Trump, Sanders look to win in New Hampshire

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump won New Hampshire’s Republican presidential nominating contest yesterday, while US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont won the Democratic primary over Hillary Clinton, US television networks said after early results.

In a year when bigotry, xenophobia and profanity have fueled the campaign of one party’s front-runner – an unofficial status conferred only by polling, and not yet affirmed in any actual voting – the ability of New Hampshire’s independent voters to choose either party’s ballot offers a unique early opportunity for course-correction in a campaign that has careered off any reasonable person’s concept of a good track. A rocky debate performance by Florida Sen.

In the week since her slim victory in the leadoff Iowa caucuses, Clinton’s campaign has tried to lower expectations for New Hampshire, where Sanders has maintained a steady lead despite her family’s longstanding ties.

Play video “Who is Hillary Clinton?”. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., grimaces as he delivers his stump speech during a campaign stop at the University of New Hampshire Whittemore Center Arena, Monday, Feb. 8, 2016, in Durham, N.H. “Today, I woke up this morning and something clicked”, she said.

On the Democratic front, Clinton is looking to confound polls that predict a large victory for her insurgent challenger Sanders, who represents neighboring Vermont in the US Senate and is big on erasing economic inequality.

“We’re running a very radical campaign because we are telling the American people the truth and that’s something that is not often told in the political world”, Sanders said Monday as he urged supporters to help him pull out a win.

Stung by his second-place showing in Iowa last week, Trump was out to prove his unorthodox campaign can translate large crowds at raucous rallies into concrete votes.

The enthusiasm behind Mr Sanders and Mr Trump underscores the public’s anger with the U.S. political system. Even if neither candidate ultimately becomes their party’s nominee, those who do will have to reckon with the voter frustration they’ve tapped into.

“It wasn’t more people than expected, we actually expected more people but the traffic situation was so terrible that I think a lot of people got discouraged”, Mahon said. Still, he closed the final full day of campaigning with a vulgar insult of Mr Cruz.

At his Manchester rally Monday, he told about 5,000 people to “vote no matter what”. When an audience member shouted out an insult directed at Cruz – a vulgar term for “coward” – Trump repeated the term and jokingly reprimanded the woman. What the Republican candidates really want from the New Hampshire primary is an express lane out of the… Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have spent most of their time in the state in recent weeks and needed to show voters, as well as crucial financial donors, that they’re viable candidates. The irony was that Christie’s debate elbows did much to bring Rubio down, but the New Jersey governor benefited least.

Rubio does best among voters for whom experience and electability is important. But he was a long shot to win in New Hampshire, where Republican voters are more moderate and less religious than in Iowa.

Trump leads rival Republicans with 31.2 per cent – with no other candidate above 15 per cent.

For Mr Trump, New Hampshire was his state to lose. Amid her rallies and town hall events, she’s knocked on voters’ doors and made surprise visits to local coffee shops and restaurants. In June 2015, when Sanders proclaimed he would win the state, he trailed Clinton by as many as 40 points.

Before Sanders took the stage, his supporters chanted “We don’t need no super PAC, Bernie Sanders got our back!”

Her campaign also dealt with poor timing as Attorney General Loretta Lynch reaffirmed that the FBI’s probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server while at the State Department was free of outside political influence.