Donald Trump just got shut out

Donald Trump will very likely win the New Hampshire Republican primary on Tuesday, and it’ll likely be by a sizable margin. As I’ve said before, this won’t mean anything, both because Iowa and new Hampshire never tell us much about who the nominees are going to be, and because if Trump is going to lose the nomination it’s likely to be at the convention, by which time he’ll be a convicted felon and even more senile. All that said, something interesting just happened in New Hampshire tonight.

The tiny town of Dixville Notch likes to vote just after midnight so it can be the first to announce its votes in the New Hampshire primary. To that end, Nikki Haley just got all six Republican votes. Donald Trump got zero votes. That’s right, Trump got shut out.

This isn’t likely to translate to the overall New Hampshire primary. Trump didn’t do particularly well in Dixville Notch in the 2016 primary either. Then again, he didn’t do this poorly. But if nothing else it serves to demonstrate a point that I’ve been making all along, which is that Trump does not have some “ironclad grip” on the Republican voting base, no matter how many times the media repeats that phrase.

In reality Trump is only polling at around 50% within the Republican primary race nationwide, even though none of his primary challengers are popular. Nikki Haley is seen as the closest thing to a viable alternative right now, and so Dixville Notch decided to unanimously hand its votes to her, simply to send a message about how Trump shouldn’t be the nominee.