The real winner on Tuesday was the group of New Hampshire voters who made history.

A record 323,166 votes were cast in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.

Equally impressive, 121,152 votes were cast in the Democratic primary in a contest where the incumbent president wasn’t even on the ballot and where no delegates were at stake due to the primary’s unsanctioned status with the Democratic National Committee.

Trump ended up with 175,308 votes to Haley’s 139,792, which gave the former president a 54.2% to 43.3% margin of victory.

In the Democratic primary, President Joe Biden won 77,051 write-in votes, with his top primary challenger Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota winning 23,977 votes. Biden’s percentage over Phillips was 63.6% to 19.8%.

Sununu’s impact mixed

With the New Hampshire primary slowly fading into the rear-view mirror, Gov. Chris Sununu is still fighting for Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley.

Sununu, in multiple interviews this week, took aim at Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel and some other top GOP leaders for saying that it’s time the party rallies around Donald Trump following the former president’s back-to-back double-digit victories in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, which are the first two contests in the Republican presidential nominating calendar.

“That’s nonsense. You got to let the voters decide, not a bunch of political elites out of DC,” the governor emphasized.

Sununu, who a year ago flirted with his own White House run, six weeks ago endorsed Haley’s bid for the nomination and instantly became the biggest cheerleader and surrogate as well as the top New Hampshire adviser for Haley, a former two-term South Carolina governor who later served as U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration.

Sununu, a vocal GOP Trump critic, gambled on Haley as he endorsed her on Dec. 12 instead of backing longtime friend and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another outspoken Trump critic. Sununu also passed on supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who at the time was still in distant second place to Trump in the public opinion surveys in Iowa and in national polls.

Haley had been on the rise for a couple of months when she landed Sununu’s much-coveted backing, thanks in part to her rapport with voters and her well-regarded performances in the late summer and autumn in the first three Republican primary debates.

But Sununu’s endorsement, and his constant companionship on the campaign trail, instantly gave Haley’s campaign an extra shot of adrenaline, which resulted in her surge in New Hampshire primary polling and her catching up with DeSantis for second place in Iowa and in national surveys.

In December, Sununu suggested that Haley could win in New Hampshire, but as the primary date neared, he lowered the goalposts.

“We’ve already exceeded expectations in terms of a one-on-one race,” he said. “A strong second is going to be great.”

With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspending his campaign two days ahead of the primary, the GOP contest turned into what Haley had repeatedly called it – a two-person race.

Haley ended up finishing 11 points behind Trump. The margin – while tighter than what most of the final public opinion surveys forecast – was still short of the victory that many pundits said Haley needed in order to slow down Trump’s march toward the nomination. Pointing to the prominent role independent voters have long played in New Hampshire’s storied primary, those pundits argued that the Granite State was likely Haley’s best shot at wounding Trump.

Haley quickly declared on primary night that “this race is far from over,” but she headed home to South Carolina – which holds the next major GOP presidential primary on Feb. 24 – facing a steep uphill climb for the nomination and resisting calls to drop out of the race.

The day after the primary, Sununu was still spinning for Haley, noting that “there were polls saying that Nikki was going to lose by 25 points or more.”

Analysts are mixed on Sununu’s impact on the primary race.

“Sununu is the one who motivated Haley’s campaign and made her a much better candidate,” said New Hampshire Institute of Politics Executive Director Neil Levesque.

“Sununu definitely shined. I think he was a big winner in this whole thing,” Levesque added. “She didn’t reach the goalpost, but she got the ball all the way down the field.”

Longtime New Hampshire-based Republican strategist Mike Dennehy had a different take.

“The good news is that Sununu had influence with independent voters and the bad news is he absolutely no influence with registered Republicans,” Dennehy said.

As for any lasting impact, Dennehy – who is a veteran of multiple GOP presidential campaigns – said it’s likely that “six months for now it will all be forgotten.”