President Biden was projected to win the Democratic primary in New Hampshire Tuesday, even with his name not being on the ballot in the Granite State.

NBC News and CNN projected his victory just after the polls closed at 8 p.m.

The 81-year-old commander-in-chief last appeared in New Hampshire in April 2022, and forewent campaigning in the state after the Democratic National Committee put South Carolina first on the voting calendar. But local Democrats ignored the move and went ahead with the contest.

A wide-ranging write-in campaign mounted over the past few months to make sure Biden did not suffer an embarrassing loss in the first-in-the-nation primary. Massachusetts Democrats like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Gov. Maura Healey even made the trip north to help the president.

In a statement announcing a series of “grassroots events” in the state, Wu said Democrats did “not have a choice, but to work as hard as we possibly can to try to explain what’s at stake here.”

“It’s a moment in our political history, in our country’s history where it feels like people are not talking to each other and one set of information is just staying within a certain space,” she said.

Biden spent Tuesday afternoon in Virginia, where he held a campaign event celebrating the 51st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that guaranteed citizen’s right to an abortion.

At a rally with Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden lashed out at former President Donald Trump, who the Associated Press projected would win New Hampshire, as he spoke about abortion.

“The person most responsible for taking away this freedom in America is Donald Trump,” he said.

Back in New Hampshire, Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips, who has mounted a longshot bid in the Democratic presidential primary, was projected to lose the Granite State.

Materials from the Associated Press were used in this report.