NH: Sore Winner

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun. The nomination phase has effectively ended, but Trump is still raging.

Lloyd Greene at The Guardian:

On Tuesday night, Donald Trump emerged as the winner of New Hampshire’s Republican primary and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, handily defeating Nikki Haley. He is the first non-incumbent Republican to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina’s contest is next month and those that follow are formalities on the road to coronation.

College graduates voted for Haley, non-college for Trump.

Haley is staying in the race.  Trump is unhappy. Politico Playbook:

He rage-posted about her speech in realtime on Truth Social. “DELUSIONAL!!!” he wrote. When he came on stage at his own event 30 miles south in Nashua, he could barely contain his anger. Gone was the sunny Trump of Iowa caucus night who magnanimously praised his defeated rivals.

Trump began his remarks with a falsehood. He claimed to have won New Hampshire in both the primaries and the general election. Nope: HILLARY CLINTON beat him there in 2016 and JOE BIDEN won in 2020. This was a particularly noteworthy claim at the top given the subject of his remarks: the fact that Haley did “a speech like she won” even 
though she lost by 11 points.

“This is not your typical victory speech,” he warned, and he was right. As the clear victor, he had one job: ignore Haley and focus on Biden and the general election. But he couldn’t let it go.

He attacked her as unelectable. He suggested New Hampshire Gov. CHRIS SUNUNU uses drugs (“He’s got to be on something”). He hinted darkly that she would be under investigation (“a little stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about”). He even mocked her outfit (“the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy”).

He handed the program over to VIVEK RAMASWAMY, who Trump said had helped instigate the plan to focus on Haley and was “the only person more angry” than him. (He quickly clarified, “I don’t get mad, I get even.”) Ramaswamy got a few more shots in at Haley. After 20 minutes of this, Trump explained his curveball of a speech. “I felt I should do this,” he said, “because I find in life you can’t let people get away with bullshit.”

Haley’s campaign seemed pleased to get under Trump’s skin. “Why is he so angry?” a member of Team Haley told Playbook. “For someone who’s not threatened by Nikki, he sure talks about her every chance he gets.”

The Biden team was cheered by the drama. A campaign aide texted Playbook taking note of Trump’s fit: “That’s the guy we will beat.”

 

DeSantis Backs Down

The International Churchill Society says this is a fake quote. https://t.co/bYODmSv5zP

— Ramesh Ponnuru (@RameshPonnuru) January 21, 2024

 

November 10, 2022. Maybe the most important day of the 2024 primary. DeSantis is riding high after re-election, the GOP’s new hope. Then Trump opens fire. DeSantis hangs back and declines to respond *for months* as the hits keep coming and denting his standing. It never recovers. https://t.co/E05fiK99K6

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 21, 2024

Trump Trashes Haley

 Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The 2024 race has begun.  The nomination phase may soon end.

Charisma Madarang at Rolling Stone:

AFTER ANNOUNCING TO the state of New Hampshire that he had aced his cognitive test, Donald Trump incorrectly blamed Republican rival Nikki Haley for being in “charge of security” during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on the Capitol.

During a rally in Concord, New Hampshire on Friday evening, Trump spiraled into a bizarre rant about crowd sizes and the Capitol riot. “Look at all the people back there. You got a lot of people. This is supposed to be a quaint little area. This is not quaint at all,” Trump titillated before a crowd of supporters. “You know when [Haley] comes here she gets like nine people, and the press never reports the crowds you know.”

Trump then appeared to confuse the former South Carolina governor with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who he has previously used as a scapegoat for the Capitol attack. “By the way, they never report the crowd on Jan. 6. You know Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley… You know, they — do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything? Deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it,” Trump falsely claimed. “Because of lots of things… like Nikki Haley is in charge of security — we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people.”

Wow while rambling about January 6th, a confused Trump blames Nikki Haley for January 6th and says she was in charge of security for the Capitol pic.twitter.com/uw6FzJsqD9

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 20, 2024

v 

Trump's closing argument for New Hampshire is really turning up the racism dial. pic.twitter.com/IQyjyhGU9R

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) January 19, 2024

Nikki Haley's old affair rumor gives MAGA new ammo https://t.co/M7WoEkpZii

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) January 20, 2024

Christie Out

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

Michael C. Bender at NYT:

Chris Christie closed out his second presidential campaign much as he began it, with a blistering and personal takedown of Donald J. Trump designed to prompt a reckoning in his party.

Anticipation had been building all day for the remarks from Mr. Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, after news had spilled out hours earlier that he was telling close allies about his decision.

With all three major cable news networks airing the speech live, Mr. Christie used the rare spotlight — something that had largely eluded his campaign — to make an urgent appeal to the better angels of his party. He framed his animosity toward Mr. Trump in sweeping, historical terms and cast himself as the experienced party elder warning of the possible dangers ahead.

“Imagine just for a moment if 9/11 had happened with Donald Trump behind the desk,” Mr. Christie said. “The first thing he would have done was run to the bunker to protect himself. He would have put himself first before this country, and anyone who is unwilling to say that he is unfit to be president of the United States is unfit themselves to be president of the United States.”

...
Mr. Christie also grappled with his own role in Mr. Trump’s rise, acknowledging that he had capitulated to ambition when he ended his 2016 presidential bid and surprised much of the political establishment at the time by backing Mr. Trump. Mr. Christie described his second campaign as something of a redemption tour.

“I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie in order to win, and I feel no differently today, because this is a fight for the soul of our party and the soul of our country,” he said.

Mr. Christie paced the stage as he spoke and at times appeared emotional, including when he talked about the supporters who had urged him to remain in the race. His voice cracked when he quoted Benjamin Franklin’s warning that Americans had been given “a republic, if you can keep it.”

“Benjamin Franklin’s words were never more relevant in America than they are right now,” Mr. Christie said. “The last time they were this relevant was the Civil War.”

The Pardoner'sTale

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The 2024 race has begun.

Jacob Knutson at Axios:

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said if she is elected president, she would pardon former President Trump if he's convicted of a crime, saying the amnesty would be "in the best interest of the country."
...

 Haley joins her fellow Republicans Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in signaling support for a possible pardon for Trump.

What they're saying: "I would pardon Trump," Haley said.She was responding to a 9-year-old boy's question at a New Hampshire campaign event NBC News covered.

"If he is found guilty, a leader needs to think about what's in the best interest of the country," she added. "What's in the best interest of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail that continues to divide our country."

"What's in the best interest of the country would be to pardon him so that we can move on as a country and no longer talk about him," Haley said.

Of note: Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday slammed Haley for making the remarks before the trial in the election interference case against Trump even started.Christie has also skewered Haley several times in recent days, primarily over declining to say that slavery was the cause of the Civil War at a campaign event on Wednesday.

Haley v. DeSantis

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The 2024 race has begun.  The DeSantis campaign has been troubled.  The Haley campaign is rising ... to second place.

SuperPAC backing @NikkiHaley, @SFAINC2024, out with new TV that mocks @RonDeSantis for being too much like Trump. Spot first aired at 04:42 local in Cedar Rapids market on KCRG (ABC). "Too lame to lead. Too Weak to Win," the spot says. pic.twitter.com/k6uvqHyCt2

— John McCormick (@McCormickJohn) December 8, 2023

Dan Balz at WP:

On the debate stage, both are scripted, but Haley is agile and sharp-tongued while DeSantis is a bulldozer with a bullhorn. Many pundits call her the best performer in their post-debate commentary, but polls by The Washington Post, 538 and Ipsos more often than not have given that nod to DeSantis. That was the case after Wednesday’s debate in Alabama and a reversal from the results of the debate in Miami, where those Republicans who watched thought Haley did the best.

Haley has certainly profited from her debate performances. Her poll numbers have risen while DeSantis’s have stalled or declined. That has added to the narrative of trajectories going in opposite directions.

In New Hampshire, that’s true. In July, the RealClearPolitics poll average there showed DeSantis at about 18 percent, Haley at about 4 percent, with Trump leading at 44 percent. Today, Haley is at 19 percent, DeSantis at 8 percent and trailing former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is polling at 11 percent. Trump leads at nearly 46 percent.

Iowa presents a somewhat different picture. There are few reliable recent polls of likely Iowa caucusgoers. What has been the most reputable over time is the Iowa Poll, this year the work of the Des Moines Register and NBC News. In October, this poll showed Haley and DeSantis tied at 16 percent, far behind Trump’s 43 percent. Haley had risen 10 percentage points over the previous two months, DeSantis had fallen 3 percentage points. Polls taken since then by other organizations have shown Haley surpassing DeSantis in the state

DeSantis Skyfall

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

DeSantis is doing very very poorly.

LISA KASHINSKY and KELLY GARRITY at Politico:

Ron DeSantis is in freefall in New Hampshire.

The Florida GOP governor, who once polled ahead of former President Donald Trump in the first primary state, has now fallen solidly back into the pack, competing in a crowded race with biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for second place in a new survey.

Support for DeSantis cratered to 10 percent in the CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released Wednesday, his worst showing in a public poll of Granite Staters yet, according to the list compiled by polling aggregator Real Clear Politics. He’s down 32 points from the January UNH survey in which he led Trump 42 percent to 30 percent. He now sits 29 points behind the former president.

“The campaign for Ron DeSantis is on life support,” veteran New Hampshire GOP strategist Mike Dennehy said in response to the poll. “He has one shot at resuscitation and that is the debate next week.”

DeSantis finished fifth in the survey, behind Ramaswamy at 13 percent, Haley at 12 percent and Christie at 11 percent. But because of the poll’s margin of error, the candidates are statistically in a four-way tie for second.

Threshold

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under way.

At PolitiFact, Louis Jacobson has an explainer on Democratic delegate selection:

If several candidates remain in the race but fall short of the 15% threshold, that enlarges the delegate haul for the candidates above the 15% threshold. As the winner of the New Hampshire primary and the Nevada caucuses, and a close second in the Iowa caucuses, Sanders has already benefited disproportionately in delegate allotments. In Iowa, Sanders won 26% of the vote but got 30% of the delegates; in New Hampshire, he won 26% of the vote but got 38% of the delegates; and in Nevada, he won 47% of the vote but secured 67% of the delegates.

A candidate with a solid base of supporters, like Sanders, is well positioned to collect some delegates in almost every contest. Until the field narrows, meanwhile, the anti-Sanders vote will be splintered. The longer this splintering continues, the easier it is for Sanders to build his delegate lead.

New Hampshire

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under way.

Bernie Sanders won NH with about 26% of the vote -- the lowest vote share of any winner of the New Hampshire primary.  Some worry that he could cruise to victory over divided opposition, as Trump did in 2016.  But unlike the GOP, Democrats strictly require proportional delegate allocation, which means he could not win the same way as Trump.

Buttigieg ran a very close second. Klobuchar is getting massive attention for coming in third.

Warren is a distant fourth, with about nine percent. A lot of NH voters are in the Boston media market and commute to jobs in Massachusetts. Bay State candidates Dukakis (1988), Tsongas (1992) and Kerry (2004) all won the primary.  Warren should have done better.

Biden was a sad fifth, with about eight percent.

 Sahil Kapur and Shaquille Brewster at NBC:

Victorious in New Hampshire on the heels of a popular-vote win in Iowa, Bernie Sanders has forced the Democratic establishment to reckon with a prospect it has been dismissing: He's currently the favorite to win the party's presidential nomination.

The Vermont senator has seen his fortunes rise since Iowa, leap-frogging a struggling former Vice President Joe Biden as the frontrunner in two national surveys of Democratic voters — ahead by 8 points in a Quinnipiac poll and 10 points in a Monmouth poll. At a jubilant election night party here, he told a cheering crowd that his victory in the state was "the beginning of the end for Donald Trump."

The prospect was causing waves of anxiety in the Democratic Party.

“A lot of mainstream and moderate Democrats are growing increasingly nervous with the prospect of Bernie Sanders as the nominee,” said Jonathan Kott, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to centrist Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V.

NH Independents Endorse Biden

In Defying the Odds, we discuss primaries.

John DiStaso at WMUR:

Former Republican U.S. Sen. Gordon Humphrey and former New Hampshire First Lady Dorothy Peterson are among 100 independent Granite State voters announcing their support for former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday.

The Biden campaign said 93 of the 100 “New Hampshire Independents for Biden” are making their support for the former vice president known for the first time. The other seven have been previously announced and are reaffirming their support as members of the grassroots coalition.

The campaign said it intends to make a broad, concerted effort to speak to independent voters over the next six weeks leading to the first-in-the-nation primary on Feb. 11.

View the full list of “New Hampshire Independents for Biden” here.

Independents, formally known as undeclared voters, make up the largest voting bloc in the state. As of Oct. 30, they comprised 42 percent of the registered voters in the state, while Republicans were 29.5 percent and Democrats were 28 percent of New Hampshire voters.

Independents can take either a Democratic or a Republican ballot in primary elections and then are able to return to undeclared status if they wish.

In 2016, Sanders got 70 percent of the independent vote in the New Hampshire primary. 

But Seriously...

My take at Fox and Hounds:

When George Wallace ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, his slogan was “Send Them a Message!” Last night’s winners might as well have used the same catchphrase. The New Hampshire primary was a political Festivus, in which Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders performed feats of strength while the electorate undertook the airing of grievances. Voters wanted to show that they were fed up with the political and economic establishments, and the double-digit margins got the message across quite vividly.

Trump and Sanders have become the voices of discontent by positioning themselves as “outsiders.” In neither case is the mantle a perfect fit. Sanders has held office for 33 of the past 35 years, and has always caucused with congressional Democrats. His avowed socialism scarcely sets him apart in a party that has galloped leftward ever since Bill Clinton let go of the reins in 2001. Trump has direct experience in government. Rather, he bought his seat at the table of power by spreading money liberally among New York politicians. If Trump supporters are right that most political insiders are prostitutes, then Trump has distinguished himself by being a john.

In the weeks ahead, as the delegate totals increase and the general election draws nearer, voters might start to realize that they are not just sending messages but picking people who could actually become president of the United States. Will this realization change the way that they think about their choices? If it does, then Sanders and Trump will have some problems. It’s not just that either would be the oldest man ever to enter the White House. What’s more important, both would also face questions about their qualifications.

For all his years in office, Sanders seems to have some gaps in his knowledge. James Hohmann of The Washington Post reported on last week’s debate: “The Vermont senator, leading in polls ahead of Tuesday’s primary, conceded that the former secretary of state has more experience on international issues, but he argued that he has superior judgment. When pressed for specifics, though, Sanders offered simplistic answers that were anything but reassuring to experts and elites.” Sanders is scarcely more reassuring on domestic policy. He recently wrote: “Any Supreme Court nominee of mine will make overturning Citizens United one of their first decisions.” Apparently he did not realize that the court cannot change precedents at will: it has to wait for actual cases to come before it. And in any case, no president can bind justices to vote a certain way.

Trump’s qualification problems are even worse. His misstatements of fact are so numerous that fact-checkers have practically given up counting them. When someone does catch him in a whopper – such as his preposterous claim that he saw thousands of American Muslims cheer the attack on the World Trade Center – he just sticks to his false story. Given that a president has to make life-or-death decisions based on judgments about foreign intelligence, it would be disturbing to have a president who thinks, “If I believe it, then it’s so.”

George Washington could not tell a lie. Joe Isuzu could not tell the truth. Donald Trump cannot tell the difference.

New Hampshire's GOP Storm

Byron York recalls a January New Hampshire GOP gathering:

What was extraordinary about the gathering was that I talked to a lot of people there, politically active Republicans, and most of them told me they personally didn't know anyone who supported Trump. Asked about the Trump lead, one very well-connected New Hampshire Republican told me, "I don't see it. I don't feel it. I don't hear it, and I spend part of every day with Republican voters."

Readers of the story came to one of two conclusions. Either New Hampshire Republican leaders were so out of touch that they couldn't tell something huge was happening right under their noses, or there really weren't very many Trump voters, and the Trump phenomenon was a mirage that would fade before election day.

Now, with Trump's smashing victory in the New Hampshire primary, we know the answer. There really were a lot of Trump voters out there, and party officials could not, or did not want, to see them.

CNN reports:

Exit poll results from the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night showed deep discontent with the Republican Party and the federal government, and the candidate who railed hardest on those topics, Donald Trump, won with multiple groups of voters.

Trump won New Hampshire's primary by carrying a range of demographic and ideological groups with more than 30% of the vote. He topped the rest of the field among both men and women, voters under age 64, voters without a college degree, and those who have a college degree but no postgraduate study.

He won among conservatives and moderates, first-time voters and those who've voted before and registered Republicans and those who are undeclared.

Trump won 6-in-10 voters who said they were looking for an outside candidate.
But New Hampshire also exposed a weakness for Trump: late-deciding voters, who made up almost half the Republican vote, broke evenly between Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

At The Washington Post, Philip Bump looks at how Rubio crashed:

We can say pretty conclusively that a look at polls in New Hampshire on the day of the Iowa caucuses (when Rubio had an average of 9.5 percent) and a look at the final result would suggest that Rubio had no bump during the last week -- or that, if he did, the tide went out as suddenly as it came in.

Rubio was the favorite target of other people in that middle tier over the week, which was precisely why Christie went after him. Maybe that, as much as the debate, was what New Hampshire was reacting to, if it was reacting to anything.

Rubio's speech on Tuesday night may have been wrong. But it was purposeful. Rubio recognized that he did badly in New Hampshire, and, in front of his supporters, pointed to the broken part of his campaign that he said had caused it.

The Sanders-Trump Primary

In The Perfect Tie, Ceaser and Busch wrote of the 2000 cross-party competition between Bill Bradley and John McCain for the votes of New Hampshire independents.

Evan McMorris-Santoro reports at Buzzfeed:

In New Hampshire, where Sanders remains in the lead according to public polling averages, Sanders campaign strategists genuinely believe they can win over some Trump supporters by speaking to their economic angst. A Sanders campaign source said field teams meet undecided voters all the time who are choosing between Sanders and Trump.

The campaign in the Granite State has even written a campaign pitch for volunteers to use when they meet voters like that, which the source insisted is a frequent occurrence.
In Iowa, where Hillary Clinton leads, there’s no such formalized effort to win over Trump supporters. A source with the Iowa Sanders campaign said Sanders’s recent talk of Trump was triggered by Trump’s rhetoric, and will return if and when — “when” is more likely, the source said — Trump says something else inflammatory.

But political observers in Iowa say if a Democratic candidate can flip some of Trump’s supporters here, it’s Sanders. Sherry Toelle, chair of the Democratic Party in Iowa’s Republican-leaning Cass County, told BuzzFeed News at a Sanders event in Harlan, Iowa last week that Sanders has the right language for Trump supporters who are worried about the economy. 

“His viewpoints and his stressing the importance of the middle class, and stressing all the importance of all the economic reforms, it’s a good starting point,” she said. “Because that’s what a lot of folks are angry about, the economy.”

Also see comparisons to Wallace's appeal to supporters of RFK (1968) and McGovern (1972.) 

Union-Leader for Christie

Maggie Haberman reports at The New York Times:

Chris Christie’s long-shot presidential campaign got a lift on Saturday night with the endorsement of The New Hampshire Union Leader, an influential paper in the state where the New Jersey governor has camped out in the hopes of catching fire.

The newspaper’s endorsement, coming 10 weeks before the first-in-the-nation primary, arrived earlier than it had in the past two election cycles involving crowded Republican primary fields.

The endorsement, however, was framed in terms of the changed landscape of the 2016 presidential race in the wake of the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, the aftermath of which Mr. Christie has pointed to as a moment for which his skill set is perfectly matched. And it is the strongest suggestion of the vibrancy of a candidate who has fought for survival in a sprawling field, after the so-called Bridgegate scandal in New Jersey dampened his national prospects and hindered his standing in the polls and in fund-raising.

“Mr. Christie is right for these dangerous times,” wrote Joseph W. McQuaid, the paper’s publisher, in the endorsement editorial. At another point, he wrote: “As a U.S. attorney and then a big-state governor, he is the one candidate who has the range and type of experience the nation desperately needs.”

Independents and the New Hampshire Primary

In The Perfect Tie, the third book in this series, James Ceaser and Andrew Busch explain that the 2000 New Hampshire primary involved an "invisible primary" between John McCain and Bill Bradley.  They were running in different parties but competing for the large bloc of independent voters.  McCain won, enabling him to beat George W. Bush.  Bradley lost, meaning that the primary went to Gore.

James Pindell writes at The Boston Globe:

Unlike in many other states, New Hampshire voters who don’t register as Republican or Democrat can participate in either party’s primary. Republican officials are predicting that these “undeclared” voters — as many as 90,000 of the 250,000 Republican primary voters next year, according to one campaign’s count — will be inclined to pull a ballot for the GOP in the first-in-the-nation primary in large part because that contest is much more heated.

“There is no doubt that independent voters will decide this primary,” said Sarah Crawford Stewart, who ran former Utah governor Jon Huntsman’s independent-focused 2012 Republican campaign here. “And now is the time when every campaign begins looking for the unicorn: the truly independent voters that you know are there, but you have no idea where to find them.”

...
A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll this week suggested that undeclared voters would make up 32 percent of the Republican primary electorate. Their preferences were largely the same as likely Republican voters as a whole.

New York businessman Donald Trump and Governor John Kasich of Ohio topped the list for undeclared voters with 19 percent and 14 percent, respectively. Senator Marco Rubio had the support of 12 percent of undeclared voters and Senator Ted Cruz received the support of 11 percent of the undeclared voters who were polled.

Indeed, undeclared voters could have the most impact in selecting among the more establishment-oriented candidates — like Bush, Kasich, Rubio, or Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. These candidates are investing time and money in identifying independent voters.

The $20 Million Cover Charge

Karl Rove explains why the rock-bottom cover charge for the 2016 campaign is $20 million.

One way to get a rough sense of the likely buy-in to the GOP race is to examine the cost of running four weeks of television in each of the sanctioned contests in February 2016—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. These first four states collectively have 133 delegates, or only 5.4% of the 2,471 delegates likely to be at the convention.

A week of television—enough for an average viewer to see an ad about 10 times—in the four states would cost roughly $4 million, according to GOP TV buyers. It’s reasonable to expect most campaigns would look for at least four weeks of TV, making the cost to run ads in the February states right around $16 million.

Of course, TV is not the only way campaigns would convey messages. In addition, the prices TV stations are quoting are for third-party groups like Super PACs. The law guarantees candidates the lowest rate, which stations are loath to estimate now.

But even if candidates paid less for TV, the additional costs for Internet activity, mail, phones and radio would mean candidates could still spend close to $20 million to mount strong campaigns in all the February contests.

Why New Hampshire Matters

At The New York Times, Jonathan Martin explains the significance of he 2016 GOP primary in New Hampshire:

“Not only is there not an heir apparent, there’s not even a whiff of an heir apparent,” said Stephen Duprey, a Concord businessman and the state’s Republican national committeeman.

Unlike the last two Republican primaries here, and many before, this one will not feature a candidate who has previously won significant votes in the state.

Beyond the sheer uncertainty, the other factor increasing New Hampshire’s importance is that it offers a tantalizing opportunity for some of the establishment-oriented Republican candidates, who will almost certainly need to notch at least one victory to survive the initial contests. If there is no truly contested Democratic primary here, the unaffiliated voters who are allowed to participate in either party’s balloting could flood into the Republican race and bolster one of the more moderate candidates.

“The more independents you get in a potential Republican electorate, the more unpredictable the electorate becomes,” said Thomas D. Rath, a former state attorney general and longtime Republican strategist.

Sandwiched between the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary, in which the Republican electorate is heavier on religious conservatives, the New Hampshire primary is the early contest where Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor, and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey will compete aggressively for a clear win.

With a large number of conservative candidates vying to capture the Iowa caucuses, potentially splintering the vote, and with the prospect of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina competing in his home state, New Hampshire could prove clarifying.
“Everyone has to compete in New Hampshire, which means a win here is going to mean something,” said Fergus Cullen, a former state party chairman.

GOP Turnout So Far

From a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center:

Based on final and official results from the six states whose primaries preceded Super Tuesday and near final and unofficial results from the seven Super Tuesday primaries, 7,846,172 voted out of 68,125,000 eligible citizens or 11.5 percent.

Turnout in 2008 was 13.2 percent of eligibles and it was 12.2 in 2000.
Of the thirteen states with presidential primaries which have voted so far, eight had lower turnout than 2008, five had higher – all states that allowed independents or both independents and Democrats to vote in the GOP primaries in a year when there was no Democratic presidential contest.

These were some of the highlights of a joint preliminary report on GOP primary turnout released by the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Center for the Study of the American Electorate on Thursday.

The state with the highest turnout was New Hampshire where 24.5 percent of eligibles voted, higher than the 24.2 percent that voted in 2008, but lower than the 26.41 which voted in 2000. In South Carolina 17.3 percent of eligibles voted higher than the 13.5 percent that voted in 2008, but lower than the 19.5 percent that voted in 2000. Ohio’s 2012 turnout was 13.9 percent, higher than the 12.8 who voted in 2008, but lower than the 16.8 who voted in 2000. Michigan had a higher turnout in 2012 (13.6 percent of eligibles) than the 12.0 percent that voted in 2008, but lower than the 19.6 percent who voted in 2000. The other state with higher 2012 turnout as compared to 2008 was Vermont where 11.8 percent of eligibles voted as compared to only 8.3 percent in 2008. But the 2012 turnout was substantially lower than the 18.0 percent who turned out in 2000.

Mitt the Acceptable

Gallup reports:

Mitt Romney is the now the only candidate that a majority of conservative and moderate/liberal Republicans nationwide see as an "acceptable" GOP nominee for president. Conservative Republicans are more likely to say Romney would be an acceptable nominee than either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum....Fifty-nine percent of all Republicans nationwide perceive that Romney is an acceptable GOP nominee for president, the only candidate with majority support on this measure. Slightly less than half say Gingrich (46%) or Santorum (45%) would be acceptable, while a majority of Republicans say that the three remaining candidates -- Perry, Paul, and Huntsman -- would be unacceptable as their party's nominee.

Jay Cost finds a similar result in the New Hampshire exit poll:

Romney is now the running away favorite to win the GOP nomination, and not just because of momentum. The following was the most startling set of numbers from the exit poll in New Hampshire:

We have heard a lot over the last couple months about the anti-Romney sentiment in the Republican party. However, this statistic suggests that, in New Hampshire at any rate, Romney is the only candidate with whom a majority of the party is satisfied. The rest of the candidates seem to have alienated more than half of the GOP.

That is Romney’s biggest advantage, far and away.

Microtargeting and New Hampshire

An earlier post discussed Romney's success with micro-targeting in Iowa.  He did it again last night in New Hampshire. Maeve Reston writes at The Los Angeles Times:

A central factor in Mitt Romney's impressive win in New Hampshire was a sophisticated and relentless voter contact program that locked in supporters early and turned them out to the polls.

Flush with cash as other rivals limped through the summer and fall, the Romney team poured resources into data: Operatives mined reams of consumer information — from the number of purchases voters made at Williams-Sonoma to their range of financial investments — to build a model that would allow them to find and identify potential supporters.

...

Michael Meyers, one of Romney's micro-targeting gurus and the president of the Alexandria, Va.-based TargetPoint Consulting, noted that because more data are now collected online, the campaign has been able to cull up to 300 pieces of information about a voter, compared with fewer than two dozen in 2008.

The practice is a cost-effective way to reach high-value voters, especially in states where heavy retail politicking is impractical.

"The larger the state is, the harder it is to do effective voter contact — because there's more people to contact, identify and recontact," said Charlie Black, a strategist for 2008 GOP nominee John McCain who has informally offered advice to Romney from time to time this cycle. "The underdog candidates, even if they got hot and won a primary, don't have time to develop and install this kind of system in a matter of weeks.

"It's expensive. It's part of having a sophisticated national campaign that's well-funded," Black said, "and they're really the only such campaign out there this time."