New Hampshire As Bellwether: Are The Times Changing? [updated]
As expected, Mitt Romney skated to victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday. In the process, he “became the first Republican to sweep the first two contests in competitive races since 1976.”
NH Results from Google and AP
New Hampshire was a leading indicator of who would get the nomination and possibly the White House until 1992. That’s when Bill Clinton made history by being the first presidential candidate to lose New Hampshire but win the White House. Paul Tsongas won with 33% of the vote. George Bush (2000, John McCain won with 37% of the vote) and Barack Obama (2008, Hillary Clinton won with 39%) followed suit.
Thus it’s possible, but not probable, that Romney will be edged out of the GOP nomination.
Moreover, there are about 40% more undecided voters in this overwhelmingly white state (94%) than there are Republican voters (231,611 to 312,621). Perhaps the state has gotten too out-of-step with our increasingly multi-cultural melting pot.
Next week’s contest in South Carolina is a showdown in another demographically unrepresentative state. It’s less white and Hispanic/Latino but more black than the national average. It has proportionally fewer foreign-born citizens, fewer high school grads and fewer folks with college degrees. Finally, it’s poorer: 17.1% of its citizens lived below the poverty level in 2009, compared to 14.3% nationally. (New Hampshire: 8.6%)
Newt Gingrich might do better in S.C. if the state’s GOP faithful are feeling neighborly, but he has an uphill battle. Will his not-a-product-of-my-campaign 28-minute, gambling-funded docu-ad (thank you, SCOTUS) siphon votes from Romney or paint the Newt camp as hysterical? Time will tell.
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Eeek! iPad typo in headline fixed!
7 Responses to “New Hampshire As Bellwether: Are The Times Changing? [updated]”
NH can only demonstrate if a non-moderate candidate has a chance of winning the nomination. If anything, RP was the anti-Romney winner of NH.
It’s ridiculous that barely 1 percent of the total people in the US determine who the rest of us get to choose from.
The total voting in IA was about 120,000 and the total voting in NH was 243,722.
Maybe all primaries and caucuses should be replaced by the conventions of all parties who can gain _____ signatures by December 31 of the year preceding an year. All candidates chosen could then be placed on the ballot in every state.
This would give any 3rd (and 4th, etc.) parties a chance. Maybe even the corporations would be stretched to buy all those candidates.
Hi, ShannonLee – I think that Ron Paul’s showing in NH and Iowa suggests a deep philosophical divide in the GOP. If the party were a person, we might say that it has multiple personality syndrome.
To The_Ohioan — as citizens we have a right to vote in a general election. We do NOT have a right to vote in a contest organized by a non-profit organization (a political party). Only members of that party have a right to vote and they also have the right to demand change.
If I were emperor for a day, I’d make all state-run party primaries obsolete in one fell swoop. They gives the Ds and Rs massive power relative to minor parties AND imply that the party selection process is a right just like voting in a general. It’s not.
First, the party elections are for party members. It’s a waste of time to say anybody else should be participating, even though the two major parties give us who we all vote for eventually. That’s just Logic 101. Party means party. Outsiders have no right to demand they crash the party. Done.
Second, the Ohioan is right about New Hampshire (and Iowa) going first and getting too much importance. (South Carolina is full of meat-eating religious and social conservatives, and why don’t the liberal complainers gripe about that state?)
The solution isn’t to bash Iowa and New Hampshire for being small (much less bash them for PC stupid things like being “too white,” etc.) but to seek a better system that is more equitable and rotates all the states at the head of the line, or better, keeps the small states at the early dates of elections (because they otherwise would be wiped out by the clout of the big states) but ends the stupid situation we have now. Just “rotate” different small states or groups of states in various weeks while still front-loading the schedule with small states so that they still have the say they deserve.
Oh, and end winner-take-all, but award the delegates from states according to each of the states’ election results, but that’s a private, not a government, matter.
Kathy, New Hampshire has been nothing of any kind of bellweather for the nation for elections. The only virtue it has is being second and giving us a likely contrast to Iowa.
(The only bellweather the nation has is the state that leads it, California, and given the Golden State’s liberal reputation in politics and government it’s not any kind of bellweather in that regard.)
Some states have open primaries where your declared political party doesn’t matter – you can still vote for the nominee of any one party listed, as long as you are a registered voter. Which defeats the purpose of party membership.
Some, like Iowa, you can state your party affiliation on election day then participate in that party’s caucus. Which also defeats the purpose of party membership.
My suggestion was to skip primaries and go straight to national party conventions and any party, that qualifies as a party by the FEC, be able to select then list their final candidate on every election ballot nationwide.
This would give every state their say (through their delegates to their party’s national convention), would give viable third, or more, parties a place at the ballot box, and would shorten the time of electioneering – maybe.
Of course it wouldn’t help anyone who doesn’t wish to affiliate with any party at all, but they can vote or not as they wish depending on the candidates each party selects.