Hillary Clinton was crushed in New Hampshire’s Democratic Primary Tuesday night, losing by more than 20 points to a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, in an outcome that months ago seemed practically impossible.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) collected roughly 60 percent of the vote with nearly all precincts in the Granite State reporting at the time of publication on Wednesday morning. The former Secretary of State gained less than 39 percent of the vote.
In June 2015, Clinton was ahead of Sanders by 40 points in public polling, as FiveThirtyEight pointed out earlier in the week.
The victory–reportedly by the largest margin in the history of New Hampshire Democratic primaries–came a week after Sanders narrowly lost the Iowa Caucuses to Clinton, in what was the closest Democratic presidential contest in that state’s history.
And although he made no mention of it on the night, Sanders, who is Jewish, also became the first non-Christian to win a presidential primary in US history.
“Because of a huge voter turnout–and I say huge–we won,” Sanders told a raucous crowd on Tuesday, after Clinton conceded. The 74 year-old senator proclaimed that his campaign “harnessed the energy and the excitement that the Democratic Party will need to succeed in November.”
Backing that up were data showing Sanders’ message overwhelmingly resonating with younger voters. According to exit polls in New Hampshire, he won by nearly 70 points among 18-29 year-olds.
He also cleaned up among voters in every single income bracket, except those who make more than $200,000 a year, which Clinton won 53 to 46 percent.
And notably, women voters in N.H. favored Sanders by a 55-44 margin, even though public polling in January showed women nationwide favoring the former Secretary of State by double digits.
Like in Iowa, Sanders’s campaign appears very clearly to be pushing the ideological makeup of the Democratic Party to the left. Voters describing themselves as “somewhat or very liberal” made up 68 percent of the electorate, and supported Sanders in droves. Self-described “moderates,” meanwhile, accounted for only 27 percent of voters, down from 36 percent during the 2008 primary. Sanders won that moderate voting bloc on Tuesday night by nearly a 20-point margin.
There was bad news for the establishment on the Republican side, too, when billionaire businessman Donald Trump trounced the much-more crowded GOP field. He secured 35 percent of the vote, followed by by Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), who, somewhat surprisingly, won 16 percent of the vote to finish in second. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), former Governor Jeb Bush (R-Fla.), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) rounded out the top five.
Disturbingly, it appears Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric paid dividends at the polls for him in New Hampshire. Exit polls show that two-thirds of GOP voters supported the real estate mogul’s calls to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the US.
The Democratic race now heads to Nevada, which holds a caucus Feb. 20. It will be followed by the South Carolina primary on Feb. 27.
