President Joe Biden won this year’s New Hampshire Democratic primary thanks to more than 79,000 thousand write-in votes, according to the latest count from the New Hampshire Secretary of State. But he wasn’t the only write-in candidate.
The second most popular write-in choice for Democrats this year was actually a Republican: Former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. More than 4,700 Democrats wrote in her name on their ballots, according to the Secretary of State.
About 2,000 Democrats also wrote in former President Donald Trump. Other Republican candidates who dropped out of the race — Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy — also got a smattering of votes.
But because each party’s primary is treated as a separate election, to pick the nominees for November, the Republican votes in a Democratic race don't count toward the overall Republican results. Similarly, the roughly 500 write-in votes Biden received in the Republican primary won’t count toward his overall vote count in the Democratic race.
Some local activists also encouraged people to write "cease-fire" on their ballots to send a message to the Biden administration regarding their handling of the Israel-Hamas war. According to the Secretary of State, about 1,500 Democratic voters opted to send that message, and about three dozen Republican voters did the same.
