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2024 Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump, right, greets supporters Jan. 23, 2024, at a campaign stop in Londonderry, N.H. (AP)
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MANCHESTER, N.H. — Former President Donald Trump, who ran a nontraditional campaign in New Hampshire, beat his onetime ally Nikki Haley in the state’s Republican presidential primary.
This was not the typical New Hampshire primary. Trump refused to debate his primary rivals for months, skipped the usual events other candidates attended and largely campaigned in front of his fans at large rallies.
Haley, a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador during the Trump administration, also said she would no longer debate unless it was against Trump or President Joe Biden. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who campaigned sporadically in New Hampshire in the days leading up to the Jan. 23 election, dropped out just two days before the contest.
Haley congratulated Trump and said she will continue her campaign. "New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation," she told her supporters. "This race is far from over."
In a victory speech, Trump misled about New Hampshire’s electoral process, how much border wall he built and the number of migrants crossing the border illegally.
"In the state, in the Republican primary they accept Democrats to vote."
Democrats are not allowed to vote in the Republican primary in New Hampshire. They would have had to change their party affiliation on their voter registration in early October to vote in the Jan. 23 primary.
Voters registered as "undeclared" — New Hampshire’s version of independents — are allowed under state law to vote in the primary. Those voters walk into the polls and can cast a Republican ballot. While some polls showed Haley was leading among undeclared voters, some said they would vote for Trump.
The state has more undeclared voters than people registered with the Republican or Democratic parties.
"We have millions of millions of people flowing into our country illegally. We have no idea who the hell they are. They come from prisons, and they come from mental institutions."
Immigration officials have stopped people trying to cross the border about 8 million times during Biden’s presidency, but that doesn’t mean that 8 million people have come in. Because these encounter statistics track events, not individuals, if a person tries coming in three different times, that counts as three stops — even if it’s the same person. Also, millions of stops have led to expulsions and deportations.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection publishes data on how many people with criminal convictions or who are wanted by law enforcement are stopped by border authorities. Criminals encountered are not let into the country, "absent extenuating circumstances," according to the agency’s website.
We asked multiple immigration experts about this claim in September 2023, and they all said there was no evidence that people were coming to the border from prisons or mental institutions. PolitiFact previously examined a claim from a Republican representative who said Venezuela is sending its prisoners to the southern border and found no public reports or mentions of Venezuela’s government releasing prisoners and sending them to the U.S.
Many immigrants arriving at the border turn themselves in to authorities and ask for asylum, which starts a screening process.
"I built hundreds of miles of border wall."
The Trump administration built 458 total miles of primary and secondary barriers — the first and secondary impediments people encounter as they try to get into the U.S. But the majority of this fencing replaced older, smaller and dilapidated barriers.
Trump added about 50 miles of new wall in places where nothing existed, but not hundreds as he says.
"We won New Hampshire three times. We won it every time — we win the primary, we win the generals."
Trump did win New Hampshire’s primary in 2016, 2020, and 2024. But he has never won the state in a general election.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Trump in New Hampshire, 46.8% to 46.5% — a difference of 2,736 votes.
In 2020, Biden’s margin over Trump was wider, 53% to 45%, or 59,277 votes.
Since 2016, the results in New Hampshire’s races for president, Senate, and House seats have increasingly favored Democrats. The most recent poll for the 2024 presidential race — from mid-January by Marist College — showed Biden leading Trump by 7 percentage points in a head-to-head contest, and by 3 percentage points if independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was included in the race.
PolitiFact Senior Correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this report.
UPDATE, Jan. 24, 2024: This story was updated to include analysis of Trump's electoral record in New Hampshire.
RELATED: Does the New Hampshire primary have a future? Impressions from PolitiFact’s reporting on the ground
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