President Joe Biden won New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary as a write-in candidate in a Tuesday contest that will have no effect on the nominating race.
Biden beat a field of longshot challengers led by U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota and author Marianne Williamson, the Associated Press projected shortly after polls closed at 8 p.m. His exact vote share was not clear because some cities and towns did not immediately break down write-in votes cast for Biden and other people.
It is only a symbolic victory for Biden, who refused to put his name on the ballot after pushing through Democratic rules that sought to deemphasize New Hampshire’s primary in favor of states with more minority voters. Politicians in the state that heavily guards its first-in-the-nation primary forged ahead with the unsanctioned contest.
While Biden officially ignored the race, his campaign looked to avoid an embarrassing outcome by dispatching surrogates for stops over the last few weeks to boost his candidacy. They generally ignored Biden’s role in the primary dispute.
In the end, he was not threatened by Phillips, who has built his campaign on fears that the 81-year-old Biden will have trouble winning a rematch with President Donald Trump in the November election.
Trump won New Hampshire’s Republican primary over former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Tuesday after winning the Iowa caucuses earlier this month. Phillips is the only Democrat with Biden on Maine’s March 5 primary ballot. Biden is a virtual lock to win his party’s nomination.
There were signs that Democrats are rallying around Biden’s economic policies in an Associated Press poll of New Hampshire voters. More than 8 in 10 of them approve of his economic leadership, though only 6 in 10 approve of how he is handling immigration.
However, there were also some warning signs. About 4 in 10 New Hampshire Democrats said Biden is too old to serve a second term as president, and roughly half say it is important to them that New Hampshire’s primary is the first in the nation.
