New Hampshire primary live updates: Nikki Haley battles Donald Trump to the finish as voters hit the polls

Voters in New Hampshire are casting the first primary votes of the 2024 presidential election in more than 300 voting locations across the Granite State.

Most polling stations opened at 7:00 a.m. ET, and will close between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m.

As results start to come in this evening, NBC News will post them to its Decision Desk results landing page.

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scalan said that he expects that turnout will exceed 400,000 voters, with the lion's share of those ballots being cast in the Republican primary.

In the GOP race, former President Donald Trump faces off against ex-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. They are their party's only major party candidates left in the field after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out Sunday.

Trump's lead in polls is undeniably massive. He holds a 60%-to-38% edge over Haley in the most recent Suffolk University/NBC10 Boston/Boston Globe tracking poll.

If those trends hold, the first Republican primary of the cycle could end up being the party's last competitive nominating contest this year.

But New Hampshire has been known to surprise. And with around 40% of voters neither a registered Republican nor a Democrat, the state is still far from a done deal for Trump.

While Republicans wage a major battle whose outcome will translate into delegate allocations, Democrats are holding a very different kind of primary.

The party's incumbent, President Joe Biden, is not on the ballot, and the results will not affect delegate allocations later this year.

New Hampshire's insistence on holding a primary before South Carolina led the Democratic National Committee to both reduce New Hampshire's delegate count, and refuse to honor the results of its primary.

Write-in voting is the