Only two US states have had their say on the Republican presidential nomination so far, but the race appears to be Donald Trump’s to lose.

The former president was projected the winner of the New Hampshire primary by Associated Press just moments after polls closed in the state.

He is the first non-incumbent Republican candidate to win the first two races of primary season.

Only one other serious challenger remains in the race – former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley – who lost by at least 10 points.

Despite this, Haley’s concession was jubilant and defiant, while Trump’s victory speech was more bitter.

“Who the hell was the impostor that went up on the stage, that went before, and claimed victory?” a visibly frustrated Trump said.

“She did very poorly actually.”

Despite dozens of primary races left, Trump now appears eager to focus his attention on the general election against Democratic incumbent, President Joe Biden.

These are the key takeaways from the New Hampshire primary.

Trump won, but the results were closer than expected

Despite being projected the winner just moments after polls closed, Trump did not score the kind of landslide he did in Iowa.

The AP estimates the former president picked up about 54 per cent of the vote, against Nikki Haley’s approximately 44 per cent. 

That’s an improvement for Haley compared to polls that had predicted she would be beaten by around 20 points.

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And it’s a smaller victory for Trump than his thumping 30 point win last week.

He was still quick to celebrate his latest triumph, sending his supporters an email within minutes of the result being declared claiming ‘The race is over!’

A spokesman for a fundraising committee supporting him also argued his nearest rival should withdraw.

“Without a viable path to victory, every day she stays in this race is another day she delivers to the Harris-Biden campaign,” Taylor Budowich said.

“It’s time for unity, it’s time to take the fight to the Democrats, and for Nikki Haley: it’s time to drop out.”

Trump is the only non-incumbent Republican candidate to have won both the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, and this latest win again boosts his chances of securing the nomination.

But his former United Nations ambassador is not giving in just yet.

A ‘scrappy’ Nikki Haley vows to fight on

For Nikki Haley, the stakes could not have been higher going into this primary.

She came third in Iowa, just behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. But when he dropped out of the race earlier this week, she was left as the only serious challenger to Trump.

And while the former UN ambassador had vowed to keep campaigning, regardless of what happened in New Hampshire, another overwhelming victory for the former president would have made that increasingly difficult.

“This race is far from over, there are dozens of states left to go,” she told cheering supporters in the city of Concord.

“And the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.”

Describing herself as “scrappy”, and a “fighter”, she reiterated her public attacks on Trump, arguing “it’s time to put the negativity and chaos behind us.”

She also again alluded to his age and called for mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75 after he appeared to confuse her for former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

“Trump claims he’d do better than me in one of those tests. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t,” she said.

“But if he thinks that then he should have no problem standing on a debate stage with me.”

Independents may have had a big impact

Voting rules differ across the US.

In New Hampshire, people who are undeclared — which means they’re not registered to either major party — are still allowed to have a say in the primaries.

It means they could show up to a polling place and choose either a Republican or Democratic ballot and then cast their vote.

Nikki Haley was always expected to perform better with this group, and her campaign would argue that suggests she has a stronger chance of success at the general election, when candidates will be courting more than just Republican voters. 

But Trump criticised New Hampshire’s rules in the lead up to the vote, repeatedly describing them as “ridiculous” and misleadingly claiming that Democrats could vote in the Republican primary.

If former Democrats did want to shift their party affiliation, they would have had to have done so by October last year.

Democrats also held a primary — but Biden wasn’t on the ballot

New Hampshire takes its position in holding the country’s first primary so seriously that it’s written into state law.

But President Joe Biden pushed for Democrats to instead start this year’s contest in South Carolina, which is more racially diverse and better reflects the US as a whole.

The party’s New Hampshire branch refused to shift, resulting in the odd situation where the primary went ahead with 21 candidates – including those named Vermin Supreme and Paperboy Love Prince — but not the incumbent.

Democratic congressman and candidate Dean Phillips even ran ads comparing the president to the elusive mythical creature Big Foot.

Voters could still add the name of their preferred pick at the bottom of the ballot, and after a so-called ‘write-in’ campaign encouraging them to do so, Biden appears to be on track to win.

Either way, because of the spat, the results in New Hampshire don’t count in terms of the number of delegates needed to secure Democratic nomination.

But the president risked embarrassment if another candidate did well, especially considering his poor approval ratings.

In the end though, Biden won handily with an initial estimate of about 73 per cent of the vote.

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Two states down, many more to go

The primaries are just the first step in America’s presidential election process.

The Republican candidate who collects the largest number of delegates will then go head-to-head against Biden for the White House in a general election in November.

The next Republican race is the Nevada caucuses on February 8 — a vote Haley opted not to contest.

That means she will next face Trump in her home state of South Carolina in February 24.

Polls have Trump leading Haley by about 20 points, meaning he could walk away with all 50 delegates.

He needs to get to 1215 delegates to cross the threshold and officially be the Republican nominee.

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Despite her loss today, Haley has repeatedly insisted she won’t give up, saying, ‘this is not a coronation. This is an election”.

Anti-Trump donors, who do not want to see him up against Biden in November, have backed Haley’s campaign financially.

If she stays in the race until Super Tuesday on March 5, she will compete in more than a dozen states, with about third of all Republican delegates up for grabs.

If Trump runs the board on Super Tuesday, he will be on the path to clinch the nomination by the Florida primary on March 19.