The latest on the New Hampshire primary

The New Hampshire primary has a pretty good track record of picking the Republican nominee. Only three times since the 1950s has the winner of the New Hampshire primary not gone on to be the Republican nominee.

The state’s primaries and their results get a lot of scrutiny because they come first, but there are only a relatively few delegates on the line. Ultimately, it is winning delegates that secure primary nominations.

New Hampshire gets 22 delegates in the Republican primary process – less than 1% of the total delegates who will vote at the convention this summer. All of the state’s Republican delegates will be awarded to candidates proportionally based on their statewide primary performance, but candidates need to win at least 10% of the vote to be eligible for delegates.

The state is not representative of the country as a whole. It has fewer than 1.5 million residents and is overwhelmingly White.

But voters in New Hampshire take their role as the first primary state seriously, and it is an interesting feature of the American system that anyone who wants to be president will have to get his or her message across to everyday people in New Hampshire living rooms and make appearances in the state’s diners.

Trump is the clear front-runner and holds 50% support among likely Republican primary voters in the Granite State, according to a CNN poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire and released Sunday. Trump’s closest competitor, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, stands at 39%. 

Read up on everything you need to know about New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.