Reuters
As soon as polls closed Tuesday evening, multiple news outlets called the New Hampshire primaries for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Both candidates went into the first-in-the-nation primary as the heavy favorites, with polling averages showing wide leads for them in their respective races; and they came out victorious without much of a fight.
With less than a quarter of the state's votes reported at 8:40 p.m. ET, projections showed Sanders and Trump with commanding double-digit leads over their party rivals. In the Republican race, the secondary narrative becomes whether John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz will take second-place, each fighting it out with low-teens percentages of the vote.
Trump's victory comes on the heels of a surprising loss to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucuses—a defeat which many saw as a sign of the reality TV star's impending political decline. By winning the Granite State, Trump will head into the South Carolina primary (Feb. 20) with renewed confidence and a RealClear average polling lead of 16.3 percent. The Donald's victory in the northeastern state comes as a result of appealing to the state's business-minded conservative populace, which is less concerned with the social conservatism that propelled Cruz to a Hawkeye State victory last week.
Sanders's win over frontrunner Hillary Clinton gives the self-described "democratic socialist" some momentum headed into next week's southern primary. However, because his New Hampshire win was predicted