Biden challenger Dean Phillips nabs nearly 20% in New Hampshire primary

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Phillips: My party has disenfranchised Democrats

Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., gives his take on the primary election race on "Special Report."

Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, the Democratic presidential underdog, fell just short of his stated goal in the New Hampshire primary.

With 95% of votes accounted for, Phillips — who previously said "getting in the 20s would be an extraordinary accomplishment" — received 19.5% of the state.

President Biden secured victory with approximately 55% of the vote.

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Rep. Dean Phillips, a Democrat from Minnesota and a 2024 presidential candidate, speaks during a primary election night event in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Mel Musto/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Phillips got a lucky break going into the second primary election: Biden voters were forced to write in the president's name after his campaign failed to register him on the ballot.

More than a year ago, the president proposed a nominating calendar for the 2024 election cycle that booted New Hampshire from its traditional leadoff primary position and replaced it with South Carolina, a much more diverse state where Black voters play an outsized role in Democratic politics.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) a year ago overwhelmingly approved the calendar change proposed by the president, but New Hampshire leapfrogged South Carolina to honor a longtime state law that mandates that the Granite State holds the first primary.

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President Biden. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

With the state holding an unsanctioned Democratic contest, the president's re-election campaign last autumn announced that Biden wouldn't file to place his name on the New Hampshire ballot.

Phillips says he's invested $5 million of his own money in his White House bid.

"A lot more than I intended," he noted in an interview with Fox News Digital. But he said his investment may be starting to pay off as "grassroots donors are really starting to pop up."

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Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips speaks to the media in Londonderry, New Hampshire. (Reuters/Reba Saldanha)

While the president is the commanding front-runner for his party’s 2024 nomination, polls indicate that many Americans — including plenty of Democrats — don't want Biden to seek a second term in the White House.

Those same surveys show that voters are not thrilled with the likely prospect of a rematch between Biden and the candidate he defeated in 2020: former President Trump.

Fox News Digital's Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.