CONCORD, New Hampshire — The results Tuesday night showed Nikki Haley losing the first-in-the-nation primary to Donald Trump, but her fans didn’t see it that way.

Many guests at Haley’s watch party in the state capital were all smiles and expressed a sense of pride in her accomplishment.

“I think she showed how weak Donald Trump is. I think tonight was a defeat for Donald Trump,” enthused voter John Shaw, 64, from Hampton. “This is round one.”

Haley was quick to declare moral victory, hitting the stage to speak to supporters moments after media outlets called the race for Trump and soon after the last polls closed at 8 p.m.

The TV feed in the main ballroom at the Grappone Conference Center was rapidly cut off after Haley’s speech and the 52-year-old’s supporters had headed home long before late results from rural areas of the Granite State pushed the 77-year-old Trump’s margin into double digits.

“I think this was fantastic,” said David Tille, a longtime GOP strategist and former New England regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This [Haley’s performance] was very strong against basically an incumbent in Donald Trump … this is very much the beginning,” Tille said, comparing Haley to Pat Buchanan, who earned 38% against sitting President George H.W. Bush in the 1992 Republican primary.

“I sure know that he’s probably scared after the results from New Hampshire. No one expected that you’d be like this,” exulted Grace Puchaski, 19, a volunteer from North Carolina. “Now she’s got a two-man race.”

“Nobody’s gonna outwork Nikki Haley. You’ve seen her work in here. Now she’s going to South Carolina, her home state, where twice she’s ran [for governor] and won both races,” added Kim Rice, a Haley backer and former speaker pro tempore of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

“This is just the beginning,” agreed Melanie Sabelhaus, a co-chair of Women for Nikki. “The strategy is to go on to her home state of South Carolina, where she was governor for two terms. They love Nikki.”

That love is not reflected in the Palmetto State primary polls, which have Trump leading Haley by an average of more than 30 percentage points, according to the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate.

Celebrating an 11-point loss would seem incongruous with expectations set by Haley’s supporters earlier in the primary race.

The 52-year-old’s foremost surrogate, New Hampshire GOP Gov. Chris Sununu, predicted as recently as last month that Haley would pull off a “landslide” before backtracking and tempering expectations.

The governor, who blitzed his home state for Haley — at times behind the wheel of his classic red Ford Mustang despite the winter weather — briefly stopped by the Concord watch party but declined to take questions.

He later argued on X that “Granite State voters put wind in [Haley’s] sails as she heads off to her sweet home state of South Carolina.”

Some 35 miles to the south in Nashua, the Trump faithful gathered for their own celebration, having turned aside Haley in what many pundits saw as the most favorable state for her.

“Just a little note to Nikki. She’s not going to win. But if she did, she would be under investigation by these people in 15 minutes. And I could tell you five reasons why already,” the 45th president smirked.

No stranger to seeing victory in his own defeats, Trump binge-posted content about his “stunning victory” and Haley’s loss throughout Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning.

“Could somebody please explain to Nikki Haley that she lost – and lost really badly. She also lost Iowa, BIG, last week. They were, as certain Non-Fake Media says, ‘CRUSHING DEFEATS,'” he wrote on Truth Social at one point.

Whatever hostility Trump feels toward Haley is matched by her supporters’ feelings toward him.

“I’m a Never Trumper,” Sabelhaus said, before demurring about whether she could back him in a general election against President Biden.

“I can’t answer that right now,” she said, later adding: “I liked his policies. [But] the chaos and drama — you can’t have it for America.”