More than one-third of New Hampshire GOP primary voters won’t back Trump: poll

Former President Donald Trump has left some hard feelings among New Hampshire Republican primary voters in his wake, according to survey data following Tuesday’s contest.

A sizeable 35% of GOP vote participants indicated they would be so dissatisfied if Trump wins the Republican nomination that they won’t vote for the 77-year-old in November’s general election, the Fox News Voter Analysis found.

Not surprisingly, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley won 96% of that cohort, with 1% voting for Trump anyway.

Another 11% of exit poll respondents said they would be “dissatisfied” if Trump won the nomination, but would still vote for him in November.

The 45th president won 36% of that cohort, while Haley got 59% support from that group.

Among the 53% who said they were satisfied and would vote for Trump in November if he was the Republican standard-bearer, 94% pulled the lever for the former president.

Live election results from New Hampshire

Elsewhere in the analysis, 32% of exit poll respondents said they would not back Haley, 52, if she overcame Trump to seize the Republican nomination — though 13% of that cohort voted for her in the primary anyway.

Just 39% said they would be satisfied with Haley as the GOP nominee, while 26% said they would be dissatisfied, but would still vote for her. Nearly three-quarters of respondents in the latter group (73%) voted for Trump, while 25% went for Haley.

Ahead of primary day, the former president bemoaned New Hampshire’s open system, which allows undeclared voters to help decide the Republican contest.

“Tremendous number of independents came out,” Trump lamented Tuesday evening. “They’re only voting because they want to make me look as bad as possible.”

Just 13% of GOP primary voters considered themselves to be independent voters, with that group breaking for Haley, 67% to 31%. Another 10% called themselves Democrats or Democrat-leaners, and 94% of that group went for Haley.

The remaining 74% of voters who called themselves Republicans or Republican leaners went for Trump by a two-to-one margin.

Meanwhile, just 13% of New Hampshire Democratic primary participants said they had no plans to vote for Biden in November should he be nominated for a second term.

Another 31% said they were dissatisfied, but would still vote for the president in November.

“Trump’s extremism has left him struggling with some of the various voters that he needs to win,” Biden-Harris deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told reporters Wednesday.

“His agenda is toxic and voters aren’t buying what he’s selling.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Fox News Voter Analysis surveyed approximately 2,000 Republican primary-goers in the Granite State Jan. 17-23 with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.