Previewing Tuesday’s New Hampshire Primary

On Tuesday, nearly 600,000 residents of New Hampshire are expected to go to the polls and cast their mark behind one of the 11 Republican or Democratic candidates running for President of the United States. In this brief post, I’ll handicap the likely results. What’s fascinating about tomorrow’s primary is that the outcome is so obvious and also so impossible to predict at the same time.

Barring a seismic difference between the polls and the results, business Donald Trump will be the New Hampshire winner on the Republican side and Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders will take the crown for the Democrats. For the record, here is the latest Real Clear Politics average of polls as of Monday evening.

Wordpress Table Plugin

It would be shocking if either Trump or Sanders lost, considering that both have won every single poll taken in 2016 and most by margins in the double digits. The slight drama on the Democratic side will be whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can finish within 10 points of the self-described socialist.

On the GOP side, there’s a tremendous amount at stake depending on where the non-Trump candidates finish between 2nd and 7th place (with the assumption that Dr. Ben Carson, not even campaigning in New Hampshire today, will finish 8th). If on Friday you had asked me or any other political observer about what would happen in the Granite State on Tuesday, I would have said that it was a near certainty that Florida Senator Marco Rubio would come in a strong second and possibly even challenge Trump for an upset win.

That was until Rubio ran into a super storm named Chris Christie. The New Jersey Governor, in one of the most significant moment in any of the debates, set a trap for Rubio which he ran into with the speed of a world class sprinter. Christie criticized Rubio for delivering canned 30-second memorized speeches and, moments later, Rubio provided the big man with an opening that an elephant could charge through. Rubio, for the second time in a matter of minutes, went to his talking point that “Barack Obama knows exactly what he is doing.” This line (repeated four times during Saturday’s debate), is his response to the question about whether the nation should entrust the Oval Office to another first term senator (as Barack Obama was in 2008). Implicit in the question that Rubio fields all the time is that Obama has been incompetent as president. Rubio, trying to draw a distinction, has been trying to communicate that Obama is not clueless and inexperienced but is executing his liberal vision in the precise manner that he intended.

Anyway, for a man who has done so well in most of the debates, this was nearly an “oops” level gaffe, because Christie had just seconds ago made the point that Rubio delivers these pre-rehearsed lines over and over again. So, when Rubio did it with “Obama knows exactly what he is doing,” Christie bellowed “There it is! The memorized 25 second speech!” Watching it live, it looked to me like a potentially catastrophic moment for Rubio’s quest for the presidency, perhaps a lingering game-changing moment such as the one in 2011 when Rick Perry said “oops” as he lost his train of thought.

Rubio, who finished third in the Iowa caucuses last Monday, barely behind Trump for 2nd place, came into New Hampshire with a full head of steam. His surprising finish brought donations and brought endorsements from respected conservatives (including former candidates Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum). The immediate polling results showed Rubio gaining ground, which some called “Marco-mentum.”

The question is whether the devastating debate moment will crush Rubio’s campaign or merely stall the momentum he had. This is impossible to know because there are no reliable polls taken entirely after Saturday’s debate but my guess is that it was not a fatal moment but that it eliminated any chance of an upset win or even the chance of finishing a close second to Trump in Tuesday’s primary. Ironically, I’m not sure that the moment helped Christie a whole lot. He looked like a bully and, during the previous week, was really nasty, calling Rubio the “boy in the bubble.”

So, for anybody who was supporting Rubio but had second thoughts after the brutal debate moment, are they going to go to Christie just because he was the one who delivered the cut? I think not. The way Christie did it and behaved all week beforehand made him intensely unlikable to anybody who was a Rubio fan. Trump has seemingly cornered the market on the bully vote so I think that the primary beneficiaries of the moment were the other governors, Ohio Governor John Kasich and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Both Kasich and Bush had excellent debate performances, the best so far for each. Kasich, the most popular Republican among Democrats, is tailor-made for New Hampshire. Granite State voters who are not officially registered with either major party have the ability to vote for either the GOP or the Dems. This is right into Kasich’s wheelhouse. The thing that makes him most unpopular with “true conservatives” (he talks about “getting along” rather than throwing bombs) is pitch perfect for middle-of-road independent voters. But Kasich also had moments when he was able to remind the base that he does have a mostly conservative governing record.

Bush also had a good night, in particular when he took on Trump with respect to the use of eminent domain to evict people from their homes for private projects. The Donald earned boos from the audience when he put his finger up to his lips and said “quiet” to Bush. It wasn’t a terrible moment for Trump but it was a good one for Bush, who deserves credit for being the only candidate on the stage who had the guts to go toe-to-toe with Trump.

The truth is that Christie’s evisceration of Rubio early in the debate set the tone of the entire night, that experience matters, and that was to the great advantage of those who have it (mostly Kasich and Bush).

Now, the truth about Rubio’s “canned 25-second speeches” is that all candidates do it:

How many times have you heard Trump talk about “China ripping us off,” or “build a wall and have China pay for it” or “I’m the most militaristic person you know?” How many times have you heard Christie remind the audience that he is a “former federal prosecutor and the only one on this stage who has experience prosecuting terrorists.” How many times have we heard Bernie Sanders talk about the “disastrous Citizens United decision which allows millionaires and billionaires buy elections.” The point here is that, in a debate with seven people on stage in which the candidates are limited to 60 or 30 second answers, all candidates by definition revert to their stump speeches from time to time.

Bottom line: I think Rubio will be hurt by this gaffe but will recover. He has a well-funded campaign and is suddenly polling close to Trump and Ted Cruz in multiple polls in other states. Interesting that I have yet to mention the Texas Senator, the man who won the Iowa caucuses. Cruz, after going full guns blazing after Trump in the days following his victory in the Hawkeye State, played it safe in Saturday’s debate despite getting the most talking time in the early going. Cruz is clearly a finalist in the battle for the GOP nomination; regardless of where he finishes in New Hampshire, he will be formidable in South Carolina, which votes on Saturday, February 20th.

I truly have no idea where Rubio, Cruz, Bush and Kasich will finish tomorrow night.  Any could be 2nd, any could be 5th. They could also all finish in a virtual tie for 2nd, within a few hundred or thousand votes of each other. I feel fairly certain that Christie finishes in 6th place, Carly Fiorina 7th and Ben Carson 8th, as the polls predict.

Carson will soldier on to South Carolina. I’m not so sure about Christie and Fiorina; it really depends on how well-funded their campaigns are right now. With Super-PAC’s, it’s easier for candidates to stay in the race than it used to be but you still need traditional campaign donations to fund the campaign, pay staff, etc.

I feel fairly certain that if Kasich doesn’t finish second or a strong third, he will drop out of the race immediately. Christie, feeling that maybe he needs one more debate, will be inclined to stick around for it next Saturday (Feb 13th) in South Carolina no matter where he finishes. I suspect the same may be true for Fiorina, who was excluded from Saturday’s debate on ABC. If Christie and Fiorina finish 6th and 7th (as I expect), they’ll probably hang around for that debate but drop out thereafter if they don’t have any new traction in the polls.

As for Bush, he has the campaign finance to hang around and Christie’s body blow to Rubio is a boon to his campaign. I think that the only thing that might cause him to drop out is if he finishes in 5th behind Kasich, Rubio, Cruz and Christie.

Thanks for reading!

Chris Bodig