New Hampshire regularly tops the nation in primary turnout, and this year it set new records. Though the Republican ballots had just two viable candidates, the turnout of roughly 300,000 compared favorably to 2016, when 288,000 registered Republicans weighed a much larger field. (In 2020, when Trump faced no serious opposition, 157,000 Republicans voted.) But the high voter interest indicated by Tuesday’s primary no longer holds the promise it would have in 1996.
The maddening thing about America’s renewed and impassioned political engagement is that it only intersects with the millstones slung around our country’s neck occasionally, almost by accident. Why bother writing your congressional representative to advance campaign finance reform, or to bring pharmaceutical companies to heel, when you can instead get twice the emotional satisfaction at a fraction of the effort by venting your choler at imaginary pedophiles on social media?
Though Haley has given every sign she will continue her campaign into her home state of South Carolina (where polls put her as much as 40 points behind Trump), those who hope to stop Trumpism from reclaiming the White House can no longer look to the Republican Party to clean its own house. Though there will be noise over Haley’s continued candidacy and Trump’s eligibility and criminal status, the real question will most likely come in November, when Trumpism will—for the fourth time in a row—be on the menu.