Democratic and Republican voters deliver resounding victories for two candidates whose 2016 presidential campaigns were once seen as far-fetched

Voters in New Hampshire delivered a resounding rebuke to the US political establishment on Tuesday, with strong wins for leftwing Democrat Bernie Sanders and bombastic Republican outsider Donald Trump in the second major test of the 2016 presidential race.

The Vermont senator’s victory over Hillary Clinton will give him much needed momentum as he heads for tougher states farther south, while high voter turnout helped power Trump to a double-digit victory that could end up matching consistent polling leads he has maintained since declaring his candidacy.

Voters hungry for what Sanders calls “political revolution” turned out in large numbers to vote for the Democratic socialist, according to the Associated Press.

Sanders took to the stage at his victory party and wasted no time going straight to the theme that appears to have dominated the election here: campaign finance.

“Together we have sent a message that will resonate from Wall Street to Washington ... that government belongs to all of the people,” he said to applause and foot-stomping from a fired up audience of mixed ages.

But he warned of the brickbats ahead as the campaign prepares to move to the national stage. “They are throwing everything at me except the kitchen sink, and I have a feeling that it is coming soon,” he said.

One of the biggest cheers of the night came when he started a sentence: “When we make it to the White House ... ” but the crowd turned and shook their fists at the press riser when Sanders talked of “sending a message to the media establishment”.

Bernie Sanders sweeps to decisive win over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire Read more

Foreign policy also made a return to his stump speech, after a period of relative absence during campaigning here that had attracted growing criticism. “As president I will defend this nation, but I will do it responsibly,” he said. “We cannot and should not be the policeman of the world.

“Thank you, New Hampshire,” he concluded. “Now it’s on to Nevada, South Carolina and beyond.”

Trump gave an unusually emotional speech to supporters in a hotel ballroom next to a Best Western hotel by the Manchester airport, starting by thanking his deceased parents as well as his siblings.

He also took a moment to mention Sanders. “Congratulations to Bernie,” he said. “We have to congratulate him, we may not like it. He wants to give away our country, folks. We’re not going to let it happen.”

Trump’s campaign, fueled by a blend of insurgent populism and unprecedented media attention, has turned every rule of politics on its head. His success in New Hampshire happened despite comparatively weak campaign organization in the state and a penchant for controversial remarks that would have sunk the campaigns of almost any other candidate.



Donald Trump sweeps to victory in New Hampshire primary Read more

Yet none of the controversies have affected Trump’s standing with his base of disaffected blue-collar white voters, who remain drawn to his pledge to “Make America Great Again”. Many of Trump’s themes were familiar to a New Hampshire primary electorate that strongly supported Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996; but Trump added an aura of celebrity and drew in many who were entirely new to the political process.

What remained less clear as the polls closed was how the pile-up of candidates vying to finish in the top tier behind Trump would perform.

Ohio governor John Kasich came in second place with 15.9% to Trump’s 35.1%, according to the AP, with almost 89% of precincts reporting.

“Maybe – just maybe – we are turning the page on a dark part of American politics, because tonight the light overcame the darkness,” Kasich told supporters in Concord.

By dawn, the fight over third place was still not formally resolved, though Texas senator Ted Cruz led former Florida governor Jeb Bush by a narrow 11.6% to 11.1% – a margin of 1,240 votes. Florida senator Marco Rubio, who had been tipped as the man to emerge as the establishment favourite, was languishing in a damaging fifth place on 10.6%. He admitted his slump was “on me” after a terrible debate performance days before polling which left him looking scripted and inauthentic.

Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor whose last act ahead of the primary was to savage Rubio on the debate stage, seemed all but certain to suspend his campaign in the coming days, admitting he would return home to New Jersey to consider his next moves.

The fight over the 2016 Democratic nomination had been expected to be a wintertime formality for Clinton. But the prospect of sustained campaigns from Sanders had sent the former secretary of state’s campaign into a whirlwind of spin about whether the outsider surge could last.

The call for Sanders came early: with nearly 60% of precincts reporting, he had 59.3% of the votes to Clinton’s 38.9%. By morning, with 89% of votes counted, that margin held good – Sanders on 60%, Clinton on 38.4%.

At the Sanders results party in Concord, supporters were being turned away before polling had even closed. Few were doubting he would win; the question was only by how much.

In her concession speech delivered from Southern New Hampshire University in Hooksett, Clinton said: “I know I have some work to do.” Former president Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea stood by her side.

Clinton, who called Sanders earlier in the evening, congratulated her rival and said of his supporters: “Even if they are not supporting me now, I support them.”

The insurgent candidates won New Hampshire. Still, this is no 2008 rerun | Richard Wolffe Read more

Senior Sanders staff see this decisive win in New Hampshire as their ticket to the genuine national campaign momentum that has so far proved difficult to achieve.

Chief adviser Tad Devine told the the Guardian he is increasingly confident of securing union support to help the campaign in Nevada, the scene of their next and perhaps most important showdown with Clinton.

“People need to understand something,” said a passionate Devine. “We are a better campaign. We are a better resourced campaign. We have more people on the ground. We are demonstrating that resource superiority by going on television all across this country. We are redeploying hundreds of people who worked on this campaign [in New Hampshire]. We are happy to compete with them in the air and on the ground anywhere in this country.”

Clinton’s campaign had been bracing for a loss, with surrogates telling voters in a cafe earlier in the day that they were “looking for a miracle”.

The former secretary of state’s 2008 comeback win in New Hampshire against Barack Obama added momentum to the prospect of the first female US president. But the state offered no such luck this time.

Voters across the state said they were gripped by Sanders and Trump, perhaps more for what they represented rather than the nature as tried and tested candidates who could go the distance. From school gymnasiums to post offices in socially liberal cities and gun-toting conservative hamlets, they expressed widespread discontent with both Clinton in particular and the Republican party’s leadership as a whole.

Chris Comfort, a 50-year-old retired plumber, had voted for Trump. “I really believe he’s not owned by anyone,” he said. “And that’s a big thing in politics today.”

Comfort said he also admired Sanders, whom he saw as atypical of the American political system: “He is like Donald Trump in the fact that he’s a man of principle – he doesn’t waver,” he said. “Mr Sanders has always been for what he believes in, and I respect that.”

The two parties will now criss-cross the country, with Sanders carrying his momentum to a Democratic caucus in Nevada on 20 February and Trump testing his popularity among southern Republicans in South Carolina’s primary on the same day. The campaigns will then turn their attentions towards Super Tuesday on 1 March, when 14 states will vote – including seven in the south, where Clinton is expected to beat Sanders among African American voters.

But Joseph Bafumi, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth University who has studied how new voters can be brought into a party’s coalition by outsider candidates, said Trump and Sanders had become “much more viable for the nomination” by meeting expectations in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

“It’s more of a question of momentum,” he said of Trump, “but it indicates to the rest of the country that his supporters can reliably go out and vote for him.”