Donald Trump is the wier in the New Hampshire Republican primary, Fox News projects, but five of his rivals are locked in a tight race for second and third in the state.
Republican John Kasich held the edge in the race for second, with just 10 percent of precincts reporting. But Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Chris Christie are all battling for a place on the leaderboard as retus come in.
On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Vermont Sen. Beie Sanders decisively beat Hillary Clinton, in another setback for her campaign after she barely eked out a victory last week in Iowa.
The projections are based on Fox News exit polls and early voting retus.
On the GOP side, early retus show Kasich with about 16 percent.
Bush, Cruz and Rubio are trailing closely behind, followed by Christie.
It is too early to say in what order these five will finish.
A second-place finish by Kasich would give a major boost to his campaign, especially after he finished a distant eighth in Iowa last week. It would also deal a blow to Rubio, whose strong, third-place finish in Iowa eight days ago gave him momentum that lasted until Saturday, when Rubio stumbled in a debate.
Meanwhile, Trump’s victory, while expected, is a comeback of sorts for the real estate mogul who last week was beaten by Cruz in Iowa. It helps cement his front-ruer status in the crowded GOP field.
Meanwhile, the person who tripped up Rubio in Saturday’s debate, New Jersey Gov. Christie, is still trailing. According to Fox News exit polls and early vote retus, Christie remains in single digits, along with former businesswoman Carly Fiorina and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. It is too early to project how these candidates will finish, though.
Exit polls suggest Trump was aided in large part in the state by independents.
They showed 36 percent of the state’s influential independents were backing Trump, leading the field among that bloc.
Independents matter because the state's “undeclared” voters -- a huge chunk of the electorate -- are allowed to affiliate with a party at the polling site and vote in that party’s primary.
On the Republican side, Trump led virtually every poll in the state in the run-up to the contest.
And on the Democratic side, Clinton consistently trailed Sanders going into Tuesday’s contest.
Clinton herself has pushed back on reports that the campaign may be looking at a shake-up in the near future – but the speculation is sure to mount following her Granite State loss.
“We're going to take stock, but it's going to be the campaign that I've got,” Clinton told MSNBC on primary eve. “I'm very confident in the people that I have. I'm very committed to them, they're committed to doing the best we can.”
The race on the Republican side has been even more competitive than in Iowa, with a half-dozen candidates fighting for the top three positions in New Hampshire. Below Trump, that fight is still not resolved.
The race for the second and third slots has been especially fierce, with the three current and former goveors in the race pitting their on-the-job experience against the popular appeal of the contest’s two senators.
Rubio in particular has weathered the brunt of the attacks in recent days, seen as the candidate with momentum going into New Hampshire -- though Cruz won last week’s caucuses, and Rubio placed third. Rubio was thrown off stride over the weekend, though, as Christie battered him at Saturday’s debate over his relative inexperience and reliance on campaign “talking points.”
Rubio, for his part, has not backed off the anti-Obama “talking points” Christie hammered him for at Saturday’s debate. The senator told Fox News he’s only saying what he believes, that “Barack Obama is changing America.”
He stressed that no matter how New Hampshire decides, there’s plenty of presidential race left to go.
“Obviously, we want to do well here in New Hampshire and get as many delegates as we can. The same is true in South Carolina and in Nevada,” he said. “I feel very confident that as we move forward in this process, that's what we're going to wind up at.”
From here, the campaigns head next to Nevada and South Carolina, which hold the next two contests before Super Tuesday at the begiing of March.