New Hampshire is still counting votes, but the 87% of results counted in the state’s Democratic presidential primary show Sen. Bernie Sanders as the winner with 25.7%, narrowly leading former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 24.4%. Sen. Amy Klobuchar came in a strong third with just under 20%. Sen. Elizabeth Warren faded to fourth with 9.3%, and former Vice President Joe Biden put in another weak performance at 8.4%.
Those results—so far—translate to a delegate tie for Sanders and Buttigieg at nine apiece, while Klobuchar gets six. Between New Hampshire and Iowa, the overall delegate picture is Buttigieg at 22, Sanders 21, Warren eight, Klobuchar seven, and Biden six, out of 1,991 needed to win the nomination. Quite the fractured field heading to Nevada and South Carolina, with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lurking in the wings, ready to enter the fray on Super Tuesday.
Sanders has cause to declare a substantial victory after winning the popular vote in Iowa and winning in New Hampshire—but this narrow win over Buttigieg is underwhelming compared with his big win over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire in 2016, when he got literally twice as many votes as in 2020. Buttigieg has outperformed expectations—but his path forward isn’t clear, especially given his extremely poor polling with black voters. Ditto Klobuchar. Warren was already contending with a media writing her obituary after she outperformed polls in Iowa, never mind after a disappointing finish in New Hampshire. And Biden has now had two disappointing finishes that threaten to give voters in his firewall states second thoughts.
Billionaire Tom Steyer took 3.6%, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard got 3.2%.
Andrew Yang and Sen. Michael Bennet dropped out Tuesday night, and former Gov. Deval Patrick is expected to drop out Wednesday, but since between them they got about 3.6% of the vote, even if they all endorsed the same person and every single one of their supporters followed their endorsement, it wouldn’t make a huge difference in the race. (And that’s not how endorsements work.)
In other words, this primary is unlikely to be over soon.