voters, and whether they were going to be inspired to come out. a woman, she told me yesterday, or i should say, two days ago, over the weekend, at an kaley event. when she walked out, she goes, i guess i will vote for nicky haley because she is the only alternative at this point. what nikki haley now has the opportunity to do, though, is work on inspiring anti trump movement. and if these results are closer than expected here, this would be a signal but this is not only donald trump's republican party at this point, but that there is a faction of a stemming from the lease cheney, from the bob corker's, the jeff flake's, that there is a surge
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that could potentially challenge him, and his grip hold on this republican party. because this summer at, the convention, rachel, is not a likely place in which they would be likely to unseat him, because of these delegates. this is really a last gasp opportunity over the month ahead that we can expect to create an amount of resources going behind nikki haley to challenge all trump and his attempts with his third nomination. >> vaughn hillyard, let me ask you about one of the charges that nikki haley is increasingly making about donald trump. and she really hit this quite hard tonight in her remarks on her campaign headquarters, in concord. she referenced senior moments. she talked about her demand that candidates over the age of 70, five which would include on trump, should have a mental fitness test. she talked about his confusion on the stump, recently. i know that, from reporting about his last rally that he did in laconia, new hampshire, yesterday, that there was, again, a moment of him appearing to -- i mean, best-case scenario,
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maybe lost his place in the teleprompter, worst-case scenario seem to be slurring, seem to not know what he was talking about, ended up sort of spitting up gobbledegook of words that nobody knew except that involve something about the death penalty. that attack from nikki haley, obviously, is meant for her to land on both joe biden and on donald trump. but she is really hammering it now when it comes to trump and his mental fitness, and his age, and his, essentially, mental stamina. how is the trump campaign handling that criticism from her? >> donald trump, he does not run away from it, number one, rachel. almost every speech over the last days is nikki haley, has focused on his mental fitness, he has gone back to talking about the fact that he has passed to cognitive tests, including one from former white house doctor ronny jackson, who, of course, is a maga -- currently serving in congress. and for donald trump, this is -- don jr., just before donald trump took the stage last night,
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was calling joe biden a roomba and mocking joe biden's mental fitness. here and so this is a moment in which, clearly, the target has been put on donald trump's back by nikki haley. the issue is, over the course of her 11 months of campaigning, she did not attack donald trump's mental fitness, literally, just one month ago, in an interview, she explicitly said that she believed that had the cognitive ability to serve as president again. and so, the question is, can she change course like, she did over the last week? and hammer that home? and it is not clear. but now that she can tie these two together over the last 11 months, she has consistently, rachel, said that it would be a president kamala harris, not a president biden, that the country would have. so clearly, she's made the decision to tie these two individuals, donald trump and joe -- herself and her generation from the potential to nearly 80-year-olds that could be running against each other in november. >> vaughn hillyard for us in
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nashua, in trump campaign headquarters. vaughn, we know we will be back with you, we are waiting at this point to see if the candidate himself will make remarks. they are appreciated, von. we will be back. the we're joined here on set by our colleagues stephanie ruhle and alex wagner. alex, you get first word responded to this news that we saw a -- nikki haley, saying, i'm not going anywhere. >> yeah, i believe trump is the first republican candidate since 1970 60 when both iowa and new hampshire in an open campaign. >> that's right, since gerald ford. that's right. >> it is a big victory for him. i was shocked by nikki haley saying he earned it. i mean, what is your definition of earned? this is someone who has spent more time in courtrooms in the last few weeks and months and he has campaigning in new hampshire. it has been a presidential campaign cycle unlike any other. nikki haley said she is a fighter and that she is scrappy. she's going back to her home turf of south carolina.
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but you know, rachel, you have seen this state play out in previous presidential races. it is bare knuckle brawling in south carolina. this is a state that had the whisper campaign against john mccain, and he supposedly illegitimate black daughter. this is strong thurmond territory and lee asked water. and donald trump has already started going for the birtherism stuff with nikki haley. it is going to be obeah bruising next month for this woman who, there clearly, did not want to be talk about being the daughter of immigrants. did not want to talk about being the governor that took the confederate -- in the wake of the mother emmanuel shooting. this is all stuff that, i think, for the general election, could be important data points for nikki haley. but in a primary process that we are nativism and xenophobia and latent, if not explicit racism has proven to be -- i think it is going to get really, really ugly. >> yeah. and she has a case to make, as she made in her speech tonight,
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we don't need to decide this right away and it can take a couple of months. we will still have plenty of time to take on joe biden. what's and said there is, we don't have to decide this right away. our guy might be going to prison. it would be good if there was somebody else running against him, still. at that point. so, we still have an opportunity to choose somebody else before the convention. >> but she's not wrong when she says trump earned. it does not matter how we feel or what he's done or the amount of charges against. and in the last free three presidential elections, republicans have chosen donald trump as their guy. before i came to, this i was actually at an event tonight now, the political event, but it was filled with big nikki haley new york donors. they are giving her lots, and they will continue to give her more. >> interesting. >> because the issue is, there these classic george bush republicans waiting for that moment to come back. and they are not. right? when you look at how nikki haley performed tonight, republicans did not vote for her. the george bush republicans might have money. but they are not republican voters. and it was independents that helped her tonight.
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and that is the issue for joe biden to focus on, his messaging. and when she says things like, the economy is crushing the middle class, everyone here at this table knows that is not a fact. the challenges, for joe biden to convince americans of. that >> you know? what can i just give this sort of -- the donors who were in la la land and who were dreaming that they can go back to george bush, can i just give you the case they are probably making to each other and that you are probably hearing? >> yes. yes. >> -- the case is about 2008, and it's about delegates. -- let's go back to may. let's go back to the time machine, in may, of 2008, what was the fight in -- and having lost all of their delegates because they went out of turn. hillary clinton then gets to may, and barack obama is really, we'll close to clinching the magic number of delegates. so, they have this huge fight over whether they get half delegates or hold delegates. why was that a thing? proportionality. the case that can be made, if you want to live on the planet
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that says, you can take down donald trump with a former south carolina governor who, as north of donald -- united nations, say what i want about our politics, but she seems -- to most people would probably be a fairly strong general election candidate. the case you make is that she can thug it out if he wants to, even through july, losing south carolina, a winner take all state, because other than south carolina, which is -- unfortunate, for her, most of the states are proportional. so, she's not going to get any delegates out of nevada. it is not on the khaki, she's on the primary ballot. those 26 delegates, trump is going to get those. the 50 delegates in south carolina, this is a high highly evangelical state. she could lose her own state. but a whole lot of these other states -- let's hawke about michigan, let's talk about nesconset wisconsin, let's talk about missouri, let's talk about north dakota, let's talk about the virgin islands, for little delegates. the way that proportionality works in american politics is that the two can incrementally creep your way to the
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nomination, and what barack obama did in 2008 is that he overtook hillary clinton through a series of unfortunate events, including michigan and florida, losing half their delegates. they wound up making a compromise and got half of them back. but he delegate creeped his way in caucuses, in small states, getting proportional stuff in texas. i'm not saying he can actually. get it but if you are the donor class that wants trump gone, you tell her, they'll get out for a few months. i'm gonna put some more money in your bank account because if he is convicted, you don't want to have a candidate with enough delegates to be on the floor and have a floor fight with donald trump. >> this is not 2008 because the case that you just made, i can guarantee that none of those donors who i spoke to tonight know a single bit of that. they have deep pockets and they know donald trump is facing 91 charges -- >> but they don't want somebody that could actually. you need somebody it's got delegates at the convention. >> and it's the rupture, right?
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like, there needs to still be somebody standing who's not gonna be ruptured in case there is a rupture. that's basically the playbook. >> he wanted to be but he was such a poor candidate who blew all his money on private jets -- >> it out of the race, no reason ever, unless by the time we get to the election, by the time we get to the general election, donald trump has been acquitted. i mean, other than that happening, there is no reason for her to ever leave. >> although usually what ends up happening is money dries up, and also political pressure is a real thing. i mean, she is in the republican party, presumably wants a future in the republican party. usually what ends up happening, it's not like the trump people are gonna be subtle about that pressure. the pressure is gonna be unbelievably intense. >> but it's gonna be unbelievably intense starting tonight, like it's not gonna -- >> i think you are right. it's fire hose versus fire hose. >> look, clearly, she came out of the gate tonight to speak early to send one message, which is i'm not gonna get it.
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everything about that speech was to the donors in that room to everyone else, no, this was not, like, i'm fighting. and in fact i think she turned up the attacks. it was a bit of burning the ships because she turned up the attacks on trump more than i've seen her in what will be her probably biggest national audience that she ever has, again, to reaffirm that she's not getting out tomorrow. and i think the reason for that is she has to right now, if you are her, a, she's the last option left. b, she wants to preserve maximum options for herself. and, c the point that we're all making, the rupture might come. they were not total idiots. they understand there's this huge lease hanging over the entire proceedings. >> by the way, the argument that she is making, as much as it may infuriate the biden team, the h argument actually has legs. >> of course it does. >> so all she has to do is
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continue to be younger to them -- >> she is hitting trump now on his look at the stuff that is saying -- >> the same exact political pressures of other politicians. here's the other reason why. remember what happened when she was the ambassador, she got paid from corporate america, she got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in speeches. i think she joined bone sport. and that's who she is being cornered by right now. desantis did not have an exit strategy to join a corporate vote, i assure you of that. she is now operating and a whole new universe of people that are saying, hang tight -- >> let's bring in former rnc chairman michael steele. he is now the co-host of the weekend right here on msnbc. but for our purposes right here we need to talk to you because you understand the kind of pressure that can be put on a republican candidate who may want to stay in forever, who nevertheless is getting pushed
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by some donors, and the rest of the party the other way. what do you think of this discussion we're having about nikki haley's options? >> i think it's spot on, the number of ways, and it's really interesting because alex and joy kind of hit that sweet spot in their comments about where nikki's right now. and the reality is a very straight up one for her. she did well, okay? south carolina is ahead. you are 30 to 40 points down depending on the polls in your home state. your senators have endorsed the other guy. your congresswoman and other members of your congressional delegations have come out and endorsed the other guy. the state apparatus is forming around the other guy. so that begins to bubble up a great deal of pressure, as you were talking about. it's not just about how you perform in new hampshire. it's how you are going to do in the upcoming states. to the conversation around proportionality, it's important
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to understand that up until march 15th in our republican primaries, you can get a proportional amount of that vote. super tuesday is part of that. so, what should then happen is that pressure sort of galvanizing, starting with south carolina and ending up with super tuesday, among three interest groups here. the first, of course, are those who love nikki. nikki stay, we love you. you're doing fine. don't worry. you can increment your way through this process. that, there's the donor class. they're like, okay, i think i want to write another check. give me another reason. okay, you did okay in new hampshire. i'll give you another check. that goes to a lot of what stephanie was just saying. but then, the third piece which is the more important one is that rank-and-file members of the republican party. we know them effectively as the base. they're not voting for nikki. they don't want nikki. they've made it very clear now in two states, even one that is
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supposedly with democrats and interdependence could have a strong hand in the outcome. well, we see what that strong hand, you know, brought out for us, you know, early call for donald trump. the base is lined up exactly where the base wants to be. and nikki's problem is going to be, she doesn't have a game plan or strategy to crack that base. all of the nice hot rhetoric about trump's age tonight, and snell swinging at him, where was that six weeks ago, six months ago? where was all that them and vigor to take on donald trump when you are asked directly about his mental acuity and you demure it, right? so you are not credible now, and you're not credible for the reason that the base looks at you and goes, okay, is that how you really feel? are you lying to us now or were you lying to us than? so the trust factor for her becomes a real problem which, again, pushes into that pressure.
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the donors and get nervous, rachel. they're gonna get nervous. you're gonna see them start getting nervous pretty soon. and that's gonna be a different kind of pressure. the political establishment is not lined up with her, as i just mentioned, by her delegation and her u.s. senators standing with trump. and that base vote is just not going to reorient itself. give me the number that she can come out of new hampshire with that's gonna move 20, 30 points in her home state of south carolina. >> yeah, i don't think anybody thinks she can't win in south carolina -- so the question is, how does she moved forward? and how does she resist the pressure to leave? and my question, michael, i mean, she has a lot of money in this race, even though she hasn't been contending with trump one for one, vote for a vote. how come she's never run an anti trump ad? you know, i mean, we've seen her start to criticize trump in her speeches and in her remarks.
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but has there been a nikki haley negative trump ad, and will that make a difference? >> at this point, it really doesn't because the narratives are set in. 75% of the electorate in south carolina is evangelical. what kind of ad do you run that's going to move the needle off of them? and then when you look at the states that make up super tuesday, even their, even in places like michigan where she could be doing well, there is a very strong core of republican support. so at this stage, given the success that donald trump has had in this primary season, you didn't go after him in that first debate when he did the show up, right? you were softball-ing, raise your hand, he's a convicted fellow, i will not support him. okay -- good, thank you. [laughter] what are you doing, right? so now, what do you do?
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how do you make the case to the base and the party? what do you think the rnc is gonna do? have you taken a poll after 168 that make up the national committee? 75% trump. there are a lot of walls that have been built up. and they weren't and her and her team weren't in the process of taking those breaks out of the wall. and so now she finds herself in a very difficult race, one that, has she played a bit different in the beginning, could be very different for her on this back and? >> the question is whether she will restart, reset, and take a different tactic from here on. former rnc chairman, michael steele, our beloved colleague. thank you for your time this evening. thank you for being here. this hour, nikki haley has congratulated trump on his victory in new hampshire, and she also promised to keep going with her campaign, as we've been discussing. steve kornacki is gonna take a look at the road ahead from here, starting with how big or how small a victory trump has
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just won in new hampshire tonight. interesting results coming in to give us a sense of trump's win tonight. that's after the break. stay with us. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> now, you have all heard the chatter among the political class. there are falling all over themselves saying this race is over. [crowd chanting] well, i had news for all of them. new hampshire's first in the nation. it is not the last in the nation. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪
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biden win and a kamala harris presidency. >> nikki haley giving remarks to her campaign headquarters tonight in new hampshire, after losing in the new hampshire primary to donald trump. now, how much has she lost by? was what's the marginal gonna look like here? what will that do in terms of bragging rights and the case that she's making that she's not getting out of the race no matter what the political class says. let's go to steve kornacki for some of the metrics on this. steve, what's it looking like in terms of the overall performance here? >> as you can see, we are close to 30% of the voting statewide now. and trump's lead is now 12 and a half points with what's been counted. and a couple of key to this here. first of all, all the votes are in. we showed you the three biggest cities. concord is number three, manchester number one. you can see, now we're of 80% in manchester and the margin for trump, it's been climbing a bit each time we've looked,
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sitting at 15 points in the states largest city. again, this was one, this was gonna be basically a toss-up statewide, it will be a toss-up in manchester. so i think that's a gauge here of, you know, haley's night here in terms of how she's falling short of making this a real game statewide. she probably needs to be about 49% here. she is missing by seven. trump's going 7% over. that goes and both directions. and nashwa which closed at eight, the second largest city, this is the one on paper haley wants to be winning. and she really wants to be winning it right now to get that trump margins low as she can get it. and 60% in, she is losing it by seven points to donald trump. now, there is more to come. we've seen, you know, there could be variance between these precincts and these awards. we will see the rest of the national which parts come in, if it elevates her. but she really needs to make up ground in population centers like nashwa right now to cut this lead down.
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a big, big source of votes for haley, we can almost guarantee, still to be reported, it's gonna be right here in hanover, dartmouth college, donald trump's worst town in 2016. it won't be a huge number of votes. but haley, we're expecting, she's gonna get a vast, vast majority of those. that will help her cause. the city of lebanon in the south, expecting her to do very, very well there. we're also still waiting on durham college town university, new hampshire. for that matter, we're waiting on places where haley can run up numbers and she needs to run up numbers because the problem for haley, we started to see this earlier tonight, and i can tell you it has only continue, and it is a continuation of what we saw in iowa. when you get away from these population centers, when you get away from some of these suburban areas, places with higher concentrations of college degrees, places with higher median incomes, she is significantly, significantly underperforming. what we thought she needed to do to be in the game statewide. again, you add that together right now, and it is adding up to a 13 point trump lead.
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and i don't think it's all impossible from this vantage point. i mean, we will see. but if you look at these numbers, it's not impossible trump's gonna still win this state by more than ten points, by double digits. and in that sense, if that were to happen, and that is if, that is a possibility right now. you think that is what haley just did. that was the bill clinton strategy 92. the exit polls showed a toss-up 92. he returned to the toss-up, clinton ran downstairs, called himself the comeback head. and then six hours later, they count the outlying areas, and he lost by almost ten points in 1982. nobody remember that. they remember earlier in the night. i think that might have been in the haley playbook. we will see, again, these final returns. there's a chance she can keep this in single digits, maybe on the higher end. but i think what really stands out here, and what really tells a story, and i think i might explain some of that rural and small town weakness that she's having is this. we showed this at the beginning of the night. there is a very large number, a large number of independents, and even relatively speaking, democrats.
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but look at this breakdown. first of all, this is the current breakdown. 49% of the electorate call themselves republicans. 45, independent. 6%, democrat. these are numbers you're not gonna see in other states. but check this out. among republicans, donald trump is beating nikki haley by essentially 50 points. 74 to 25. among independent voters, haley is beating trump by 24 point, 61 to 37. that is a swing of 73 points between how donald trump is doing with republicans and how he's doing within independents. and taking one step further among democrats, the 6% who call themselves democrats, it is haley 84 and trump 6%. so, that is, you know, to rely on that kind of, i can't imagine -- let me put it this way, the previous record that i'm aware of for a difference between the independent vote and that republican vote in a new hampshire primary was back in 2000, john mccain wanted the
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independent vote by 42, george w. bush won the republican vote by one. it's a 43 point swing. now, we're talking a 73 point swing. so the idea that this is a great result for haley that reads and you life and everything, the core problem of her candidacy has been appealed with the republican party. and she is running at 25%. that core problem has not been addressed at all here in new hampshire. she is just benefiting from a uniquely massively high number of non-republicans. and to take this one step further, if we start talking about the states that are coming next, obviously, south carolina is the next state where they're both gonna be on the ballot. so south carolina does not have party registration, okay? so you ask everybody, anybody can participate. theoretically, every democrat in the state, if they don't vote in a democratic primary, could go and vote in a republican primary. so it is a, you know, they're going for everybody to participate. but we always ask in the exit poll in south carolina, what do you think yourself as, republican, independent, as a
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democrat? now, the highest non republican mix we've seen in a south carolina primary was 40%, and it was 31% independent and 9% self democrats. that was in 2000 when john mccain won new hampshire with all those independents, okay? and john mccain still lost south carolina by 12 points to george w. bush. if you apply the results i just showed you, you know, trump's strength with republicans, haley with independents and democrats, if you apply them to that 2000 demographic mix in south carolina, the most not republican they've ever had, trump would win the state by 15 points. so that is, again, haley, we'll see how strong the results in that being for her. now at 30% and it's 13 points. but just thinking south carolina and beyond, because what happens beyond south carolina when you get to super tuesday, big massive states, they are not necessarily around paper winner take all, but in a
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two-person race, which is what this is, they functionally are, because no states, a lot of them, have rules that basically say, every congressional district has three delegates. if you get 50%, you win them all. on a two-person race, basically if you get 50 -- someone's gonna get 50%. so if trump is winning these states even by small margins, he can sweep the congressional district, and then they have the same role statewide. 50% statewide, get all the delegates. so functionally, you know, a lot of these states, you know, michigan's most of the votes are given out, you get 50%, you win them all. it's about three quarters of the delegates in michigan. california, you hit 50% statewide, you take them all. texas, 50% in the congressional district, you take them all. 50% statewide at large, you take them all. alabama, you go on and on and on. there is design in the republican process for a quick resolution. and the added thing this year is that the trump forces since 2020 have really taken control
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of some of these state party organizations, and in some cases, changed the rules. california, which i just cited, that's a rule change. that was a rule change implemented by the trump forces with the, with the exact scenario in mind, you get to california and it's still a game, how do you get that big pot of delegates? well, you change it. you just need 50% plus one statewide. you get them all. >> and that's why it helps to have an experienced political operation who is working the delegate game from the very beginning even before the first votes are cast. i know this is going to seem a bit strange. but if it's possible, control room, can we look at the democratic primary results? we have a projection as soon as polls closed in new hampshire that president joe biden would win the unusual thing here, well, there is a number of unusual things. one, there are ten delegates on the basis of these results in the new hampire democratic primary. this is a symbolic primary only.
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but the other part of it and it's important here is that joe biden wasn't on the ballot. and so, for him win, for him to even compete in new hampshire, he had to be written in by people who were not saying his name on a sheet of paper that had 21, other 21 i think, other people listed on it, including two people who campaigned really are in new hampshire, mr. phillips, his name is dean. and miss williamson, her name is marianne. yes, nailed it. you can see the results there. yes, this is only 12% in with a lot of write in votes. you would expect that this would take some time to get their. but no question as to whether or not president joe biden has won this purely meaningless beauty contest in that state of new hampshire. let's bring in our colleague jen psaki, who knows former president, president biden, who's a very important part of the biden administration and its white house complications team. jen is in manchester this
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evening in new hampshire. jen, are we hearing anything interesting or substantive from president biden's side tonight? >> i mean, there are statements flying out from the biden team tonight. none of them have anything to do with the outcome in new hampshire tonight. i'm sure they are relieved of what the outcome was on some level. but they are ready to move forward, basically. so, rachel, a couple of statements, one from the campaign out tonight, which indicates to me that they are moving to the general election, whether nikki haley is staying it or not, they're moving on to the race against donald trump. and let me read you just two of their key sentences that stuck out to me. the first is, tonight's results confirmed donald trump has all but locked up the gop nomination. and the election denying anti-freedom maga movement has completed its takeover of the republican party. lots of messaging in there, obviously. what they're saying, running against him. the last line of the statement is, one thing is increasingly clear today, donald trump is headed straight into a general election matchup where he will face the only person to have
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ever beaten him at the ballot box, joe biden. so, there is is on for them. they're moving to the general election, whether or not haley is in. the other statement that came out from the white house tonight, rachel, was from the president. and this was about news that leaked earlier this evening, my hunch here, this wasn't their intention for this news to get out today, which is that general molly dillon and mike donald, two very close advisers to the president, within the inner circle, moving from the white house to delaware to help play senior roles on the campaign. so, lots of news, lots of reaction, not involving the new hampshire outcome. >> well, but involving the new hampshire outcome on the republican side. i mean, jen -- >> it's true. >> we are very focused tonight on nikki haley's prospects and how tight or distant the margin is gonna be between her and donald trump. steve kornacki just laid out to us some very brutal numbers in terms of how poorly she did with self republicans who are voting in the republican primary.
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and so, the places she's getting numbers from tonight in new hampshire are from people who self identify as democrats and people who self identify as independents. and those of course are the people who are the biden campaign is trying to mobilize in the general election to support president biden's reelection. i mean, it's just new hampshire. it's just this electorate. it's just this one contest. but here is everybody who is sort of biden inclined or potentially biden curious saying, like, we're gonna go out and vote for nicky haley, even though it's awkward. we need to change the administration into all this stuff, it's not really our beeps. and here is the biden campaign saying, nikki haley is nothing. we are pretending she is not there. we know we are already against trump. the killer's prospects mean nothing to us. there's a bit of a cross purpose here for people who like joe biden and people who are trying to elect joe biden at his campaign hq. >> and biden is curious, haley curious, people are key to the. if you look at these numbers, see what we're going through, one of the things that is
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sticking out to the biden campaign is that the number of democrats who turned out, because the last percentage was 3% the last time, if i'm getting my numbers correct here. so it means it's much more than that. and what that means, rachel, to them, is that people were motivated to go out and participate in this, to vote against donald trump. that is a good sign for the biden team because the concern has been, people aren't excited. they're not energized. that's a good thing. we obviously don't know the entire breakdown of independents. but those are also potential voters for joe biden. and i mean, they look a lot at this number that was in the washington post earlier this week. it's about 81%, i believe, of haley supporters, or people who are supporting haley in that paul, who think that biden was legitimately elected. now, the bar is low. i think we can all agree. but to them, those are all people who might be biden voters in a general election. so they do look at these numbers and the outcome of the republican primary as telling them, they're learning
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something from it as well. and i'm sure they will be digging through the data in the coming days as well. >> jen, very, very, very good point, in terms of how the democrats have to look at these results from new hampshire, and who can cross over to being a target-able biden general election voter, or might have turned out for nikki haley today. it's not a single set, right? it's an overlapping set. >> this thing happened, i think it was a week and a half ago, when isa hutchinson withdrew from the campaign. and he was still in the campaign, and the dnc released this kind of snarky statement saying, we had no idea we you were in the campaign. i'm channeling there's not. and the white house immediately basically rescinded in official way if you will what the dnc had said and karine jean-pierre was out there saying, effectively, we don't condone this level of snark i think that is principle in politics but it's also a very candid strategy here. if you are voting for asa
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hutchinson, you might be biden curious. >> you are voting against trump. anybody who's against trump, we will take you. >> and i think it's not a coincidence that you're not hearing a lot about nikki haley and her voters and her lack of support or whatever because as you and jen just discussed, those are the biden curious voters. also, rachel, we make fun of kind of like what a nothing burger, the biden result is. but there's some concern that dean phillips who invested millions of dollars in new hampshire was maybe gonna be biden or come close to him. and as much as the white house are saying we're not worried about third-party challenges, the optics of the sitting president getting a run for his money in new hampshire, even if he wasn't on the ballot, by a gelato barren named dean phillips -- [laughter] >> he is a delauro baron. >> dean phillips. >> and jamie raskin was up there, maggie hassan, they were all quietly doing the work to convince people that joe biden was worth -- >> and he did an a.i. attack on
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the biden campaign. if this was an important, someone thought fit to actually send out fake robocalls of joe biden's voice -- >> and we have no idea who did that. >> no idea -- there was a bit of drama. but i think to the point that you're making, a bit off of that point, there's a good reason why the biden team is glad that nikki haley doesn't get out too, which is the longer she stays in the more she triggers donald trump. and the more she triggers, this will become a physical presence of donald trump, the more he says the kinds of things that remind people why they would rather have joe biden, because he's gonna keep birtherism her, he's gonna keep digging into the very kinds of, like, antics that have made him unacceptable to some independent voters -- >> then why are they putting out these statements tonight, downplaying the effect of her results -- >> because they're not running against her. they definitely don't want to run against a younger candidate who's making that very poignant argument about that very sort of area. so they don't want to run against her. they don't want to recognize her as a competitor.
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but i promise you they don't mind -- >> here is the thing, every election in the trump era, basically the same trans pertain. and again, tonight, like haley is now with a proxy for the anti trump vote. where is she doing well? well, she's over performing places with high degrees of college attainment and in her areas. those when you control the demographics those are, and she's clobbering him -- and she's getting clobbered in the north in these industrial and rural places. we have seen this time and time again. here's something about this. donald trump is uniquely polarizing figure in american politics. he has been from the beginning. sometimes, in certain contexts, like a republican primary, that polarization cleaves such that he wins more voters off the polarization and then he loses on. and at a national level, it is always lost him more voters than he gain, which is why he lost the popular vote to hillary clinton but pulled off the editorial college trait. in certain states, it's worked for him, like in missouri in the 2018 senate race where his
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polarization absolutely got josh hawley elected. the math work in missouri. it didn't work at the national level in 2020. it didn't work at the congressional level in 2022. it's back to working in the republican primary. but the same dynamic is there and the math is clear as day, staring you in the face. when you look at that board there, when he's losing independents by 40 points, winning republicans by 50, it's the same math. >> chris, that math is also why the biden white house is happy to let nikki haley stay in this fight, let donald trump sink his money into her, think his attacks against her, because they look at the math, and say at the end of the day, she could stay in this for a while. but we're still going to be running against donald trump. let her bruise him. let her empty's bank account. and then, we will take a look at him this summer. >> let me put up one of the exit polls we haven't talked about yet. we have this fitness exit poll, can you put us up there. this is comparing iowa new hampshire. the question here is if trump is convicted, is he fit to be
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president? iowa electorate in the iowa republican caucuses last week, 65% of them said if trump convicted, he's still fit to be president. but nearly a third, 31% say if he's convicted, not fit to be present. i mean, that is an iowa caucus that donald trump won by 30 points, still, nearly a third of the people who turned out in that caucus said, if he's convicted, no, i'm out. look at new hampshire tonight, 44% of new hampshire voters saying if he is convicted, i am out. and, i mean, he may be winning by double digits in new hampshire and maybe something that makes him feel warm and toasty inside because there is a lot of independents and even democratic-leaning independents in the electorate. but if 44% of the people who turned out in an electorate, maybe they did not get double digit lead, they're out if he gets convicted? -- the rapture option needs to be alive. >> and why nikki haley or even a ron desantis didn't want to
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come straight for trump and attack him? because if they do, that is attacking his voters. so if she just mildly attacks him, she's not taking his voters out of bed. but if he gets nabbed by the government, she can say that -- remember, it's me. i wasn't that mean. [laughter] >> you can do that in a two-person race. i mean, it's the pressure that's going to be extreme. >> he's making it easy for her when he mistakes her for nancy pelosi. >> you're talking about from nikki haley's vantage point. i think you're not really, the maga base, which already doesn't like nikki haley and everything she represents, from her heritage, to her corporatize, to her sort of rhyno-esque impression that she's left on some of the field, they're going to hater even more if she is the thing standing between trump and the nomination. that level of rage is gonna go through the roof. >> the level of rage, the problem, it's a ping-pong, right? it's attached to a court that keeps hitting trump in the face,
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to your point, every time he hits her, he hits her in a way that just happens to remind whatever independents are left out there that can't decide, he is constantly reminding people of why he is unacceptable to so many people. >> can i just say one last thing? at the end of this race, it was the most perfect distillation of trump versus the rest of the field, he closed on two messages. this disgusting birtherism and racist nickname about her, and she wants to cut social security in iowa. and it was like -- you could not produce a more succinct articulation of why donald trump has wrenched this party away from the people who used to run it. that's what they want, those two things. >> social security, like, let's go to paul ryan -- >> exactly. all right, with this win in new hampshire tonight, donald trump takes a major step toward becoming a republican nominee for president, of course. when he won last week in iowa, his victory speech was a sort of politically sanitized version of the way he has otherwise been campaigning.
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the iowa speech was lots of thank you, praise for other republicans, a notable lack of, chris, what you are describing in terms of the racist, birth wrist attacks on nikki haley, and a notable lack in the iowa victory speech of like, you know, promises to build camps to hold millions of people to root out his internal enemies like vermont. he didn't do that. and seeing him dial it back like that in iowa, that's an important part of understanding the way this candidate and the republican party are going to try to win the election. so, this is a decision that we revisit constantly and that we will revisit constantly. but tonight, we are expecting trump to speak momentarily. we are gonna go to those remarks to see how he uses this moment, at least. at first, we'll see how it goes. again, this is a decision is one that we consider to be an open-ended live decision. let's go to trump headquarters right now in new hampshire.
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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [applause] >> thank, you everybody. thank you. >> [crowd chanting] usa! usa! usa! usa! [crowd chanting] >> well, i want to thank everybody. this is a fantastic state. this is a great, great state. you know, we want new hampshire three times now. we win it every time. we win the primary. we win the general. it's a very, very special place to me, is very important. if you remember in 2016, we came here and we needed that win. we won by 21 points, and it was great. and today, i have to tell you it was very interesting because i said, wow, what a great victory. but then somebody ran up to the
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stage all dressed up, when it was at seven. but now, i just woke up and it said 14. [applause] i woke up when it was seven and we have to do what's good for our party. and she was up and i said -- >> so, there we go. this is part of the issue here. so donald trump is saying that he won new hampshire not only in previous primaries, but that he won new hampshire in the general election, it's not true. donald trump did, to his credit, in 2016, win the new hampshire republican primary. he did in 2020 win that new hampshire republican primary. but both in 2016, when he was competing against hillary clinton in the general election, he narrowly lost new hampshire in the general election. and then in 2020, when he was competing against joe biden in the general election, he lost new hampshire by a good fair chunk of votes. so, the former president has
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opened his remarks tonight, once again, by proclaiming falsehoods about previous elections. this is what makes it hard to take him, his pronouncements live. we'll try again, though. here we go. >> you have an all very unpopular governor of this state. this guy, he's got to be on something. i've never seen anybody with energy. >> [crowd booing] -- >> who is like pup scotch. and, you know, i'm watching this guy. and i said, we're gonna win, we're gonna win -- about three days ago, i said to him, well, what we want to do, well, that's a big difference. but i walk now with 14 points of, and i don't know what it's going to be. but when she was up here, it was like six or seven. and, you know, with, like, 7% of the vote counted, let me just tell you, we had an unbelievable week last week in iowa. we set a record. [applause] it was the best in the history
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of the caucus, in the history. and i remember having the same feeling. i'm up and i'm watching, and i said she's taking a victory lap. and we've beater so badly. but ron beat her also. you know, ron came in second and he left. she came in third and she is still hanging around. [laughter] the other thing, she only got 25% of the republican votes. i don't know if you saw that. tremendous numbers of independents came out because in this state, because you have a governor that doesn't frankly know what the hell he's doing, in this state, in the republican primary, they accept democrats to vote. in fact, i think they had 4000 democrats before october 6th who already voted. now, they were only voting because they want to make me look as bad as possible, because if you remember, we won in 2016. and if you really remember, if you want to play it straight, we also won in 2020.
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[applause] buy more -- and we did much better in 2020 than we did in 20, plenty 16. but as they said, we lost just by a whisker. no, we can't let that happen. you know, you have to have people who speak up and say, i can go up and say to everybody, oh, thank you for the victory, it's wonderful. somebody can go up and say, who the hell was the imposture that went up in the states before, and claimed a victory. she did very poorly, actually. she had to win. the governor said she's gonna win, she's gonna win, she is gonna win. then she failed badly. now, i have fear, if he promises her to do it in a minute or less, but the only person more angry then let's say me, but i don't get too angry, i get even -- [applause] [laughter]
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because he was there and he did fantastically well by the way in the north cement, we don't have to talk about tim scott, who by the way, just got engaged. we have to congratulate him. [applause] and that's more important than all of this stuff. a man that got to know her very well is the back. i said, vivek -- i said, vivek, go up and say a few words about it. you have to do it in one minute or less. and then, we're just gonna say, we had a hell of a night tonight. one other thing before vivek comes, do you see that poll? we're gonna put it out. we have eaten biden, and you can almost say, who can't, who the hell can't? the man can't put two sentences together. he can't find the stairs off a stage, who can't? but vivek, one minute or less, go do it vivek. [applause]
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>> what we saw tonight -- >> donald trump giving an unusual victory speech in new hampshire, in which he initially at the outset of his remarks said that he won new hampshire, not only in previous primaries, but has won in previous general elections. he lost both in 2016 and in 2020 in new hampshire general election contests. and he then reiterated that and then handed it over his victory speech to vivek ramaswamy. after saying we don't need to talk about tim scott, and by the way, he got engaged. and it's more important than any of this. and then he did -- >> he seemed to suggest also that the governor in new hampshire is on some sort of a drug. he said, i don't know what he is on. which i think is utterly baseless, just to be clear. but i just want to be clear, he said this -- he said it casually, we won the primaries, we won the general. he came back to linger on it,
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acknowledging at one point, like, they said we lost by a whisker, but we won in 2016, and we won by a bigger amount in 2020. again, the statements, they are, you know, the half truths that politicians tell, but the fundamental core lie that is the core of the whole democratic crisis that the country faces right now, it revolves around, this simple matter of history. you see it reflected in the two thirds of iowa primary voters say biden was not legitimately elected. one half of those voters in new hampshire. this is just in a different category. >> and, i mean, let's just be really clear about this, right? so trump is saying tonight, after having won the new hampshire primary, which he has done twice before, having been then gone on to say, that's not enough, you can just claimed credit. you have to claim credit -- you have to falsify the election results in that two times that you lost the state. that is a form of, like, reality bullying in a way.
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and doing this around iowa as well. so for example, he doesn't have bragging rights about winning the iowa caucuses. he lost the iowa caucuses in 2016 to ted cruz. but after winning the iowa caucuses this time, he said, oh, it's really great to have won it for three times in a row. and he knows it's not true. and he knows that everybody listening to him knows that it's not true. it's like his insistence on the date of the spanish flu epidemic, or his insistence on what the track was gonna be, but he had a drawing with a sharpie. it's an exercise and bending reality to his well and insisting that others follow. it's an exercise in making people who loved him than ounce reality and endorsed his view instead as a form of fealty, as a form of loyalty. and it's a way of breaking truth in our country, and showing that his most loyal people will do that, and we'll do it in a performative and facing way -- >> listen, there is a guy who wrote a book about him, literally, all agreed that this
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is a very serious lifelong problem. he's now in his 70th year of never being satisfied with reality, even on the days when he wins. because life can never ever give him what he wants, his insecurity being so profoundly deep and permanent. the victory speech, by the way, in political campaigns and in the primary season, it's always supposed to be about winning more voters -- >> yes, you gotta win the party. >> whether that's the next election, the general election, or the next state. you are supposed to reach out to voters who expressed a different feeling tonight, saying reach out to the voters who voted for hailie, you don't want to specify that that's what you're doing. but every politician prior to trump has found a way to do that. he never has -- >> i think because you said it in the last time, which is, you know, throughout these, however many years we are now into this, nine years i suppose, 2015 is
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when he starts. you know, there's always been these moments where he's like, he's able to sort of perform some version of conventional campaigning. he stays on script and people say, oh, if only -- it's like a joke, like if only that donald trump. last time in iowa, it was more conventional. he says thank you. i'm glad that we saw that because that is the sort of petulant incoherence which is really kind of, no, it's really the rhetorical residence that he's at at all times and protecting the last three days on the trail. i don't know if people have been seeing the clips. but it's a constant degree of essentially petulant incoherence. that has been the sort of general vibe, much different then the rare moment of something approaching composure -- >> let's slow this down, a petulant incoherence. when you say incoherence, what do you mean? >> well, i saw him speak earlier about gas prices. and he talked about gas prices and he said they're higher than they've ever been.
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they were $2 when i left. okay, they're not higher than they've ever been. they are below $3, this is reality. they were $2 during covid when no one was on the road, okay? so, you know, they're throwing everything, and it's coming down now. but, man, if he gets in and we never know what's gonna happen -- so, again, this is the salesman pattern -- but there, this has been the sort of general rhetorical mode and people have noted it, nikki haley, in her speech tonight, talking about the fact that he was sort of ranting about january 6th, and he said that nikki haley was the one who had destroyed some evidence, or, not destroyed evidence, but had not allow them to bring the national guard in, when it was actually nancy pelosi. that general aggrieved but hard to follow vibe has been the candidate trump of this campaign. >> but it's also in the donald trump, i mean, if you look at
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his biography, right? one religion that his family was ever associated with was norman vincent pill, the power of positive thinking. and it is part of, i mean, the way he grew up, it is this notion that to lose is to be a loser. and to lose is actually the greatest sin. it's the one thing you can't do that his parents, his father would never allow, and you get away with. and you really see it as he's gotten older that it is now enhanced by this kind of take, the things that trigger him he can't stop ranting about them. and sometimes, he substitutes the thing that triggers him most, or the thing that he's talking about. so when barack obama is triggering him, he will say, barack obama when he means joe biden, because when he's triggered by a nickel by nikki haley, by pelosi, he super triggered. but he's also acclimatized and was raised by this sort of norman vincent purely -- and if you look back at videos
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of this guy back when he was a speaker, it was all about bending reality to your well. >> because she has been invoked -- joining us now, i'm very, very pleased to say, nancy pelosi, former house speaker. madam speaker, we have so much to ask you. we're so glad you can be here with us tonight. >> my pleasure, thank you. glad to be with you. >> you have been invoked in this current discussion that we're having, i'm sorry to say, because the former president in campaigning in new hampshire did repeatedly try to attack you over the response to the january 6th insurrection at the u.s. capitol building. his opponent, nikki haley, has made a lot of chaos out of the fact that in trying to attack you, he kept using her name instead. we've heard what the kayleigh thought about that, that confusion, that mistake by donald trump. but i don't know what you thought about it, and i'm curious. >> well, let me just say, i'm not gonna spend too much time on donald trump's cognitive
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disorders. but what i'm gonna say, and i want to say that to chris, he tried to say that nikki haley did not allow the national guard to come, but it was nancy pelosi. it was nobody. it was donald trump. he knows, and you know, that mitch mcconnell, chuck schumer, and i begged for hours for the national guard to come. he knows that we don't have a party to bring the national guard, the president does. sad to say to the district of columbia because every other state, the governor has that power. so, i'm more concerned about what he was trying to accuse her of, and again, his many misrepresentations. but don't spend so much time on him. we don't want to agonize about him. we organize. and joe biden is our nominee, and he is going to be, again, he and kamala harris again would be president and vice president of the united states.
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it's now the time the intensity has arrived. the election year is here. as you see, some folks have come over from the white house, gio o'malley, dylan and mike, two stars of the political arena and our country, joining julie -- julie is wonderful. julie chávez rodríguez. she's done a great job as a campaign manager. she has the biggest record, money raised, for a presidential campaign. more importantly, she is mobilizing at the grassroots level. we organized, and they will come out together with the message to go forward. and so, the message, when he lies, i mean, he's a constant liar. but when he lies, sometimes, you have to listen to him. for example, he lied and said, obamacare sucks. i mean, to use his kind of language, obamacare sucks. listen to when he says that. of course, it doesn't. obamacare cures.
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so in the campaign, people have to understand that their well-being is on the ballot, whether it's a woman's right to choose, which yesterday we observe the 51st anniversary when that became respected in our country, until his judges pull that down. and he brags about that. he says he's gonna terminate the affordable care act. what does that mean to you? if you have a pre-existing condition, if you have a child, after college, who still needs health care, if you are a woman, a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition, the list goes on and on and on about the benefits of affordable care. people have to understand, listen when he speaks because he does not have your interest and heart, even though you may not, you know, i respect that you see your interest, but i'm not sure that you know how you are affected by some of what he says, whether it's guns, whether it's climate, whether it's a woman's right to choose, whether it's health care. you know, in 2018, people said
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to me, weren't you lucky that health care became a central issue of the campaign, and that's how you won 40 seats and when the house? i said, no, we weren't lucky. we made our own luck. so, let's get on with it. let's forget about him and his dysfunction, and understand that we have to get out our vote. we have to mobilize on the ground. we have to message in the interest, as lincoln said, public sentiment is everything, whether you can accomplish almost anything without, practically nothing. and we have to have financial resources, and joe biden has proven that he can attract that. message, mobilization, money, joe biden, great vision, great knowledge, great strategic thinker, great legislator, and a person with a big heart. and thankful for the american people. >> speaker pelosi, it's alex wagner. thanks for joining us tonight
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-- how are you? in addition to abortion and the aca, it seems one of the issues that's very much front of mind with republican voters tonight, and those who may not be fans of trump. it's whether or not he's going to be convicted, i will point you to some of the exit polling we have tonight. 47% of republican new hampshire primary voters say they will not consider donald trump fit to be president if he were convicted of a crime. last week, 31% of iowa caucus goers said effectively the same. as of this evening, he's almost certainly going to be the nominee. i do have to ask you should the american people know whether they're potentially voting for a convicted felon? you established a january 6th committee in june, i believe, of 2021, and it held its first public hearing in july of 2021. do you take any issue given that history and given the fact that you are an american voter with the timing of the department of justice that has pursued on, this both in terms of the investigation and the prosecution of donald trump? >> well, let me say that no one
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in our country is above the law. and that is applicable to someone who wants to be president of the united states. and many of their transgressions that the president has engaged in our about his integrity, but it's also about our security. people, his base, it doesn't seem to care about some of that in those states in any event. but the fact is they have to know what it means in their lives, that they're no longer going to have affordable care, that there will be a national ban on access to abortion. and so, the elections are about freedom, democracy, yes, at large. but it's also about your personal freedom and your lives. and all of the things that joe biden did in his presidency with the help of democrats and the house and the senate, i might add modestly, you create things. you create jobs. how many million more jobs?
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16 million jobs created. the market hit 38,000. now, it stands at 37, or something today. but record high. what that means to people's 401(k) s? the issue about, again, child tax, the biden child tax credit, what that means to women to be in the workplace? it is actually dads too in the workplace. so we have to carefully and with great, shall we say, prioritizing, make sure people understand, while they may want to vote for a convicted felon, do they want to vote for somebody who's gonna take away your health care, especially if you have a pre-existing condition, or a child with one? or do you want to make sure that your daughter, wife, sister, someone in your family has no freedom to make a judgment about her reproductive health? do you want to vote for somebody who ignores that in the country, 80 some percent of the american people think there
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should be background checks for purchasing a firearm, to reduce the violence in our country? and young people care so much about the climate issue, which this person doesn't -- i don't even have to understand, i don't know if he understands it, much less understands, or if he's solely in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, which is probably blocking his understanding of the faith of our plan. so the faith of our democracy, the fate of our planet. the personal decisions for people at their kitchen table, how they're gonna make ends meet. we reduce the calls for prescriptive drugs, insulin, in the bill -- insulin, be for the bill, it was 500 to $600 a month for seniors on medicare. and now, it's $35 a month. they want to change that back because they're in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, they're in the pocket of pharma,
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they're in the pocket of the gun industry. so we have to have clarity, and again, prioritizing, and that's what we did in 2020, 2022, when people said you're gonna lose 30, 40 seats. we said we're not. i don't know why people who sit in washington, or in new york, say these things when they're not in that hinterland, fighting on the ground, mobilizing, and fighting. we knew that gun violence protection of women's right to choose, climate, and democracy, and health care, they were very important. and the contrast, we had to make the contrast, this is what your member of congress has voted for. and this is what our candidate is for. and that's why we kept a limited five seat difference rather than 30, or 40 as was predicted. so, again, we just get out there and get the job done and we have a mobilization. but i just want to say one more thing, when we save the affordable care act, remember
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-- >> yes. >> he was going to repeal and replace -- but nobody ever knew. we had 10,000 events throughout the country where people came for it and told their stories. nothing more eloquent than that. certainly more eloquent than the misrepresentation of the president, former president, well, former occupant of the white house, when he says obamacare sucks. let's have a fight about that. >> i feel like democrats have your marching orders this evening. speaker emeritus nancy pelosi, a trait to have you on in this critical moment for the presidential race. thanks for your time tonight. rachel? >> -- saying she does not look at that his cognitive disorders and him and his dysfunctions and instead laying at whatever
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it is she wants to talk about. wow. we just heard nancy pelosi saying the election is about democracy and freedom writ large. also freedom and if it will last. president biden and vice president harris, they have been making that exact same case and they did so today in a campaign stop in virginia. we have got sign sound from that cute up for you plus more tonight from new hampshire and what's about to happen in this campaign on the road ahead. stay with us. ay with us [♪♪] looking for a moisturizer that does more than just moisturize? try olay regenerist for 10 benefits in every jar. olay visibly firms, lifts, and smooths wrinkles, by penetrating the skin, to boost regeneration at the surface cellular level. try olay.
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new hampshire, our own vaughn hillyard as a trump campaign headquarters. trump gave his victory speech tonight.
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we bowed out after he twice claimed to have one of the new hampshire election contest in 2016 and 2020, none of which was true. he also seemed to be handing the microphone off to other people that himself. vaughn, can you tell us what we missed there, if we need to know? >> two key moments were that taking in. number one, there was a moment in which he started on about nikki haley and he gave a four warning about what is to come for her if she and eight states in this race, as she indicated tonight. he said, quote, a little no to nikki. she is not going to win. but if she did, should be under investigation by those people in five minutes for a, stuff things she doesn't want to talk about. this takes me back again, yet again, to eight years ago. it was at this juncture when donald trump went on the attack against ted cruz, using right hearings like that, calling into question ted cruz marriage, calling into question whether his dad was part of a jfk
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assassination. and here on stage tonight, with only one rifle left in the, nikki haley, there goes donald trump on the stage today throwing out the idea of that stuff that would be investigated -- donald trump doesn't actually have that stuff to throw out there. the one other note of wanted to mention. you saw tim scott standing right there behind him, endorsing him over the weekend here in new hampshire. there is a moment in which donald trump, he referred to that south carolina senator and said, quote, you must really hate her, referring to nikki haley, because she was the one that appointed him to that senate. tim scott just stuck there in silence and smiled before taking a step forward to that microphone and responded, i just really love you. it was a very uncomfortable moment, but one in which we've seen republican rivals behind that knee to donald trump and use them as instruments and mocked them -- >> and bases vaughn hillyard,
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thank you very much for that report. there we have it. that's what we miss when we cut away. does anyone here in that a case for not cutting away? [laughter] >> i would like that clip, please. >> also, the humiliation at this point is so naked. to ask tim scott to demean the person who gave him his senate seat in 2012 -- >> it also raises the question, has trump run out of material? the victory speech doesn't have to be long. solid, eight minutes would be fine. ten minutes would be fun. >> two minutes would be fun! you did great, see you in south carolina, we'll kick butt. >> he couldn't fill the time. he couldn't do it. what of the race and what he turned to those people, unless he thought vivek will do a more vicious attack than i will do and i want him to do that -- >> we didn't see vivek's speech, but remember, when he was president, one of the thing he
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would love to do was to force people to ritualistically price him. and i thought he thought it was a not to ritually humiliate tim scott, vivek had to grovel. he wants to see his former rivals rival. >> he said, we'll put one man on the clock, it's, like i'll make sure you know your place. but to report, and two cents on this with nancy pelosi, throws a few different ways to think about this upcoming general, if in fact his nominee. there is that legal troubles, which are going to play out. we are still expecting word from the days he circuit about the immunity. that could happen whenever. there is the personal performance of donald trump, which people really don't like. i know it's hard -- because he's been around so long, it's hard is into people's heads. that stuff doesn't play well. there is a race and he has high unfavorable's. there is a reason he's been a negatively polarizing figure, and has not been politically successful in those elections in which he was associated.
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the third thing, i think this is interesting, in terms of nancy pelosi's strategy, he wants to run a complete policy for a campaign. so you never know, you would think, to your point about the victory speech, you come out and had four themes, what are they what are you running on? you could get summertime and talk to voters. and be like, this is what i'm running on. i'm running against the trade deals, he hit a few of those in 2016. there is not a lock there. i don't know -- >> justice for the january 6th hostages. >> right, so, yes, immigration. border is the only policy area that republican party and donald trump will talk about, that they're focused on and want to talk about. not even immigration, the border. and specifically, once we move outside of that, that want to talk to anything to do with happening in immigration policy. once you do that, it's unbelievable how steeply that cliff drops of, to talk about.
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and this is where nancy pelosi, who committed that strategy and 2018 which was for successful was correct. people do care that you are talking about their lives and things that may or may not affect them. whether you take away the right to choose or health care, or did. >> we want to take a quick break. we'll be right back with more coverage of the new hampshire primary. shir primary.
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we make money from ads, but they don't follow you aroud join the millions of people taking back their privacy by downloading duckduckgo on all your devices today. ♪ ♪ ♪ in 2016, donald trump won the new hampshire primary by a lot. he had just lost in iowa, but in 2016 when he came to new hampshire he paid his nearest rival john kasich but about 20 points. ahead of that new hampshire victory in 2016, trump had racked up endorsements from precisely zero republicans in congress, none in the house,
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none in the senate, not even any certain governors either. so contrast that new hampshire experience in 2016 for trump with what has just happened tonight. as of tonight, heading into today's new hampshire primary, a majority, more than half of all republicans in the house and senate had already endorsed trump. again, but this point in the race in 2016, that number was zero. he's now got a majority of elected republicans in washington, former presidential contender attempt scott was that latest high-profile senator to thunderous trump before tonight, on friday, after ron desantis dropped out this weekend he to endorsed trum the 11th sitting governor to do so. and tonight, in the wake of trump's victory in new hampshire, senator jon kerwin has said republicans need to unite around one candidate and that candidate should beat donald trump. that's an interesting position for him to take, given that last year at john cornyn, same
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guy, said donald trump cannot win in 2024. what this is as full consolidation of the republican party behind donald trump. it raises a question of what room there is floor nikki haley to make progress among republicans. given the result tonight, given her performance among republicans voters in new hampshire and different of roll margin in new hampshire, what is her beer trial out of this particular wilderness? let's head over to steve kornacki at the big board. >> take a look here, the latest results. i think this does, let's get new hampshire up here, let's go to the question here -- as soon as i can get on the screen. okay, the question here of what haley is going to come out of new hampshire with tonight, which case to the final margin, which gets to work she's getting her vote, from where donald trump is getting his votes from. we've been saying she wants to keep this in single digits. what sort of happened, and i
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can put this in some perspective, obviously we show you the exit poll early in the night, which from haley's standpoint has some encouraging news from her just in terms the composition of the electorate, it looked like and is a very high number of independents in this electorate and even democrats. the current exit poll with all of the waves put in when a has democrats at 6% of this electorate. it's usually two or three, so it's double or triple what you usually expect. that was good news for hailie. in the initial reports whistle, from cities like dover and concord and, can she was doing quite well. doing basically what she needed to do to make this a race state. what what's happened since, she told about this particularly in small towns and rural new hampshire. she is just getting swamped. she needed to be, like she was an eye, what we talked about this and iowa, a lot of rural counties, counties with medium and, come low college attainment, she wasn't even getting out of single tinnitus in iowa. she's out of single digits here
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because it's a 2% race but she's getting swamped in a lot of places. that's held her back from making this competitive state. what they she's had some of the things go wrong. take a look at this, the biggest on the board right now. nashua is the second largest city in the state. this is what haley didn't just need to, when she needed to win by a pretty comfortable margin. on paper, to be winning state, what that was essential. it looks like, we've got a little bit left and nashua, it looks like she's not even going to went nashua tonight. trump's going to gain votes here. and the city of manchester, which we thought going, and haley to meet again statewide needed to be tied here, maybe up a point or gonna point. she's now come to lose by 16 points and manchester. when you look at what's left, there are some areas lift your head he's going to make rent, which are not college in and this map. dartmouth, hanover, durham, university of new hampshire, no numbers there. extra. those are four plus or heavy's
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going to get a lot of votes. we can expect a lot out of hollis, amherst next door. these are votes for haley still to come. here is the problem, though, for her on top of all of that. some of the places here, atkinson, salem. salem is the sixth largest town in new hampshire. it's got more than 50,000 people. it was one of donald trump's base towns in 2016. remember i stood at the border, the suburbs, the communities -- slams the perfect example. we don't have numbers but based on everything we're seeing, it should be a blood of trump when where he gains big plurality. that's going to be true as well. we expect the same thing to happen in pelham, potentially in wyndham when that comes in. dairy, we've had reporters there at no. dairy is another big, big community. i think based on what we're seeing, we can expect trump to get a lot of numbers out of. that what it's up to, we have
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got half the vote in right now. 48%. trump is leading by 11.2%. i think that's a very, very real possibility -- it's very plausible that donald trump could end up winning the state by double digits. when nikki haley took the stage earlier, there was some and discussion of far less vote. and look at the exit poll. this might be a five or six point race and she could make some noise based on that. but if this ends up ten, 11, 12 points for donald trump and he's winning essentially three quarters of the republican vote, she's only getting 25%, as we showed you, the republican vote, what is she walking out of this state with not to comment or competitive in any other state? because this mix with saying tonight, we have pope so much about, there would be some states that can templars to this. the only one i can think of, it's actually a state, the only place i can think of based on
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this demographic mix i can see hailie absolutely winning and is that just of columbia. they have got 19 delegates. donald trump got -- kasich and rubio combined for over 60% of the vote. i don't think he's going to win the district of columbia of he's still an active candidate there. it's very hard to find other places where she could post a win. if this wasn't enough and it ends up being double digits -- the other problem, this is not like the democratic primaries. this is not like that democratic primaries were everybody, as long as you get 15%, it's getting a delicate out of every single congressional district on that map. that rose of most of the big states are, you win a congressional district, you get every delegate. 50%, you could ever at our delegate. functionally, in a two-person race, all trump has to do is beat haley in any given district of any given state.
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give him two points, he could take all the delegates. given that halle is only a 25% of republicans, you are not going to say this mix in the world. you were umatilla? maybe next door in vermont. that could be another target for her. vermont, with a negligible number of delegates. i'm talking about texas, california, arkansas, oklahoma, michigan. these are states where trump's going to go in there and win a congressional district but a single vote, he'll get all the delegates out of. it it is designed, on the republican side, unlike the democratic side not to be a six month slog. it designed to be wrapped up quickly. and taking this mix, trump with this kind of mix would be poised for a massive, massive super tuesday. even before super tuesday, he'd be poised for a very, very big win and south carolina if henry's only getting 25% of republicans. >> these numbers go a long way
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and describing -- nikki haley's fleece clad parrot, chris sununu, says i'm going to vote for don trump if he's the eventual nominally, even if he's convicted of a felony. there is this understanding and that republican party, will virtually to. trump and people -- gunned, philip's been a pretty significant development which is house republicans who won and districts that biden won in 2020, have begun endorsing trump. >> vulnerable republicans. >> vulnerable republicans, not from deep red district. we're talking nikola on long island, john forte in california. biden won that district but 11 points. north and trump. the pressure points are not the same for them as they are for the rest of the republican conference, and rushing this capitulation. you look at the met state just showed, us it's a bulldozer plowing through the next several premiered races. and, you, know you are seeing
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that reality -- >> all the nikki haley as mayor of washington -- >> and why, not everyone needs a second act. i see it like this. good night for trump, not a great time for trump. precisely for the reasons we've discussed. when you're standing on that much ground and you're only tomas number, then you have some witnesses even if he, is your clearly being declared the front of our party. think back to eight years ago. it feels like a long time to me in the news business. i remember where i was because i was in the hampshire inside the hall watching trump come on such and win. and he won by about 55,000 votes and 20 plus points. that was a great night for him. and he did it, as you point out in the league, rachel, without any of the institutional support and zero endorsements. basically taking over the party and coming off a disappointing southern iowa, based on what he told. for right now, it's a
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projection, but we have the vote, and he's obstructing thousand votes. when you say it like that, it doesn't sound like all that big a gap. oh the projections are true and the coalition doesn't necessarily materialize and every other state. but if you are the former president and grew the most famous and fox news is back excellent you and you did those ten holes in no debates and you have to endorsements and everybody gearing up for you and in davos everybody said it's your year, you are going to win, you're not an outsider -- and what do you have? at this hour? 16,000 more votes. so he might be very well on the path and there will be people who started this. but i don't call it a great night for him. it looks like a good night. and standing on a whole lot, facing on one person, who's only had to campaign days, that's where he is. 16,000. up >> one of that relevant forums to use, looking at what
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trump achieved thought and shape is what joe biden achieved. someone else came in second tonight. dean phillips running against joe biden, coming in second with 20% of the vote amount the democratic, unofficial democratic primaries the hitter. the model he had going into new hampshire was mccarthy in 1968 who won four to 2% of the vote against the sitting president lyndon johnson over the head a write-in campaign. johnson doesn't bother to have his name on the appellate, just like button. both of them or running unofficial write-in campaigns. dean phillips got completely crushed. didn't come close to the threshold. if jay mccarthy had got that result in 1968, bobby kennedy probably would have rethought his plan to get into the right after seeing how strong lbj rose. joe biden demonstrates enormous strength and new hampshire.
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then you have trump showing much greater weakness against a credible challenger. it depends on how you want to look at trump. he wants to be called president in court and ever. so let's call him president just for this moment. when a president is on the ballot in the new hampshire primary, you are supposed to win everything. you are not supposed to face a serious challenger. and when you do, you lose. there is a president who faced a serious challenge in that new hampshire primary who then won in november. and so this is a very bad night for donald trump, looking at the pattern of presidents and new hampshire primaries situations who face very serious challenges. >> what we're seeing here is he's very likely to win the nomination, and the way he's winning shows him to be a very weak general election candidate? >> he's likely to win that nomination the way george h. w.
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bush was still likely to win commission after pat buchanan almost knocked him out. in george h. w. bush did win the nomination. >> then the presidency was over. >> there is a difference between being feared within your party and appealing or popular within the nation. >> have salute. if new hampshire is avatar for what independent voters want and would choose, given the option, given the fact anyone could play in that independent side, nikki haley peaked donald trump among independents by 40 percentage points. that's not a good sign for i sitting -- former president of the united states, who again wants to be president. yes he will beat her in south carolina, but let's not forget one of the things joe buttoned it was remake the calendar such he was not on the ballot in new hampshire. still mopped up dana phillips and new hampshire, when he wasn't even on the ballot, as a write-in candidate. yes, donald trump will likely
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win south carolina, nikki haley 's home state. joe biden might win it by more. because that state is built for joe biden, just like on the republican side it's built for donald trump. so tonight, that when or if you want to look at all of the metrics for a general election, the winner of tonight's joe biden. who won in new hampshire decisively as a write-in, who's going to win to the hasse flee in south carolina. and the story that donald trump thinks he's going to get out south carolina of, joe biden will get one of equal value to him. and in the, and he's got a better story to tell and november because he's not facing 91 criminal counts. >> let me ask, steve kornacki, at love to ask your advice on this. it's not about data from tonight, but it's about race in history on campaigns. one of the electability argument being made on the republican side is it's important for the republicans to unify, now for them to and their prime right now, that
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does something on a candidate now gives him a better shot at that general election. gives them a longer runway in terms of what they want to line up against joe biden. when i think about, that state, i think about john kerry wrapping it up quickly into thousand four and losing to george w. bush. i think about hillary clinton and barack obama battling right down to the very last second in 2008, making for a very short general election campaign in 2008, but what the democrats ultimately won. is there any what you think about it, that loved history we've got of the primaries for the generals, as to whether or not there is a case to be made that might help that republicans to have no money sooner rather than later? >> the way i look at it is, and i love historical precedents and i love talking about them and working them in. but i think the reality is there is no modern precedent for what we're seeing. we can talk about whether trump
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should be considered an incumbent president or not. he didn't look like one at the start of the campaign. his support group over the course of last spring in the summer. in modern history, how many former presidents have turned around for years after losing office and tried to reclaim it. the answer is there a. what's the closest parallel we have? gerald ford explorer running in 1979, after losing in 1976. an elected president, pulling six to ronald reagan. for some of the post and didn't run. the answer closest parallel, not much of a parallel. i think we're in a different place. one of the things we've seen consistently as a lot of people have already been looking at this rice as inevitable. a trump versus drip andres. that is why opinion on both of them is so strong and in my view is so set in place. there are going to be people, there are up for grabs voters. there are spin voters.
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voters who it's a question about, but angela, does early actually come to be motivated -- i think it's going to be one of the biggest questions we get into the fall of 2020. full but i think the bottom line, is people know this candidates well, not their opinions of them. they do not have a good opinion of donald trump. but keep in mind, they did not have a good opinion on joe biden. his average approval rating is 13%. that last time our neighbor polled in trump versus biden matchup, trump was when it nationally buddy points. we have polled since the start of 2019 a trump versus joe biden matchup. nbc has 16 times. the first 4:10 times, all of twitchell 19. all of 2020, and the first not months of 2023. the first 14 times joe biden let donald trump. in the 2020 cycle, that lake was never short of six points. as high as 12 points. that was the. range this fall, for the first-time, a tie.
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and a final poll of the year, trump ahead of biden. something would never seen before. reality is, when you look at the polling out there, whether it's our polling, or any other polls at the, we're looking at a trump lottery, much you're seeing something we didn't see in 2019 and 2020 and for that matter you didn't see in 2016. at least in the polls, a strength for trump relative to biden, he never showed in 19 and 20. i defy you to find more than a single poll in 2019 and 2020, a single quality poll that put trump ahead nationally. they didn't exist. every poll was a question of how much was he? behind network looking at post that actually have trump, tied ahead in the popular vote. and we've talked about the republicans have an advantage in the electoral college, if they're even competitive for the popular vote, that's going to translate a big boost in the electoral college? and we've seen some of the swing states that biden won in 2020, trump won in 2016 --
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we've seen trump racking up some very big numbers, some very impressive numbers. again, relative to hype a before. to me, it raises the question, we are looking at a different atmosphere. i think, then we saw in 2020, we saw in 2016, we've ever seen in a modern presidential race. before and i think it's one that dominated by questions. when you see a poll right now that hit donald trump ahead of joe biden, or competitive with joe biden nationally, the questions raised artwork that news right coming on? one of the things we're picking up from's younger voters. is that? real are the backing away from biden? are they going to go out and vote for trump? or are there going to stay on the sidelines in some meaningful numbers that i didn't in 2020 and 2016, that's a big factor. that's part of what we're seeing and these polls right now. we didn't see it in 20. we're seeing it now. will that translate to election 2024 day? for that matter, we tilt in
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2016 and 2020, how the polls in both years completely missed a crucial section of trump supporters, practically and the upper midwest and midwest states. white voters, rural voters. not a college degree. low trust in media, unable to reach them in post, even though the whole methodology was changed in 2016 and 2020. has that change? is that fulton? play is there something about trump being on the ballot? because he wasn't on the ballot and name in 2022. he was in 20 and 16. he brought them out and 16 and 20. in 18 and 20, two republicans had bad years in the midterms but trump himself wasn't on the bell. it does trump's presence on the ballot bring them out again in 2024? these are the questions we. have a lot of them stamp from the effect so much is known about these two candidates, opinion is so, date so entrenched, we are left with questions about turnout, left with questions about what exactly the electorate going to
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love. like but look. if it ends up being the longest general election and history and haley is out of the right by march 3rd and is that longest election in history, it is one that is shaping up to be extremely, extremely close right now. because walter is a lot of negative opinion about trump, there is about biden too. that the difference between 20 and 24. biden is the incumbent president. with an approval rating at 40%. if the persists to election day, that's another f. will it persist? will be a kind of music better? completely possible. but if it doesn't, and if you are an incumbent president on election day with an approval rating like biden has right now, trump might look different to a small, crucial sick of the. that could decide the election. >> on top of all, that does politics matter? meaning, does politicking matter? if we're going to have that longest election campaign in history, how good are these two
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old guys campaigning against each other? we've seen it before, but they were a little bit younger. and we saw it before there was a lot of water under the bridge. and we saw it at a time when there was a global pandemic that prohibited a lot of that normal forms of campaigning. so what these two are going to do in a general election matchup has a lot to do with politic -- -ing >> to build on that, it's been a mantra, kennedy and nixon in 1960, the first televised presidential debates -- since 1976, it's been a staple of our fall every four years. the presidential debates. that vice presidential debate, too. are we going to have? those who are getting strong indications, for the first time, we may not have debates. oh for one more and. there it's been a while since we've had three party candidates registering very significant support. i don't know what's going to
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happen with rfk junior. i don't know what's going to happen with no labels. but that's another terrific question. there was a poll from the washington post at the end of last year. they matched trump and biden. i found a close result. they re-pulled the same voters and put several -- i think it put rfk junior, joe manchin, to test name, that libertarian candidate -- they put him all in front of voters and that third parted choices combined or cutting something like 15% of the vote. when you see that negatives biden and trump have, when you see that shear of the population that says i don't want either one of him, it takes me back to nothing to do. george h. w. bush, incumbent president, his approval rating and the academy was not in a good place. bill clinton emerge from the democratic primaries with seemingly poisonously high unfavorable numbers. that ross perot phenomenon --
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he qualified for all the ballots, you can find the cover of newsweek from june, 1992, it says president perot. he was leading in june of 19 to 2. dropped it in the summer, got back in the fall, finished with 20% of the vote. no electoral votes, but 20% of the vote. no one's match that number since. could that be something that happens this year? -- those are the questions -- >> oh, god, steve. we were feeling that little agitation anyway. but if those are the depths of the questions were going to consider right away, we have to take a break. more of our special coverage from the new hampshire primary still to come. still to come. >> with donald trump, republicans have lost almost
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welcome back to a special coverage of the new hampshire primary. the nbc news decision, excuse, me i'm glitching. the nbc news doesn't desk was able to project a three early win, basically a poll close in time when for president biden in the democratic presidential primary. 11 and a half minutes later, that decision desk was able to project a new hampshire republican primary win for donald trump. but with obtained exclusively a
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statement from president joe biden on tonight's results in new hampshire. this was given exclusively to us. it is now clear donald trump will be the republican nominee. my message to the country is the stakes could not be higher. our democracy, or personal freedoms, from the right to choose to the right to vote, our economy which is able strongest recovery in the world since covid, or at stake. the presidents statement continues. i want to thank all those who wrote my name this evening and new hampshire. it was a historic demonstration of commitment to our democratic process. and i want to say to all those democrats and republicans who sheer or core values of freedom and democracy to join us as americans. remember we are at the united states of america interest nothing we cannot do if we do it together. that statement exclusive from president joe biden to us here
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at nbc this evening. >> let's take a look at what joe biden was doing today. the day after the 51st anniversary of roe v. wade supreme court decision. president biden and vice president harris campaigned and manifest, fortuna. >> one does not have to abandon their fate or a plea have beliefs to agree that government should not be telling her what to do with her body. >> did anyone think, did anyone think that this is where america was going in 2024? democracy is on the ballot. freedom is on the ballot. like the freedom to choose, the freedom to vote, the freedom to love who you want. the raid him to go to work, go to school, go to your house of
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warship without being gunned down by a weapon of war. >> joining us now, former democratic summiteer claire mccaskill and jennifer palmieri, former obama white house communications director and former senior adviser to hillary clinton 2016's campaign. they could host the nbc podcast, how to win 2024. the perfect people to ask how to win 2024. can we pause, senator mccaskill, just for a second on all those pundits who told us how disastrous it was for japan and the democratic party to bypass new hampshire this year and start with south carolina, a state party fails is more representative of democratic voters. and what a disaster that was going to be for joe biden in new hampshire and how he could actually end up losing in new hampshire. it's worth a note to those pundits tonight about what actually happened there. >> keep in mind, this was a
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little harder. they had a long list of names and unorthodox were joe biden. so for him to win at write-in effort like this, or the biden campaign was not on the ground, not organizing, it's quite a statement. and at the convention, i believe that new hampshire delegates will be seated, i think joe biden is smart enough to know it still is a swing state and he needs to recognize those delegates eventually. but he felt it was important to take a stand about the first primary being in a more diverse state for a democratic party that prides itself on one pentimenti that everybody is included in the american dream. everybody, no matter who you are. so listen. you guys have gone over this. he says he is the incumbent he cold himself the incumbent, he says he. one whenever has an incumbent president only coughing 50% off
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his party's vote in the first two primaries? this is weakness, this is not strength. >> jen palmieri, with all your experience at the highest level of presidential campaigns, what does the biden harris campaign really want tonight? did they want nikki haley to hang in there and keep hammering ads donald trump and keep praying independent voters and possible republican voters away from donald trump? or do they want a clear shot at donald trump right now, the longer they get to go one on one with donald trump the better? >> they won both things, lawrence. i think that's what they were telling us tonight. it was very interesting they put out that statement that said that if donald trump was going to be the nominee. i think the campaign has been operating, and the white house, is if the general election on january 5th. that was the valley forge speech.
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you see that even there cutting pretty troll and what they're saying about donald trump on the campaign's ex account. you see them, and i think i feel like they're getting some traction. they're getting some traction -- good economic news stands to take hold. and they're getting some action on training for foreign trump. i think they're telling us, don't take your eye off the ball. he's going to be the nominee. but it's also true that as, you know, just in the last two weeks, we've learned a lot of valuable information from both i will caucus and new hampshire republican primary that will be useful to the biden campaign into general. for example, 40% off republican iowa caucus gilles said they did not vote for trump if he was convicted. that number was over 40% in that republican primary in new hampshire. if she's taking swims at him as well, that's not going to hurt him with republicans. he's going to be the republican nominee. but it's helpful to hear a
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republican say that things about trump. i think that could help in the general election. so, you know, it's not the case where donald trump is in any sort of danger. he's not taking on a lot of water, in terms of the current that nomination. but i think with that campaign, the campaign is happy for it to go on, continue to learn more from these competitive races. it's really helpful. but signaling to everyone, keep focused on trump. don't get distracted by haley. >> senator mccaskill, we heard that new hampshire a voter tonight, voting for nikki haley, republican voter, say if it's donald trump versus joe biden in november, maybe i just won't vote. mathematically, if that kind of republican voter is placed in the right spots in the electoral college in enough numbers, that could be enough floor joe biden in those states. if those otherwise republican voters just don't vote.
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>> no, lawrence, there are two parts of. this the first is persuasion, the second is enthusiasm. if, in fact, he loses the enthusiasm of a huge chunk of his party, which it's clear he's going to, it doesn't matter as much if they vote for biden as long as they don't vote. and i think that's going to be a reality. i think the other opportunity nikki, has you guys pointed all the congressmen and women who endorsed her and all the governors and all that, you, know politicians are against nikki haley. now donald trump is the party of the elite. he is a party of washington, d.c.. everybody and washington, d.c. 's floor donald trump. that is really something she can use effectively against a lot of people in that republican party who donald trump has convinced that anything and washington is the enemy. >> jim, as the head of campaign goes on, whenever she is going in for her hottest attacks on
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donald trump, most of them, she tries to include joe biden in them but some of them she doesn't. some of them are just straight at donald trump. does the biden campaign concerned about how much nikki haley mixes biden into the attack? >> i have noticed in this, just in the past couple of days, she dropped talking about biden as much and she's aiming her fired directly at trump and trump misspeaking and being confused and being older and the chaos, the negativity. which is not convinced biden. as a political person, if you're trying to convince people that joe biden and don trump office in person, appeals to devote her. i think it was a very bad, strategy for her to begin with. i don't think, i, mean for the biden, camp this is not something a very. part of our effort for making the department about trump and biden because again, voters are
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either for one or not. they're not going to constitute. it confirming to me, she has that, she has started to focus more singularly on trump. we'll see how long that lasts. she bought herself a ticket to south carolina. tonight she execution, she did everything right. she came out, really while her late, trump's lead wasn't a big. she had a good speech. she made the case for why she should stay. and she's gaining ground. did pick this weekend. what should you go out? south carolina is one state. away it's your homes. that we don't think she'll, when but it's a recent tuesday in. she picked a fight with trump every. debate she did things technically that you should do to stay. in and we'll see if he goes from here. but she's not going to be the nominee. but she may, she bought herself, she handled it well -- >> there is nothing like hearing from campaign
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professionals. jen palmieri, claire mccaskill, co-host of the msnbc can -- podcast -- >> that news we lead this segment with fight at want to go unnoticed. president biden has given us an exclusive statement in response to the new hampshire primaries will tonight. he said, it is now clear donald trump will be the republican nominee. the stakes couldn't be higher. professional freedoms -- all at stake. he didn't, says i want to thank all those who wrote my name in this evening in new hampshire, it was a historic demonstration of commitment to our democratic process. our democracy being at stake and a commitment to our democratic process represented by people writing in the presidents name and a contest in which he was not formally competing, it is awkward. in some of that awkwardness is about to get way worse and what
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is shaping up to be a general election contest between president biden and former president trump. we've got that story ahead for you next, stay with us. have you ever wondered what an icon,... a legend,... a legacy,... a pop star,... and a tight end all have in common? they all got this season's updated covid-19 shot to help better protect them against recent variants. got it? ♪♪ ♪♪ got yours?
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between iowa and new hampshire, but they were going to squeeze them. in two changes for candidates to make final appeal to voters in new hampshire before polls opened. ey happen? no, those debate did not happen usdonald trump is refusing to debate this year. nikki haley six it would be pointless to hold another debate without trump when, in her, words ron desantis was closer to zero than he was to her. so what would she bother talking to him? sort of a fair point. but it doesn't mean there or no new hampshire debate at all. my in-laws live in new hampshire, i have lots of family and lots of acquaintances in new hampshire. i spent a lot of time in new hampshire. i did not expect to hear this, but i did anecdotally her a lot of people say they were mad there was no new hampshire debate. the republican primary debate, none of them included trump, but never in wisconsin and florida and california. none of them in new hampshire.
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because there are supposedly going to be these to the naked preemptive, it's both of them -- and people were mad about. that but morally, that's become a kind of thing that. here more so than at any time since that civil war, this is the election in which we're gonna to keep a democracy. but there is not very much democracy in this contest as. for up with an incumbent president, which is true anytime you have an incumbent president, first not real primer on democrat the side. it might be the shortest primer ever on the republican side, which is what we have been talking to steve kornacki about all night. supporters of the front runner or emphatically demanding all people should clear out the field, so we can stop voting. the voting is so offensive. we have not repeat for that republican nominee, no rival for that democrat nominee. possibly no debate for that general election at all.
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neither trump or biden has debated so far. and what would? they were in a fight to save democracy, but for trying to fight for it without using democracy to fund-raise. which is, i don't know. it feels historically unprecedented but if there's one thing we're for, and nothing is. joining us now is nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss. we're so happy to have you tonight. thanks for joining us. >> me, too, thank you. >> that like off democracy in this democratic process, it does feel a little bit circumstantial. there are different reasons for it on that democratic side then on the republican side. however that maybe, their combined to give us a process in which everyone's talking about the fight for democracy, and it does feel like not very democratic process this time. >> that's right. you referenced the fact there was a suggestion in 1940, 1944, franklin roosevelt, because there was a war, on franklin
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roosevelt should suspend elections because the country could benefit from, it and he said that based way of deciding on the president and the congress is mark democracy, not less. the other thing, rachel, to make people feel better about, this if donald trump tied up that republican nomination for president tonight for 2024, and he probably did, let's ask the question, to republicans get their strongest candidate to run joe biden against? i don't think. so the polls suggest nikki haley would be a much stronger candidate then donald trump. so want what you look at the process is to say, does it include enough states and voters coming in on this? it's a real judgment. the answer in this case would be. no this is after iowa and new hampshire, they had decided who is going to look up one of the nominations of the two major parties, if it is locked up
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tonight or in the next few weeks. the other thing, you want to process that's going to get you the candidate who has at least a great chance to win and the republicans have not on this. you've got someone who's head the cornucopia of forthcoming trials and indictments. someone who's promised just a shift, it, rachel to suspend the constitution and institute essentially a presidential dictatorship if he's elected. that's not going to be necessarily a great but got her in a fall presidential election. the other thing, is this is not someone who's exactly the most self disciplined candidate the republicans could have for the presidency. look at the way he's been talking in the last. week he's not in control of what he says. he confuses nancy pelosi with nikki haley. he makes other mistakes that seem to be getting more, rather than. less if it were a republican, which i'm not, i would say this
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is in the too quickly and has settled us with a candidate may turn out to be and electable. >> michael, if we're also atrophy the muscle that is debating, presidential debating, if we lose presidential debates and we lose them on the democratic side because you've got an incumbent president -- we lost it on the republican side because it's a ceta incumbent who decided to take that privilege for himself and refused to debate. both of those nominees or likely nominees don't seem to want to debate for the general. if we lose presidential debate in the cycle, what are we losing as a country? >> we are losing a lot. because what we have demanded as a country in 1960 and saints beginning in 1976 when that tradition was resumed, at least in the fall, and also in most of those years during primary campaigns, we've demanded
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potential candidates, we want to see what you're like when you're out of your comfort zone. and out of your comfort zone doesn't main supplanting to a softball and if you on fox news. it means going into a debate when someone who's running against you and once the same job takes a few cracks if you and tries to knock you off your feet. let's see how it will grave to maintain yourself. that's a crucial requirement for whoever's gonna be an ex president at a time that's going to be very difficult in this country and very difficult around the world. >> michael, it's alex wagner. we talk about whether or not there is a historical precedent for any of. this it seems like what trump is trying to do is fairly singular in terms of modern american politics. correct me if i'm wrong. but the last guy to try to do this and succeed at this is grover cliffland. and if that's right, is there anything analogous in terms of where the country or parties are at thin and we are there at now? >> maybe 1912, more as you know,
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theodore ridgeville hood been president ran for president again, first lost the republican nomination and then ran as a progressive in the fall and got a huge number of votes, although he did not when he was a spoiler and allowed woodrow wilson to be elected with a pretty slim sheer of the vote, in the low 40s. and you see where i'm going, which is if we are in a situation where there are three parties or a threat movements like what i consider the egregious no labels for robert kennedy junior or some of these other if you chip away at a direct confrontation between joe biden and donald trump, we could wind up with results that really don't reflect the thinking of the american people because it could be that someone could be elected with a much narrower sliver of the vote, just as wilson was in 1912. i have not too much doubt that you have had to write conflict
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between joe biden and donald trump, donald trump has a harder time winning. on the other hand, if you have a spoiler candidates or movements who chip off various paces of what might otherwise it would be joe biden's vote, you could have a situation like 2000, we are al gore was probably defeated by third movements, by people like ralph nader, or other cases in history like 2016 where jill stein and others chipped off what might have been hillary clinton's ability to win the electoral college. >> nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss. fantastic to have you here. always, but particular tonight. thanks so much for being with us. >> thank you, always love being together,. rachel >> it has been a remarkable night thus far. we've got a projection at poll closing from the nbc news decision desk of president biden, who's not on the pellets, winning the democratic
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presidential primary in new hampshire. 11 minutes later we've got a projection of donald trump winning that republican presidential primary in new hampshire. nikki haley saying she will not get out, that political class saying all the things that political clans usually says. but there's a lot still to absorb here. we have got a lot more to come. our special coverage of new hampshire that primary continues right after this. t after this but i didn't wait. they told their doctors. and found out they had... atrial fibrillation. a condition which makes it about five times more likely to have a stroke. if you have one or more of these symptoms irregular heartbeat, heart racing, chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue or lightheadedness, contact your doctor. this is no time to wait.
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special coverage of tonight's presidential primaries in new hampshire. i'm chris hayes here at msnbc headquarters in new york. i'm here along with stephanie ruhle, joy reid, i remember, and alex wagner. we are just 11 minutes --
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we are not 11 minutes, but 11 minutes after the polls closed earlier tonight. i'm asleep -- able to protect that donald trump would be the winner of the new hampshire primary. right now, with 60% of the vote counted, trump is leading nikki haley as you see there on the bottom of your screen by about 11 points. nikki haley took the stage almost immediately after trump was projected to be the winner. on an evening it was clear she wasn't going to pull out an outright victory. she was defiant, she seemed like a candidate who wanted to make sure everyone knew that she would not be going anywhere, she told the crowd, she is staying in the race. where is now a month until the next republican primary contest, which just happens to be in her home state, the state of what she was the governor, south carolina. donald trump also gave a speech tonight in which he claimed to have won new hampshire in the last two general elections. he did not. he lost it narrowly in 2016, and by seven points in 2020.
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he seemed angry at initially, spent a lot of time attacking her. at one point, he put a minute on the clock for that ramaswamy to command a talker. at one point, he suggested she might soon be under investigation, and i quote, stuff she doesn't want to talk about. the democratic side, joe biden is the projected winner of tonight's primary. that may not be surprising. he is, after all, the incumbent president. this was a strange year. joe biden was not on the ballot in new hampshire. democratic party under joe biden's guidance, really, decided the first primary for the democratic party should be in the state of south carolina this year. that will happen in a month. new hampshire democrats, who take very seriously there first of the nation status, rebelled and decided to defy the party and hold a primary first. even though no delegates would be awarded. with democratic primary doesn't count ultimately for the nomination. biden supporters had to organize a writing campaign. as you could see there, that
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did not prove to be a problem. he is winning handily against his primary challengers. let's head over to steve kornacki at the big board who, of course, has been watching those returns come in. in the 10:11 range, which, again, it's interesting. it seems like it's in line with iowa where it's not unexpected. it's about within the range, maybe a little closer than the last polling average showed, but nothing shocking. >> i think that's right. what happened is the way the night to play it out, based on what we saw in the initial exit polls. if folks are watching at the start of the night, literally, the first three towns, cities, that reported, just so happened, now that this is filled in on the map, happened to be the three best cities in the state. the only three where he's hitting the numbers they would need to be hitting to compete statewide. what happened, it just so happened, the first three, and after that, we started to see some pretty clear patterns
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emerge, which she is underperforming what she need to do in places where she supposed to be strong. a great example is here in nashua. this is the states second largest city. again, a night where she is competitive in winning statewide, she is owning nashua by five points, by ten points, really. trump is going to end up winning nashua here. that was not what the haley campaign had in mind at all. manchester, the states largest city, trump is going to win it by 16 points. this is one where haley needed to run even with it. i'm showing you cities here. if we started doing small towns after small town, haley was running even worse under where she needed to be running. what's left on this map, she's going to pick up votes right in these four counties. these were basically trump's worst, some of his worst -- his counties, towns. this was trump's worst town, head, overnice exceeding. you see the 11 line, orford, you could expect big haley numbers here.
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we have yet to get numbers right here. this is durham, or the state university of new hampshire ins, some of the wildcats, school town, the academy is there. you could expect haley to pick up some ground there. what is left in terms of trump voters, big places where we expect he's going to get some very big margins. chief among them, salem. salem is one of his best towns in the state in 2016. look at this, 48%. salem is the sixth largest town, where city in the state of new hampshire. we expect this to go very big for donald trump tonight. you could also expect it's going to be a big trump margin. we've got londonderry. and it's what hailie wanted to win. she ends up losing it by 1000 points. londonderry was supposed to be much better for her the next door. another one of the largest towns in the state, dairy, no vote from dairy. based on what we're seeing is an awfully big number for trump here. you go across to the border town of seabrook, 95. it's the first down you're going to hit in new hampshire if you're going north. again, look at this.
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no surprise trump wins it. look at that, 44 points. it's a bigger margin than haley was certainly hoping to hold on to. what it means, chris, it was 62%. it's very possible, border on likely. this is going to end up being a double digit victory for donald trump tonight. more to the point, it's not just a double digit victory. it's this, you look at the exit poll here. i've got a school to the last one here when. you break it down by party this is it. republicans, trump 74, haley 25. haley lost republicans by essentially 50 points tonight, 50. what kept the sling, what's going to keep or ten points behind, among independents, this is the third wave of data now, she has a 22 point advantage over trump. an unusually high number of democrats participated. look at that, 88.6, healy over trump. this was a mix, though. in an election, it's 50/50. republicans, non republicans.
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that's as good as it's going to get for and nikki haley anywhere. she is still, potentially -- a double digit loss very much could be in the cards for her. if that happens with that demographic mix, i know south carolina is her home state, i know she's that she's taking the campaign down there, but if you took the best election ever, put it this way, the biggest share of the primary electorate that non-republicans have ever had in a south carolina primary, you've got to go back to 2000 for that. if you match it up with the results in new hampshire, it will translate into a trump win of 15 points. will translateagain, it's hard e she could go from this, despite the fact that this was a little closer than expected, especially early in the night. when you are losing republicans by 50 points, not many republican primaries you could win. >> yeah. i am not a -- kornacki of this network. even i could understand you've got to win republicans to win a
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republican primary. steve kornacki, thank you very much. joining us now from manchester, new hampshire, nbc news correspondent ali vitali and and we see news correspondent vaughn hillyard. they've been traveling with those two campaigns. i want to start with you on what you thought of the messages sent by haley's speech tonight, and what tomorrow, for the nikki haley campaign, looks like. >> i will start with the speech. there were a few things that struck me, chris. specifically, the way haley was saying, basically, with open arms, if you're like, me voted for trump twice, and elect his policies but you hated the chaos, come have a home with me as the alternative. that was the clear over arcing message here. it was on her biggest stage yet in which she had to deliver it. i do think that's important as we head into south carolina, which halle is no fool. she knows that state better than almost anyone. she is aware of the fact it has changed grant demographically
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and ideologically since she last round statewide on that ticket. nevertheless, it's what's in the calendar, and her home state. those are things she can't change. she is forging right ahead. here's what i think was smart. the coming out early when the results looked way closer than they do now allowed them to use this again as jurors are and momentum builder. that was a shrewd political move. you've seen it before. it made me think of 2021 enclosure came in, what, fifth and iowa, but came out early and said, yeah, and one for me. i'm out of here, on today hampshire. that's what this felt like here for nikki haley, saying this was good enough. she was never going to win the campaign never said she was going to. some of her surrogates initially said it would be a landslide for her, and had to taper that back. both of those things were striking to me. i do think there were two things that struck my attention with trump. the anger, you are right to point out, he wears it on his sleeve. he was trying to rob the fact he's got a south carolina senator who haley appointed to his seat in the first place in tim scott standing, not just
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with him as an endorser, but physically, literally, with him over his shoulder. at one point, referencing the fact tim scott must hate nikki haley in order to endorse donald trump and the fashion he did. scott try to perry and say, no, it's because i love you. again, this is the thing trump is going to do. we all know what it is when he turns his fire on someone, we saw what it did to ron desantis. nikki haley is the only person left their there's one final thing that i think we sort of have to remark up on. jimmy, there were so many layers to that trump, remark session that we saw the end of the night. the way nikki haley talks about the rest of the field, the fellas, there's so many different gender dynamics involved in that statement, but when you look at that stage, and trump trying to give everyone a chance to go after her, it literally looked like the boys club trying to tell the woman to get out of the way. there's a lot of political reasons that they're saying that, but it didn't necessarily only come off that way. there is politics plus on that
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stage tonight. jimmy, it felt almost an ignoble, the optics part of it. >> i agree about the optics, which were an ignoble. let me ask you, a development we've seen tonight, we've seen a few, if i'm not mistaken u.s. senators, john cornyn of texas, i believe debbie fischer as well have come forward to endorse trump. they had been withholding them. it seems very clear there is going to be an orchestrated and coordinated attempt from the trump campaign to basically, you know. create a drumbeat tomorrow, is that what you are expecting from the campaign and republican politicians tomorrow? >> absolutely. wealready heard from ron mcdaniel shortly before the polls close tonight that if donald trump in fact one tonight this was a time for the republican party to all but unite and look toward joe biden and the democrats in november. e and the trump campaign, severl senior advisers over the weekend, insisting that this is the moment where the resources
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specifically should be directed toward november, as the democrats are all bought stockpiling their cash, awaiting donald trump. this is a moment where they don't want to have to waste cash over the next month, waiting for that south carolina primary, a month from now, to play out. to give you an idea, so far, $2 million have been invested in reserved tv ads by haley allies in south carolina. there is no reserve tv ad spending from donald trump. clearly, nikki haley tonight, indicating she wants to go mono a mono in a debate against donald trump. she wants to make a fight out of it. the question for the trump campaign is do they expand resources and energy trying to take her own? you heard trump on that stage tonight, suggesting that if nikki haley were to become president, democrats would be investigating her for things that he is yet to disclose himself. of course, these are red herrings in which he has absolutely no evidence, or no specifics of. we've seen him have a history
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of doing this in the past. for donald trump, he views this very much as a nuisance. he feels like this is a republican party that is unifying around him, not only rhonda santas but vivek ramaswamy, tim scott behind him on stage. you see members of congress, more than half of the u.s. house delegation, republicans have backed his candidacy. republicans who have even suggested and scrutinized his candidacy here in 2024, like john cornyn are now rallying around him with a full understanding that the map for nikki haley looks extremely difficult, especially in some of those close primary states like california, or independents, democrats, can't take part in the republican primary. if donald trump gets more than 50% of the vote in that state, he takes all of the delegates share. this will be a difficult path for nikki haley. >> all right, thank you both. i'm curious to see, we saw the cornyn tweet tonight, you are going to create this, like let's wrap it up.
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it's going to be an interesting dynamic. so much of this comes down to these two men calculations of interest and incentives. every time they all go the same way, which is they all just fold, right? they don't just fold. he won't just accept you folding, you have to prostrate yourself to him -- the tim scott moments i was -- you know, deeply humiliating on purpose. the question now, to elise point about this boys club, it is, at one level, fateful to be determined by a calculation of interest by nikki haley, but also, what kind of person she is. it's like, i don't know if she's going to make it a month? they're doing everything they can to make sure she doesn't. >> yes! i hate to keep beating this drum, but it's going to be bare knuckle full-on role with the force of a movement that has shown itself to stop at literally nothing in terms of characters assassination. also, we talk about nikki
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haley's recent days of taking on trump as, maybe, adult or cognitively in decline. she is still assailing him on personality characteristics, traits, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him. he is pushing 80. he is not all there. never, ever to chico for any substantive critique of a man who incited an insurrection, who stole classified documents, who is 91 felony counts against him. there are substantive issues she could take up with donald trump if she so chose. she is not going to. she is constantly making this impossible arithmetic work for her until the next day. >> she made valid points tonight. in her speech, she said, he's not winning. you had, or lost the white house, we lost the house, in 18, in 2020, we lost. it's time to win. she's not hitting him between the eyes. she's making an argument while joe biden is sitting in the white house with an economy that is improving.
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donald trump hasn't even faced his maker with these 91 charges. and you haley is saying, i don't know -- how about this? she's got the money. >> she has nothing to lose by staying in. joe biden has everything to gain from her being there. the point that you made, that i think is substantively, we have to address it. republicans, at some point, how to think about it. donald trump is running for reelection for no reason. he wishes to do it, he'd like to stay out of prison -- >> i was going to say -- >> it is the only way of ensuring he doesn't go to prison. and entire political party that one would think would have at least some rational goals has decided that that is enough for them, that john cornyn of the world, mitch mcconnell, no one is fighting this despite the fact he has never delivered to them victory other than his own victory when he beat hillary clinton. after that, he delivered to them losses of historic nature.
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they could have, in a normal election cycle, won a huge midterm in the last midterm. they didn't because they used his candidates, his themes, his grievances, and his triumph in the supreme court of snatching the bodily autonomy of 50% of the american population. they are literally going to go willingly back into that stockade, and locked in with donald trump again, not because they have to, but because they've chosen to. they don't have the courage to not do it. it is fascinating to me to watch a political party make that decision to self destruct on purpose, to go down with the man who has delivered on the greatest, most historic defeats that one could have in the modern era, and who is also a promising to deliver an autocracy. >> i will say, and go to you, ari, that, you know, she says she makes the argument, all he
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does is. those he had a line, which i thought was interesting, like, who couldn't beat biden? one of the things i think is important here -- right, the answer, is there is, right, i have an answer, donald trump. number two, it really is the case. this is important to this, joy, biden is portrayed as so obviously week in the conservative media in which most of these voters are operating, and the polling shows donald trump about even with him, that they're not that freaked out, republican voters. they are like, they don't see some -- >> they don't think -- >> he wasn't popular before the last two midterms. >> i'm not saying the right. i'm saying i remember the psychology of liberals in 2004 when george w. bush was the incumbent president. it was completely different. there was the sense that, like, bush was a colossus. the voter psychology in that primary of 2004 was -- we need someone to go up against this colossus. we've lost touch of the country. he's powerful, a wartime
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president. there was this defense of crouch. you don't see that in the republican party. you don't see it in the exit polling -- >> you know why, chris? they don't believe he lost. they don't except he lost the election. they've decided -- he knows he lost, but they decided they are so fearful of their base that does not believe he lost the election, that they're not going to fight them. they keep giving them what they want until, i guess, the party collapses on itself. >> a turning point there, as we saw, the trump wing, president biden, both come out tonight and say, looks like it's trump, which tells you something funny when that happens. in politics, we've spoken about so many of trump's limitations. i do think one thing he has going for him, is how he did dispatch so many of the other candidates. to me, up to this point, haley is a little different. we will see if she gets tougher, as alex was saying, but with the other candidates, he did to something effective, and it does, for me, bring to mind drake, who said, thought we was enemies, but the big you is a
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mini. these were mini me. >> i was thinking that same thing. >> comes front to the mind. they were mini me at the time, he tried to channel them even as he clobbered them. desantis and vivek said, when he ran into any status, there must be confusion because we want to be him. tonight, we have the extremely unusual -- i would call it strange, depends on what you like. politically unusual thing of someone winning a second state and being like, let me hand it off and do some dirty work. the real question for haley is, does she pivot out of being a rejected wannabe mini me and say, i will be future of the party and find some -- >> or groveling within the next 36 hours? up next, obama campaign manager, my colleague will be right back. don't go anywhere. >> the other day, donald trump accused me of not providing security at the capitol on january 6th. >> geriatric! >> i've long called for mental
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really call attention to this and her speech tonight. donald trump raised eyebrows recently for garble in basic facts and confusing one political rival for another. take a look at this. >> we have become a drug invested, crime ridden nation,
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which is incapable of solving even the smallest, smallest problem. we are an institute, and a powerful death penalty. ding, ding, ding. they've got 17 seconds to figure this out. boom, okay. missile launch, pow. obama dropped missiles and ended up hitting a kindergartner. if that's the case, is gonna end up being indicted when he leaves office. nikki haley is in charge of security. we offered her 10,000 people. soldiers, national guards, whatever they want. they turned it down. >> they were funding hamas. when i came here, everyone thought bush was going to win. bush supposedly was a military person, great. you know what? he got us into the middle east. with obama, we won an election everyone said couldn't be won. we would be in world war ii very quickly if we were going to be relying on this man.
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>> yes, that was donald trump, the one new hampshire primary tonight. let's bring in former obama campaign manager david plouffe, and symone sanders-townsend, former chief spokesperson for vice president harris, and former senior adviser to biden's 2020 presidential campaign. you know, of course, as the co-host of the weekend on msnbc. simone, donald trump, love him or hate him, he is an effective politician. he is an expert when it comes to messaging. he won iowa and new hampshire day in and day out by spreading lies about the economy, about immigration, about crime. it has worked. how is this plan going to work in the general election? >> steph, two things. one, part of how he won iowa, and frankly, new hampshire, they are a large number of the primary voters with the republican party apparatus who have been dedicated to donald trump. think about it, in 2016,
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180,000 people went out and voted in that primary and iowa, pardon me, the caucus. fast forward to this year, it was 110,000. we have been watching steve kornacki all evening, looking at the big board, the makeup of the electorate in new hampshire, so i would note the american people, and someone said recently, and back when trump was president -- best things that happened to the american people. they could see for themselves, hear for themselves directly from trump and his administration about what they were doing and saying. bucks like us, came on air, gave the context, and they could make their own decisions. what you just played, there are many people watching right now who are watching what they're miles wide open. they never heard that before. hearing donald trump in his own words. it's going to be important for the american people, and voters when they make these decisions. right now, they're hearing a lot of editorializing about what trump, said and hearing trump.
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it's hard for them to believe, i think. i like to say, when people tell you who they are, believe them. i take the former president at his word. >> david, on the biden campaign looks at the results from tonight, donald trump being both the strongest and most vulnerable he has ever been, what is their game timeline to win over those nikki haley voters? >> stephanie, that was a key part of how joe biden won last time. he did well enough with republican voters and, just importantly, independents who basically behaved politically like republicans. what this provides, you saw and iowa and new hampshire, almost 40% in both states as his primary continues. it's going to reveal more and more targets for the biden campaign. the type of republican voters, and independent voters who don't want to sign up for another trump four years. from a modeling and data standpoint, it's important. then, his behavior. listen, it is really hard to mess up a victory speech in politics. that's what trump did tonight.
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i guarantee you that wasn't the plan. they had a speech and teleprompter, in a trump-like way. it was going to be magnanimous. haley made him angry. he reacted that way. you've got to think about trump. there is a side ops notion running against him. how do you destabilized him? that was revealing. i think that montage you showed, first of all, he looks horrible. what's going on with the makeup? this guy does not look well. those clips you just showed, i'm sure the biden campaign will make sure every voter in six or seven states that will determine his presidency will see those. and there's going to be more. i think what this does show, off if i was running a campaign, i'd say, listen 40 to 45% of republicans in every state, most of them are vote for trump. we can go communicate to them on the economy, democracy, abortion, trump's instability. it is a really rich thing to build that kind of data model
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that these primaries are revealing is available to the biden campaign. >> david, why do you think nikki haley wants to stay in this race? we've been debating it over the last hour. yes, she potentially has the money, she could imprint in republican voters minds that she was the last person standing, but the longer she stays in, the longer she goes after trump, she will then be a target of his, and that's not a nice place to be, especially if you're a republican. >> it does take a strong constitution, stephanie. listen, i wish the things she was saying tonight, you know, through this week in new hampshire, she should have been saying in the whole campaign. eek in newshe didn't take on trl it was too late. trump is going to be the republican nominee. from haley's standpoint, number one, she probably wants to see -- by the way, trump's speech tonight, if you could call it that, it's definitely going to be ammunition for haley to stay in. could there be a health issue? my sense is if he were to get convicted, that doesn't hurt her in the primary, the general.
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she wants to hang around, maybe get delegates on super tuesday in case something happens. it's going to take a strong constitution. another reason why it was malpractice, to the extent that haley, and i'm sure she is having lots of people today, maybe not her donors, but a lot of republicans saying you've got to get out, get out. that kind of speech, those attacks, i mean, trump said, if haley station, she is going to get investigated. that is not going to motivate haley to get out. >> simone, i want to go back to messaging. it's what you are so very good at. donald trump still speaks to this base, this forgotten american, the little guy, who feels left out, even though he never delivered on policy. somehow, his message, he makes that voter feel seen. joe biden's policies actually deliver for those voters, right? forgiving student debt lowering prescription drug prices, making sure more americans have health coverage, what is your advice to get to those voters why do those voters still stand
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with trump? is it the grievance party? >> look, there is, and as plouffe just noted, a segment of folks who supported donald trump in 2016, 2020, who will also support him in 2024. those are not get-able biden voters. the biden coalition but together in 2020, yes, included independents, it included some moderate republicans, and the entire t of the democratic base. all of the republicans they want from donald trump can be fetched. without the base of the democratic party, joe biden does not get reelected. there is -- . i think it's reasonably important to understand that is the coalition. some of those folks, no matter what biden says, they will not vote for him. it is important to make sure you are speaking to the totality of the potential of your coalition. i cannot underscore that enough. bold and underlined.
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you have seen the president do things like today, the first big campaign rally, he, vice president harris, the second gentleman, doctor biden, the first lady, they were all in virginia at a rally. democrats in virginia literally swept the tables in their recent elections on the issue of reproductive freedom and abortion, literally. they are now in charge of the state senate, and house of delegates all because of this issue of abortion and reproductive freedom. this is something vice president harris has been really leading on and leaning in on throughout the last year and a half, i would argue, and something that's going to be key to the biden reelection. abortion is an economic issue. you have to talk about the numbers and the economy, but you have to meet people where they are, go into their communities, and, look, joe biden is a prolific campaigner. i've seen him out there on the campaign trail, he echoes, i think, what people say about president clinton in terms of the way he campaigns. let joe biden get out there and campaign and be joe biden. that's what he does best.
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let these teleprompters with the speeches and flags behind, and put joe biden with the people. that's where he wants to be. >> simone sanders townsend, david plouffe, thank you so much. chris? >> there's a reason donald trump has made presidential immunity. have you heard that phrase? big part of his campaign not even criminal charges will do that to you running for president. trump is turning his court cases into campaign opportunities. that story is next. s next every day, more dog people, and more vets are deciding it's time for a fresh approach to pet food. they're quitting the kibble. and kicking the cans. and feeding their dogs dog food that's actually well, food. developed with vets. made from real meat and veggies. portioned for your dog. and delivered right to your door. it's smarter, healthier pet food. get 50% off your first box
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chase. here's why you should switch fo to duckduckgo on all your devie duckduckgo comes with a built-n engine like google, but it's pi and doesn't spy on your searchs and duckduckgo lets you browse like chrome, but it blocks cooi and creepy ads that follow youa from google and other companie. and there's no catch. it's fre. we make money from ads, but they don't follow you aroud join the millions of people taking back their privacy by downloading duckduckgo on all your devices today. one notable thing about trump's win in two days new hampshire primary, also true for iowa a week ago, he didn't spend a ton of time campaigning
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in you can share. instead, ex president spent much of the week leading up to the primaries, somewhere where he spent a lot of time recently in a courtroom. specifically, he was in a new york courtroom for a defamation trial which will determine how much money he has to pay the writer e. jean carroll. juries, after a full civil trial, evidence and arguments, has already ordered trump to pay her millions of dollars for sexually abusing and defaming her, saying she was a liar when she came forward with her account of her raping her. this current trial is to figure out how much money he has to pay. typically, or civil proceeding, trump doesn't have to be at these hearings, just like he didn't have to attend the fraud trial of the family business in person, another civil trial, but he did. he decided being in court is a great way to campaign for the republican nomination for president, also a good way to raise money. the trump court cases are not campaign stops. there will be verdicts in these cases. there may be more trump trials
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before the november election, crucially, criminal, civil, and polls show there is a significant number of trump voters who say they won't vote for him if he is criminally convicted. we've got exit polling on this in two states, two third one third split in iowa about fitness for president. one third say they don't view him as to it, and tonight, in new hampshire, 44 to 42, 42% saying they wouldn't find him as fitting. do you believe those polls? >> they reflect something. that something is non zero. as our panel discussed, trump has lost it a bunch of times. if that reflects five or 10% in any electorate, independent states say, i don't like the idea of a convict president, crimes are popular. we've seen this in both parties. trump is different, but luckily that she was known to be unruly and weird, and wild, and a reality show star in illinois. the democratic electorate there
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put up for it with a long time. when he was indicted for trying to hawk and sell president elect obama senate seat, people turned on him before the conviction. the conviction made it worse. it was moot because he spent time in prison, the fact he was pardoned by trump is a story for another day, chris. i think being a criminal is unpopular. being indicted with overwhelming evidence, where, yes, legally, you are presumed innocent, but it doesn't mean, as a country, we can't look at the evidence. second, what is the trump campaign strategy? crooked hillary, crime family biden, hunter biden connected back to dad, james comey letters on hillary. they know, and they live by, in multiple elections, a ukrainian investigation, they know that accusing your opponent of having criminal problems hearts them. this, i believe, is likely to continue to hurt him unless he gets an acquittal or mistrial, and beats the case, and is able to flip that evidence argument. >> go ahead, alex. >> there's some x-factor is related to it. we were trying to drill into this with garrett in iowa.
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like, what is the crime they believe is disqualifying? we have a fair idea given the 91 felony counts. then there is the spin, the obfuscation, the fact trump will say biden did this and worse. he suggesting nikki haley may be under investigation for something. you know, i want to believe, you know, being guilty of a felony is disqualifying, and american public believes that as well for the sake of democracy. when it comes down to brass tacks, are we going to -- will he be convicted? what is the appeals process going to be like? so many unknowns. hard to -- do much of an emphasis on this being the get out of jail. >> i don't think -- right. it's not the deus ex machina that ends trump. i think people undercount, to your point, but about the difference between being investigated, indicted, and having a jury find you guilty. i do think there is a seismic
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political impact to that, and perception of the american public. at the same time, one of the things, joy, that has made this so weird, you've got a guy who was the trial in a new york city courtroom, a jury of his peers, with evidence. it was not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it was a preponderance of the evidence threshold for a civil trial in which a woman said this man raped me in a dressing room, forced himself on, me and lied about it, me, lying. they found him civilly liable for that sexual abuse. again, take a step back. obviously, any other candidate is toast after that happens. wouldn't be going to the trial to highlight it as -- we would not be voluntarily bringing attention to it. >> the thing is, donald trump has been very skillfully. think about the hillary clinton example, the reason it was so effective for him is that it's neutralized in peoples minds's own guilt, right? it made -- if everyone's doing it, no one
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doing it is especially bad. vaughn hillyard it a lot of interviews on the ground in new hampshire, we saw similar interviews in iowa. you did hear voters say they're bringing all these cases to stop him. so, as long as he's able to keep the narrative going that all the volume of cases is not because he's a criminal, it is because the establishment, the swamp wants him out so badly that they, are bringing all of these cases in their mind. >> i will jump on that. i think joy is right, whether we like it or not, this is something that's a big part of the next few months of debate. you are right that there's only two responses when faced with serious accusations. i didn't do it, or everybody does it. a certain amount of -- or both. a certain amount of political attacks, more things come up, more things rolled around in campaigns up to a point. that could be appealing up to a point. everybody does it, everybody has things being thrown around.
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i didn't do it is also important here in the sense that his entire message and claims around the election, what fox had to pay up to 700, 000, 004, and doesn't want to err, and a lot of the real world knows is a lie, right, he can't go back to that. it's all connected. right, h >> he argues, i'm allowed to do it, right? shamelessness's superpower. you can't hold him to what he said yesterday or today. he will change his tune tomorrow. he will look you square in the eye. that's his super skill. >> you know what he never said? i didn't do it. he just said -- >> exactly. >> with some of these cases, i didn't do it. with the cohen election denial, it's not only i did, it it is, i'm allowed to do it, i have immunity, let's go forward. i do think that is important. that sort of was back to, what do you think is happening here? can you convince people -- tom wolfe had the line, of their people used it, basically, a conservative becomes a liver bowl a liberal once they're
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arrested. the number of people discovered on the right they have questions about the evidence standard, due process, or being set up right. this is a thing marginalized communities and other people who have been thrust into the justice system dealt with forever. all of a sudden, everyone is worried about that. he plays on. that again, your original question, does it raise, make no difference, or lower his standing effacing's accrue? i think it lowers it. >> our coverage of new hampshire, the primary, and the road ahead. tomorrow is going to be an interesting day. that will continue after the break. be right back. right back.
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but i know adam through the big brother program. we've been brothers since i was seven. he stood by my side as i graduated from yale, and i stood by his side when he married eve, the love of his life. i'm a little biased, but take it from adam's little brother. he'll make us all proud as california senator. i'm adam schiff and i approve this message. over, we are in the midst of a nominating contest, and we've got a news about what's coming up next, all right? hear me out. february 8th, the republicans are going to holdses in both nevadaand the u.s. virgin islas. there is a strange situation in
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nevada. about's republican party, ime have heard the news about this, it's a little bit messy right now, partly because its chairman has been criminally indicted for his part in the trump fake electors scheme in 2020. as a result of that chaos, a vacuum leadership, what appears to be an effort by the party to make sure trump wins about a no matter what else is happening, the nevada republicans are going to hold that caucus on february 8th, which we will run by the republican party, but there will be a traditional primary, which will be run by the state, which is described as nonbinding. you've got all that? of the caidates left, trump is participatingn the caucus on february 8th, nikki haley is participating in the primary two days prior. you've got to pick one. i don't know what to do with that, no one really does. after at is the next contest we are sure about. nikki haley's home state of south carolina, it will hold its primary contest as south carolina always does on a saturday, on february 24th.
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the nevada thing is weird. the one thing that is interesting to me is the length of time. you have got a month. >> yeah. >> we have seen before, momentum gets rolling, and a cajuns helps the candidate winning. we saw this in 2020 coming out of south carolina into super tuesday, which was that saturday south carolina, super tuesday, which included california, was three days later. that was enormously consequential for joe biden who -- next thing you, no country shuts down, covid, joe biden nominee, boom, we are done. right? you don't have anything like that -- here >> that is legit what happened. >> it happened so fast! like, what is even going on? stephanie, you've got a month, it's weird, right? a longer amount of time. i generally would think that is going to help the person who is leading. >> potentially, or, and again, i have realized the math, i realize it is hard to see a map, could you see the dormant
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george bush republicans that we hear about all the time who are, you know, disgruntled, disappointed say, here is our shining white light, it's nikki haley, let's get the group back together and get behind her, maybe it's happening once -- if there's anybody who's going to give him a shot, if -- they can't possibly make the argument that republican parties still exists, if they all don't get behind nikki haley with full force right now. if they don't, you have given your party to donald trump. say it, pray it, you did it. >> the problem with that is, if you look at the structural makeup of the republican party in south carolina, it is even more white evangelical than iowa. she's going to go home to a state built much more like iowa than new hampshire. very few independent voters. it's a close primary. literally, there is almost no scenario where i could imagine her winning her home state, which is usually the end, right? that is the end. she's got tim scott who she
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appointed to the senate, who humiliated himself, debased himself or trump tonight, who is with him. it is a mess. rhetorically, she should ride into south carolina. the question is, does she participate in that primary and embarrass herself with the loss? >> the question is this, you make it -- the pressure she's under, does -- that's a question. you know, there is a universe in which one could imagine, an alternate form of politics, primer -- >> we are living in it. >> you could say, look, this is someone who was, with pretty high approval ratings in the state when she was there, the governor of the state, and in the alternate universe, i am imagining, a pre-trump, alternative to trump universe, you could camp out in your home state for a month that rely on the political connections there. that is not the world we live in right now. >> i mean, trump has the endorsements of the two sitting south carolina senators, lindsey graham and tim scott. trump can do, apparently, anything to tim scott, humiliate him on the national stage, and the responses, i love you more. >> the most wild thing is nancy
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mace, have you seen that? not seem a sword against trump, invited a primary challenge backed by trump, saved a last-minute, by an endorsement by no other than nikki haley, and is now endorsing him. >> there is no red line for the republican party, and for south carolina. the other problem, chris, nikki haley's, effectively, running against her record as governor in a lot of ways, right? she is trying -- she's not talking about her single moments as governor. she doesn't want to be that person anymore. it's hard to create favor with those -- >> didn't she run around with her multiracial family and show them off? that is not the thing she can do. she is saying slavery and racism, doubting that at this point. i don't know. i don't get it. >> the take away for tonight's, trump won, biden won, haley vowed to fight on a mother and her home state. the results are in for the 2024 new hampshire primary. the race to the white house is just beginning. msnbc special coverage continues after this break,
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