Victory for Trump: The Donald wins in New Hampshire with 35 per cent of the vote

Donald Trump claimed victory in the New Hampshire Republican primary elections on Tuesday, predicting before a raucous crowd in Manchester that he'll also win the next presidential nominating contest in South Carolina.

In a 15-minute speech full of greatest-hits moments that followed a much longer oration from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders – who had just grabbed the Democratic Party's brass ring from Hillary Clinton – Trump swung in the socialist politician's direction.

'In all fairness we have to congratulate him,' Trump told a packed banquet hall three hours after polls closed and he was declared the winner.

'He wants to give away our country, folks! He wants to give it away. We're not going to let it happen!'

With 92 per cent of the votes counted, Trump led the field with 35.17 per cent of the total vote and 10 delegates, John Kasich was in second with 15.84 per cent and three delegates, Ted Cruz third with 11.66 per cent and two delegates, Jeb Bush fourth with 11.07 per cent and two delegates, Marco Rubio fifth with 10.52 per cent and Chris Christie sixth with 7.47 per cent.  

Trump has yet to unlace his rhetorical boxing gloves in the eight months since he launched his unlikely presidential bid. He also hasn't stopped hammering home a reliable menu of conservative red meat pledges.

'In a nutshell, we're going to make great trade deals, we're going to rebuild our military ... we are going to take care of our vets,' he said Tuesday night.

'We're going to have strong, incredible borders and people are going to come into our country but they're going to come into our country legally!' 

Donald Trump claimed victory in the New Hampshire Republican primary elections on Tuesday, giving a speech in Manchester with his family on stage

Trump, with wife Melania (left) and daughter Ivanka (right) at his side predicted before a raucous crowd that he'll also win the next presidential nominating contest in South Carolina

Melania Trump looks on as her husband tells supporters he's 'going to make America great again' during his victory speech

A supporter holds a scarf bearing Trump's slogan as he waits for the billionaire to give his victory speech in Manchester

'We're going to build a wall. It's going to be built,' Trump added, tying America's border crisis to a drug addiction epidemic in New England. 'It's not even – believe it or not, it's not even a difficult thing to do!'

Shouts of 'Build the wall! Build the wall!' followed.

So did his well-worn pledge to 'knock the hell out of ISIS,' the Islamist terror army whose videotaped beheadings of 'infidels' have forced politicians to take hard-line approaches to the Middle East.

Speaking to CNN via phone on his way out of New Hampshire, Trump said his victory 'started with trade, and the fact that we're being just ripped off by everybody, whether it's China, Japan, Mexico.'

'And I think it ended up being very much borders, and security, and other things having to do with security. And then you have the migration. And you have ISIS.'

'It seems,' he added, 'that the whole security thing, the military thing, the fact that I'm going to take care of the vets far better than anyone else will be able to, it all sort of came down to that.'

'But it seems like pretty much of a victory in every category.'

Trump thanked a long list of family members including his late parents Mary and Fred. 'They're up there looking down and they're saying, "This is something very special",' he said

Ohio Gov. John Kasich answered the hotly contested question of who would take the silver, asserting himself as the anti-Trump to watch

Trump thanked a long list of family members including his late parents Mary and Fred.

'They're up there looking down and they're saying, "This is something very special",' he said.

Although Trump put his gold-medal hopes on hold a week ago, the tycoon claimed the top prize in New Hampshire as he defeated a gaggle of establishment politicians and the outsider senator who bested him in Iowa.

And Ohio Gov. John Kasich answered the hotly contested question of who would take the silver, asserting himself as the anti-Trump to watch.

'Bernie talked so long I thought he was going to hit his 77th birthday before he got off the stage,' Kasich said in his late-night remarks after Trump spoke.

'And I mean, Hillary – you just need this much,' he mocked, holding his thumb and forefinger an inch apart, 'and head to South Carolina because it's not working here!'

Kasich's heart-strong speech was a tremendous contrast from Trump's over-the-top braggadocio. 

'There's something that's going on, that I'm not sure that anybody can quite understand,' he said. 'There's magic in the air with this campaign because we don't see it as just another campaign.'

'We see this as an opportunity for all of us – and I mean all of us – to be involved with something that's bigger than our own lives. To change America. To re-shine America. To restore the spirit of America. And to leave no one behind.'

'We will move through South Carolina, all across this country, and we'll end up in the midwest,' Kasich pledged.

'And you just wait! Let me tell you: There's so much gonna happen, if you don't have a seat belt, go get one!

With 88 per cent of the votes counted in the Granite State, Trump led the field at 35.15 per cent of the total vote in an election that poll-watchers expected would set a new record for voter participation.

The margin of victory was stunning even in the face of late polls that had the billionaire real estate developer ahead by double digits.

In contrast to a lackluster Iowa performance that saw his voting haul lagging six percentage points behind his polling average, Trump outperformed the pollsters' wildest estimates in New Hampshire.

Trump supporters, in other words, actually went out to vote on Tuesday. And New Hampshire's GOP elites were perplexed. 

'By name, I only know five people supporting Donald Trump,' former Gov. John Sununu told The New York Times. 'So I say I cannot understand this electorate.'

Kasich, the Ohio governor who made a late surge on the strength of a longstanding in-state organization, was sitting in second place at 15.89 per cent.

His communications director told Fox News that his boss was calmly having dinner as results poured in, and was 'at peace.'

The rest of the second tier looked to be bunched up at between 12 and 10 per cent, with margins so narrow that the results won't be known for hours.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz held third place with 11.55 per cent, keeping pace with his numbers in an average of the final New Hampshire polls.

Cruz, whose positions lined up nicely with Iowa's heavily evangelical GOP electorate, ran up against a buzz-saw of moderate New Hampshirites out of step with his own hard-line conservatism.

But South Carolina, the next contest in line, is thick with born-again Christian conservatives. Finishing first in Iowa and third in New Hampshire will make for a promising resume moving forward.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was just over than a thousand votes behind Cruz at 11.1 per cent.

Bush's political obituary has been written several times in the past two months, but his strong canvassing organization knocked on more than 100,000 doors in the Granite State.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who stumbled in the closing days of the campaign when he repeated himself often enough to be saddled with a 'robot' nickname, sat at 10.57 per cent in fifth.

An official with the Rubio campaign hung up the phone when DailyMail.com called for comment about why he hadn't claimed second place, as some of his surrogates had suggested he might.

Rubio claimed the bronze medal in Iowa, just a percentage point behind Trump in the first presidential caucuses on Feb. 1.

But although his polling average just a day ago suggested that he would squeak into second place, enough of his support evaporated on Election Day to put him in a disappointing fifth.

At Trump’s headquarters in Manchester, a whoop went up when TV commentators declared the national front-runner had won.

In his speech, Trump spared a gracious moment for his vanquished campaign trail foes.

'A number of them called and I just wanted to thank them,' he said. 'And I wanted to congratulate the other candidates, okay?'

'Now that I got THAT over with! ...'

As CNN projected that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton would lose her battle with democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, the cheers grew louder still.

'Burn the witch!' someone was heard shouting.

Sanders led Clinton by a 60-38 margin with 88 per cent of the votes counted.

Supporters celebrate Trump's victory in Manchester, after the billionaire claimed the top prize in the New Hampshire Republican primary

Donald Trump (pictured greeting supporters in Manchester on Tuesday) defeated a gaggle of establishment politicians and the outsider senator who bested him in Iowa

Loud boos erupted when Clinton's face appeared on TV screens to concede her race.

When she declared that she would take her campaign nationwide, a Trump backer shouted: 'You're going to jail!'

And as Clinton spoke of her optimism and hope, a man wearing a New England Patriots sweatshirt – 'SOB: Sons of Belichick,' it read – shouted at the top of his lungs: 'Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!'

He was just steps from an open bar.

Another wall-shaking yell went up when the crowd heard an analyst announce: 'This was a really angry electorate.'

Just before 9:00 p.m., audiovisual technicians at the Trump victory party changed the channel from CNN to Fox News, sending the sounds of Megyn Kelly's voice soaring through the banquet hall.

Kelly has crossed swords with Trump over a question about his treatment of women – which she asked him at the beginning of the very first GOP debate last August.

Trump's supporters, crammed into a space far too small to host a typical Trump rally, were cheering loudly enough not to notice.

The Donald claimed when he took the stage that 'we have thousands of people outside that can't even get in!'

Sanders addresses throngs of supporters waving blue 'A Future To Believe In' placards at Concord High School on Tuesday

They watched the party on a flat-screen erected in the icy parking lot after the local fire marshal shut the doors and hour before Trump arrived.

His victory will cause a wholesale rethink of the traditional emphasis on retail politics in winning crucial early primary elections.

Instead of embracing intimate, small-format handshake events, The Donald spoke to crowds numbering in the thousands.

In hockey arenas, only the most committed Trumpeters – those who arrived early to stake out seats near the stage – got close enough to smell his after shave.

Political professionals scoffed at the Trump team's approach which, although it may never work for anyone else, was sufficient to lap the field on Tuesday. 

Exit polls reported by CNN indicated a kind of dominance seldom seen from insurgent candidates. 

Trump won pluralities of both women and men, college graduates and non-graduates, married and unmarried voters, and earners up and down the salary ladder.

Both self-described 'conservative' and 'moderate/liberal' voters chose Trump more than any other candidate.

Trump won handily among New Hampshire Republican voters who told pollsters they felt 'betrayed' by establishment politicians, but he also prevailed among those who disagreed.

'I was so happy. ... It was right across the board, with men, with women, with young, with old, with, you know, everything,' Trump told CNN during his phone interview late Tuesday night.

'To win every single category was, perhaps, the greatest honor of all.'

Supporters wait for a victorious Donald Trump at his 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary night rally in Manchester, New Hampshire

Not quite every category: Cruz won the evangelical Christian vote, as he did in Iowa – but by only a single percentage point. Trump came in a close second.

Rubio came out on top with voters who said 'electability' was the single most important quality they looked for in a candidate. 

Rubio, 44, addressed the 500 loyal supporters who had rallied in Manchester in hopes of a better result and admitted his poor performance during Saturday's GOP debate had cost him.

'Many people are disappointed. I'm disappointed. Our disappointment is not on you. It's on me,' he said. 'We did not do well on Saturday and so listen to this: That will never happen again.' 

Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson rounded out the losing end of the results on Tuesday night with 7.54, 4.17 and 2.26 per cent respectively.

Christie never caught fire despite creating the most talked-about moments in Saturday's debate when he demolished Rubio's momentum by painting him as a talking-point-spouting automaton with a resume too thin to be president.

But the hard-charging New Jersey governor saw an even worse performance tonight, coming in well below Rubio, and announced that he was 'taking a deep breath' - a hint that his presidential run could very soon be over.

Projecting a winner on the basis of a fraction of the votes is dicey. When Trump was declared the victor, he led Kasich by just 5,000 votes.

But data analysts combed through the voting histories of New Hampshire counties, precinct by precinct, to estimate how strong Trump's support was in areas where election officials were still counting ballots.

The projections were unmistakable, and Trump's name was etched into history moments after the last polls closed at 8:00 p.m. 

Then the race for second place was on.

Supporters of Ohio Governor John Kasich wait for results to come in during a primary election watch party in Concord

A supporter holds a placard at Donald Trump's New Hampshire presidential primary election night rally in Manchester

Historically, placing first or second in New Hampshire has been a shortcut to the short-list of Republicans striving to be nominated for the presidency.

With Kasich, a moderate's moderate, emerging as the party's top alternative to Trump's brand of conservatism, the contrasts going into the South Carolina primary will be striking.

The Ohioan expanded Medicaid under the Obamacare system in his home state, a choice Trump would take away from governors if he had his way and scrapped the entire system.

Kasich also supports, in principle, the nuclear weapons bargain President Barack Obama struck with the Islamic Republic of Iran last year, while Trump has pledged to abandon it and renegotiate with the nation's mullahs.

South Carolina will be a different kind of challenge, with a tea party contingent that votes ultra-conservative and a more gentrified urban population that can act as a counterweight.

Neither segment is Kasich's base, leaving an opening for Cruz to assert himself – along with Bush and Rubio who hail from adjacent Florida.

The Republican primary there will come on February 20, with Clinton and Sanders squaring off a week later.

Jim Gilmore, a former Virginia governor who remains in the race despite having no campaign organization to speak of, collected 104 of the first 200,000 votes counted.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Rick Santorum, who withdrew from the race last week, had 106. 

Source: DailyMail