There’s an argument to be made that Donald Trump is now the presumptive nominee. Every presidential candidate who wins Iowa and New Hampshire goes on to win the party nomination, and Trump is the first Republican to achieve this in contested primaries. Trump won both states with solid majorities, and the GOP field is already effectively whittled down to two.

It’s time to call it and move on to the general election against Joe Biden (or the yet-to-be-named Democrat nominee), right?

Probably, yes, but let’s look at some numbers first.

The plus side for Trump is that with record turnout in New Hampshire, he won more than 160,000 votes or nearly 55% — well ahead of Nikki Haley at 43%. Trump won 75% of Republican voters, and he did so about a week after becoming the first candidate in a contested field to win more than 50% in Iowa. He’s on a roll.

Furthermore, numerous GOP establishment figures lined up to endorse Trump this week. There’s a deep irony there, of course, because Trump is the anti-establishment candidate running against a woman who’s supposed to be Mrs. Establishment herself. But politicians certainly do know when to say what they think constituents want to hear, and few elected Republicans care to oppose the clear majority of their party’s voters who happen to be Trump’s base.

Perhaps most telling, Trump leads Haley 52-22 in the South Carolina polling average. That number will surely change now that it’s a two-person race and as attention shifts there and to Nevada. But if Haley gets demolished in her home state, what possible argument does she have left for the nomination?

On the other hand, Haley did reasonably well yesterday as the only real challenger to Trump, especially considering it’s only been a few days since Ron DeSantis dropped out to consolidate the field. In fact, trends are going her direction — she won 62% of voters who waited until just before voting to decide. She also won 60% of independents, which may elicit some scoffing and the old RINO label, but those are exactly the voters who are going to decide the 2024 election.

Besides, Trump won New Hampshire independents back in 2016, when it was considered cool to grow the Republican Party’s ranks.

The biggest red flag for Trump in the primaries is that he is behaving as the incumbent and yet winning bare majorities. That seems to indicate an opening that Haley aims to exploit.

Haley told her supporters last night that “we’re just getting started” and “there are dozens of states left to go,” but as DeSantis did in Iowa, she largely put her eggs in the New Hampshire basket. He, too, sounded upbeat after finishing a distant second before dropping out a few days later. Unless she can make a better case for herself than pointing out how much younger and less chaotic she is than Trump, Haley does not have a path to the nomination.

If Trump is indeed the nominee, what about the general election?

As we already noted, he’s going to need independent voters. He won them by four points in 2016 before losing them by 13 points in 2020. He can’t win in 2024 without improving greatly there, and things don’t look promising. “Among the independent voters in New Hampshire’s GOP primary,” notes The Wall Street Journal, “66% said they wouldn’t vote for Trump in November if he was the nominee.”

There’s also the reality of a pretty fractured GOP right now. Trump lost in 2020 while losing 9% of his party. If the same thing happens this year, it will almost certainly spell defeat.

“The first task for any candidate is to unify the party,” says the Journal. “But 19% of Republicans who cast ballots in New Hampshire said they would be so dissatisfied with Trump as the nominee that they wouldn’t vote for him in November, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of primary voters. Similarly, 15% of Republicans who participated in Iowa’s caucuses last week said they wouldn’t support Trump in the general election.”

Trump does this to himself. For example, he was fairly magnanimous after winning Iowa, but he was not so gracious last night.

“Who the hell was the imposter that went up on the stage before and, like, claimed a victory?” he railed about Haley, who had already conceded and congratulated him. “She did very poorly, actually.” He went on to claim she’d soon be “under investigation” for something or other, and he insulted her dress. “In life, you can’t let people get away with bulls**t,” he added. Says the guy who tries mightily every day, including claiming to have won New Hampshire in both of the last two general elections. He didn’t.

Such things won’t win over suburban women, especially when Trump is in the midst of a second defamation lawsuit filed by a woman who says he sexually assaulted her and already won her first defamation case against him. Indeed, he’s scheduled to be back in court for that case tomorrow.

Heading back and forth from the campaign trail to the courtroom will define Trump’s year, though that is precisely why he’s gaining support among Republican voters and will likely be the GOP presidential nominee.

Oh yeah, and in other news, Joe Biden prevailed in his write-in campaign in the New Hampshire Democrat primary after his party snubbed the state by putting South Carolina officially first. Biden is one of the weakest major-party candidates ever to run for reelection, which is the best reason for hope in November. Virtually no one is undecided on Trump himself, but if they remember how good things were under his leadership compared to the rolling disasters Biden ushered in, Trump has a shot.