Donald J Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont harnessed working-class fury to surge to commanding victories in a New Hampshire primary that drew huge turnout across the state. The success by two outsider candidates dealt a remarkable rebuke to the political establishment, and left the race deeply unsettled.
Trump, the wealthy businessman whose blunt language and outsider image have electrified many Republicans and horrified others, benefited from an unusually large field of candidates that split the vote among traditional politicians like governor John Kasich of Ohio and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
But Trump also tapped into a deep well of anxiety among Republicans and independents in New Hampshire, according to exit polling data, and he ran strongest among voters who were worried about illegal immigrants, incipient economic turmoil and the threat of a terrorist attack in the United States.
With 40 percent of the precincts reporting, Trump had received almost 34 percent of the vote, and Sanders approached 60 percent. The Associated Press reported that Kasich had finished second behind Trump in the Republican primary.
The win for Sanders amounted to a powerful and painful rejection of Hillary Clinton, who has deep history with New Hampshire voters and offered policy ideas that seemed to reflect the moderate politics of the state. But Sanders, who has proposed an emphatically liberal agenda to raise taxes and impose regulations on Wall Street, drew support from a wide cross-section of voters — even edging Clinton out among women, boosted by his appeal to younger women.
The mood among supporters of Clinton, gathered at a college fieldhouse for a primary night party, was grim as the results rolled in Tuesday night. She planned to huddle with her advisers Wednesday to discuss possible changes in political strategy and additions of staff members, according to Democrats close to the Clintons. She also planned to discuss whether to mount new lines of attack against Sanders on Thursday night at their next debate.
While Trump led in New Hampshire polls since July, and Sanders was ahead for the last month, the wave of support for both men was nonetheless stunning to leaders of both parties who believed that in the end, voters would embrace more experienced candidates like Clinton or one of the Republican governors in the race. Yet the two men won significant support from voters who felt betrayed by their parties and were dissatisfied or angry with the federal government.
By winning so handily, the brash New Yorker and the blunt Vermonter asserted themselves as political forces that their parties and their opponents must quickly reckon with.
On the Republican side, with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas winning the leadoff Iowa caucuses and Trump prevailing here, the political establishment is confronted with two leading candidates, running well-funded campaigns, who party leaders think would lose badly in a November general election. Their success in the two early nominating states suggests that a long, costly and unusually turbulent primary campaign will follow.
Trump's candidacy, in particular, represents a hostile takeover of a party to which he has scant ties. Leveraging celebrity and a ubiquitous presence across both traditional and social media, Trump has embraced a style of populism on trade, foreign policy and immigration closer to the European nationalist parties than to American conservatism.
He has never held elected office and was not even a registered Republican this time four years ago.
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