Senator Elizabeth Warren and former vice president Joe Biden, who had been the leading contenders nationally, both underperformed expectations, coming in fourth and fifth, respectively, and received no delegates.

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet finished eighth, tenth and eleventh respectively and all suspended their presidential campaigns after their poor results.

The first polls opened at midnight local time (EST),[6] with the vast majority of polling places closed by 7 p.m. and a small number of cities allowed to close at 8 p.m.[1] In the semi-closed primary, candidates had to meet a viability threshold of 15 percent at the congressional district or statewide level in order to be considered viable.

The 24 pledged delegates to the 2020 Democratic National Convention were all allocated proportionally on the basis of the qualified results of the primary, in the two congressional districts and on statewide level respectively.

[101][102][103] Bernie Sanders won the state by a margin of around four thousand votes over Pete Buttigieg, with Amy Klobuchar placing third.

[105][1] Sanders had previously won the state in his prior pursuit of the Democratic nomination in 2016 with some 152,000 votes (60.4% of the total) against Hillary Clinton.

Buttigieg kept the race close by performing strongly in the southeastern part of the state,[112] including in the suburbs of Boston and in the nearby, more rural Lakes Region.

[113] Exit polls showed that Sanders benefited from his strong performance among young voters as he won about half of the under-30 vote, with this group making up about 14% of the electorate.

[114] Following poor showings in the New Hampshire primary, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado,[115] entrepreneur Andrew Yang[116] and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick[117] withdrew from the race.