If you are reading
this, the voting has already begun in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation
primary, as tiny towns like Dixville Notch and Hart's Location cast their
ballots at
midnight. But the real deal
starts Tuesday morning, and New Hampshire has a record of making history in
its primaries. Here's what to watch for:
Race for second
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have
both been leading
in the New Hampshire polls by double-digit margins for months. They
both crushed
it in a statewide poll of 11,000 K-12 students in the state last
week. If either one of them loses the New Hampshire primary, it will be the
equivalent of a political earthquake. So the real eyes are on the second-place
finishers, and in
the Republican race, perhaps third. On the Democratic side, if Hillary
Clinton can get Sanders' margin of victory down below 10%, she can
claim some success in challenging Sanders on his home turf (he's from
neighboring Vermont). On the Republican side, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Jeb
Bush have all averaged between 10% and 15% in the polls. If one of
them can break away from the pack and finish more than 5% (or so) ahead of the
rest of the field, it will give them the opportunity to claim to be the
standard-bearer for the "Not Trump" lane of the party.
Pollsters
If Sanders and Trump do
not win by large margins, prepare for a bunch of hand-wringing from pollsters,
who are already
under fire for unanimously failing to predict Ted Cruz's Iowa
victory last week. There are a lot of good reasons to be skeptical of the polls
— there are a lot of candidates in the GOP field so it is hard to narrow down
the level of support among them; New Hampshire voters notoriously make their
decisions late in the race; and it can be very difficult to predict turnout for
non-traditional candidates like Trump and Sanders. (Here's a good podcast by
pollsters Margie Omero and Kristen Anderson breaking down the Iowa
polls.) Still, for months polls have
been the only real measure of who is up and who is down in the presidential
race; those of us who cover politics for a living would feel better if the
polls turned out to be right.
Independent voters
There are more
registered independent voters in New Hampshire (390,000) than Democrats
(231,000) and Republicans (262,000), and under state law any voter can walk
into a polling pace and choose a primary ballot for any party. So independent
voters will have a dramatic impact on the outcome, and watching how these voters
align in New Hampshire might provide an interesting signal for which candidates
could reach independents in November's general election.
Turnout is key
The New Hampshire
secretary of state is predicting more than 550,000 people will vote
in the primaries Tuesday, which would be historically high and good news for
"outsider" candidates Trump and Sanders who draw a lot of support
from new voters. Keep in mind that new Hampshire allows out-of-state college
students to declare residency in the state and vote there, which is also good
news for Sanders, who is doing very well among young voters. Weather should not
be a significant factor: It snowed in much of the state Monday and more snow is forecast
for Tuesday, but not enough to keep these hearty New Englanders at home.
Early(ish) Results
Most polls close in New
Hampshire at 7 p.m. Eastern; the Iowa caucuses did not begin until 8 p.m. Eastern.
So we should have meaningful results before the 11 p.m. news.
Next dropouts?
Results were not yet
compete in Iowa before the first candidate — former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee —
dropped out of the Republican race, followed quickly former senator Rick Santorum and
Sen. Rand Paul, and, on the Democratic side, former Maryland
governor Martin
O'Malley. Elections have results, and candidates who did poorly in
Iowa like Kasich, Bush, Chris Christie, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina will have
a hard time continuing their campaigns if New Hampshire gives them a second
weak result.
