MANCHESTER, N.H. — Donald Trump can add a new word to his 2016 vocabulary after New Hampshire: winner.

The Manhattan businessman, who has taken the political world by storm, decisively won the first 2016 presidential primary on Tuesday, besting a crowded field of Republicans who, even as the results rolled in, continued to battle among themselves.


“We are going to start winning again and we are going to win so much," Trump said at his victory party here. "You are going to be so happy.”

It was a clear-cut victory, as multiple networks called it immediately after polls closed; Trump clobbered the rest of the field with more than double the support of his closest competitor. He boasted over 34 percent of the vote after more than 70 percent of precincts reported.

It was a nightmarish New Hampshire night for pragmatic-minded Republicans who had hoped to elevate a single contender of their own after Ted Cruz carried Iowa (and finished a strong third on Tuesday) and Trump coasted in New Hampshire. Instead, they got a muddled mess. No candidate broke out of the teens, as John Kasich finished in second, with Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in fourth and fifth.

All are flying to South Carolina. More significantly, they continued to pummel one another before the results were even final.

“These candidates need to stop this nonsense of pretending Trump isn't a threat,” said Katie Packer, who runs an anti-Trump super PAC that spent $2.5 million in 10 days in Iowa and has promised another assault in South Carolina.

The results portend particularly poorly for Rubio, who had slid to 5th place, with just over 10 percent of the vote. A poor debate performance on Saturday appears to have arrested any momentum Rubio had from his third-place Iowa finish. “It's on me. It's on me,” Rubio said in his concession speech about the debate debacle. “I did not — I did not do well on Saturday night, so listen to this: That will never happen again.”

The mood was ebullient at Bush’s rally in Manchester, where cheers went up every time results were shown with him bumping into third place, as CNN’s commentators spoke about “defibrillators” for the previously flat-lined candidacy.

"This campaign is not dead,” Bush said in a concession speech that tried to sell his finish as a victory. “You all have reset the race.”

But Trump, as he has throughout the race, sought to stomp on Bush, taking the stage at the same time. All the major networks cut to him over Bush.

“I think Jeb had his back to the wall and he rose to the occasion,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Bush backer. “Everybody running for president is going to get knocked down eventually. The test of whether or not you can get up was passed today in New Hampshire.”

With Bush on pace to finish ahead of Rubio, both favorites of traditional Republicans are likely on a collision course in South Carolina and beyond. And Kasich, with his second-place showing, was launched into the top-tier conversation for the first time.

“Governor Kasich is now the leading governor in the race and the only one with a realistic chance at the nomination,” said senior Kasich strategist John Weaver.

Bush’s team immediately sought to cast him as unacceptable in military-friendly South Carolina. Bush spokesman Tim Miller said that Kasich “for 20 years has been a supporter of gutting the military.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he skips South Carolina all together,” Miller said.

Replied Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf: "I wouldn't be surprised if Jeb Bush drops out which he should do instead of tearing down the rest of the Party. He is destroying his legacy.”

Cruz was lifted by breaking into the top three, with three-quarters of the vote in. Cruz had flown under the radar after facing — and meeting — sky-high expectations in Iowa a week ago.

“The real winner, the real winner is the conservative grassroots, who propelled us to outright victory in Iowa and to a far stronger result and outcome in New Hampshire than anyone had predicted,” Cruz said Tuesday night.

His campaign had tried to ramp up expectations for Rubio as voting began Tuesday.

“The big question in #NHPrimary - Can #Rubio beat #Trump for 1st place finish as #Cruz did in #IA Then, which governor places 3rd?” tweeted chief Cruz strategist Jason Johnson on Tuesday.

In sixth place, the future of Chris Christie’s candidacy was in doubt. He had previously said he had hoped to finish first among the governors but on Tuesday he was third of the three. And days after Christie led the charge against Rubio on the debate stage, the New Jersey governor is at risk of missing the next one.

In a post-primary speech, Christie announced that he's not going to South Carolina, as previously planned, and would instead go back to New Jersey with his wife.

"Mary Pat and I spoke tonight and we've decided to go home to New Jersey tomorrow and we're going to take a deep breath and see what the results are tonight," Christie said. "By tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon we should know."

Christie added that after they know the results, "that should allow us to make a decision."

Trump was the victor in the state one week and one day after he finished a disappointing second in Iowa to Cruz. His resounding victory in New Hampshire gives him a groundswell of excitement heading into South Carolina, which votes next on Feb. 20.

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders was immediately declared the victor, as well.

There were parallels between the two party’s winners — two emphatic populists who rail against Wall Street and the donors who have a stranglehold on American politics.

Trump made sure to get in a few knocks against the Vermont senator during his celebratory address. “I heard parts of Bernie’s speech," Trump said. "He wants to give away our country, folks.”

The real estate mogul successfully tapped into the deep frustration among Republicans with the federal government. Nearly 90 percent of GOP voters said they were angry or dissatisfied with the government in a CNN exit poll, and those voters went overwhelmingly for Trump — as he led “angry” voters by 22 percentage points over his closest rival.

Among Republicans, the spinning had begun before the results were final.

Watching the results from Ted Cruz’s watch party in Hollis, N.H., former New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien marveled at the early numbers showing Rubio falling far short of second place.

“Where does he go from here?” said O’Brien, Cruz’s New Hampshire co-chair. “He can’t keep coming in third. He can’t come in fourth when you don’t have any failsafe state. There’s no state at all, if it’s not New Hampshire, that he can definitely do well in. It may do well for him to consider whether he can go on from here.”

For months, New Hampshire was believed to be the state best positioned to bring order to the more traditional faction of the Republican primary. But chaos had reigned as Bush, Kasich, Rubio and Christie all competed with one another in an ugly scramble.

In a sign of how volatile the race has been, the CNN exit poll showed 46 percent of Republican primary voters made up their minds in the last three days and nearly two-thirds said the recent debates were important.

That was bad news for Rubio, who had been shooting for second but finished in fifth, after his admitted poor debate.

Kasich, meanwhile, was glowing over second place.

“There’s something that’s going on that I’m not sure that anybody can quite understand. There’s magic in the air with this campaign,” Kasich said. “Something big happened tonight.”

“Maybe just maybe we are turning the page on a dark part of American politics.”

Negative ads have bombarded the airwaves in the state with Rubio bearing the brunt of the attacks — more than $10 million, according to Rubio’s campaign, from Bush’s super PAC alone. The Bush super PAC, called Right to Rise, has criticized Kasich, too.

Ben Carson had been expected to finish poorly here, after his fourth-place showing in Iowa, and he left the state before polls closed to head to South Carolina. Results showed him in second-to-last place in New Hampshire, only beating Jim Gilmore.

Carly Fiorina, who was excluded from the debate over the weekend, had continued to campaign but struggled to gain traction. She was gasping for air in seventh place in the New Hampshire results.

Both Carson and Fiorina pledged on Tuesday night to keep up their fights for the White House.

Katie Glueck, Daniel Strauss, Sarah Wheaton, Kyle Cheney and Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.