US Senator Bernie Sanders has won New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary with former front-runner Joe Biden trailing badly.

Sanders got 25.8% of the vote, leading Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, by 1.4 points with 84% of New Hampshire precincts reporting on Tuesday night.

“With victories behind us, popular vote in Iowa and victory here tonight, we’re going to Nevada, we’re going to South Carolina, we’re going to win those states,” Sanders told the crowd in New Hampshire.

“Tonight I want to take my opportunity to express my appreciation and respect for all of the candidates we ran against: Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, and what I can tell you, with absolute certainty and I know I speak for every one of the Democratic candidates is that no matter who wins, and we certainly hope it’s going to be us, we are going to unite together and we are going to defeat the most dangerous president in modern history.”

Meanwhile, Buttigieg told his supporters in Nashua, New Hampshire, that he admired his competitor Sanders when he was in high school.

“I admired Sen. Sanders when I was a high school student. I respect him greatly to this day, and I congratulate him on his strong showing tonight.”

Senator Klobuchar, looking for a breakthrough after a strong debate performance on Friday, was in third with 20%. Warren was able to capture just 9.4 percent of the vote and Biden, the former vice president, took fifth in the early results with 8.5%.

Sensing the disappointing result, Biden left New Hampshire for South Carolina before the results began rolling in.

The results thinned the field of Democrats wanting to beat President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 election, with businessman Andrew Yang and Senator Michael Bennet dropping out after the polls closed.

This comes after Buttigieg took the lead among other rival candidates in Iowa’s caucuses last week.

Buttigieg was officially awarded the most delegates from Iowa’s caucuses after a recanvass of 55 precincts was completed, holding a 0.1% lead over Sanders in the state delegate equivalent count.

Pete Buttigieg narrowly edged out Bernie Sanders for delegates from last week

Combined with Iowa delegates, Buttigieg now has a total of 23, whereas Sanders has 21 and Klobuchar has 7. At least 1,991 delegates will be needed for any candidate to win the nomination.

Trump wins New Hampshire GOP primary

President Trump also defeated his remaining GOP challenger in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night.

Trump got about 85 percent of the vote, while Bill Weld, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, was a distant second, capturing just over 12 percent with more than half of precincts reporting.

Source: Presstv