What Went Down In The New Hampshire Primary

There are a lot of ways to think about divisions in the Democratic Party. I tend to think about it as having three parts: a moderate, establishment wing; an economically left/populist wing; and a wing that centers the issues of African Americans, Latinos and other minorities (such as immigration, criminal justice reform and other identity-linked justice concerns). I wryly predicted about two years ago that the first two groups, who I perceived to be predominantly white, would coalesce in 2020 and exclude the third.

How does this prediction look now? Well, I didn’t get everything right. For one thing, Biden – despite a shaky record on race – has been leading with minority voters, especially black voters. It’s also important not to erase Sanders’ minority support, especially among younger voters. But Jelani Cobb made this observation tonight:

Cobb’s point about the ways in which the leading candidates have built their political careers on “tough on crime” rhetoric and policy that has harmed black communities and individuals is consistent with a book that I keep coming back to: Paul Frymer’s “Uneasy Alliances.” Frymer explains how African Americans have been a “captured” constituency for Democrats, voting loyally for the party while Democratic politicians have tried to avoid being too closely associated with black issues and interests. That’s done real harm to people, but it does help to explain why the field has sustained candidates with such fraught records, and why candidates of color have, at this point, all but disappeared.

Yes, Amelia! Good point. I think there is still a “lane” out there of voters who want to support a woman. At least last year, a majority of Democrats said it was important that a woman be on the ticket.

I wonder what Obama thinks about the Obama-Buttigieg comparisons 🤔

Well, fire up the Obama comparisons over here at the Buttigieg event. One of the opening speakers is making the 2008 Obama comparison to 2020 Buttigieg. It’s a favorite of the campaign.

Warren was polling around 13, 14 percent in New Hampshire before tonight. I wonder if Sanders had already picked up some of the very liberal voters from Warren or if some more traditional Democrats who were looking to move on from Warren and found Klobuchar appealing. This goes to the point that people keep making — the voters aren’t necessarily in lanes, even if party elites/activists are.

Eh, Warren only underperformed her polls by a few points.

With 79 percent of precincts reporting, there is now a 1.7-point difference separating Sanders (26 percent) and Buttigieg (24.3 percent). This is the closest the two have been all evening.

Oh Amelia, that’s a great point about Sanders not really picking up much support despite Warren underperforming her polls (he’s not really overperforming). I hadn’t thought of that.

Isn’t it also telling that Sanders doesn’t seem to be benefiting significantly from Warren crumbling in New Hampshire tonight? That seems like not a great omen for him.

In response to Micah’s question, I think in a race with this many candidates, all candidates are factional candidates to some extent, like Dan said. And we are only two primaries in. But I see Sanders as having three blocs he is doing well with: very liberal voters, young voters and non-college educated voters. Some of those people are the same, but not all of them. And it seems like Buttigieg has moderates but also “somewhat liberal” people. I can imagine in future states that Sanders might gain younger black voters and Latino voters, so he might be able to assemble a coalition that is a bit weird but is more than 25 percent. I could also see Buttigieg doing well with Asian, black and Latino college graduates in subsequent states.

Random weird thing that could be a data error, but in Pittsburg, New Hampshire — a very small town at the northern tip of the state along the Canadian border — perennial candidate Henry Hewes got about 19 percent of the vote to finish second to Buttigieg there (based on just 75 total votes). Hewes describes himself on Twitter as “Pro-Life and a Great Debater.” Again, maybe this is an error, but …

OK, we’ve got movement here at the Buttigieg event — people are speaking at the podium. We might get a speech soon. I have a feeling the Sanders/Buttigieg teams are playing chicken, trying to see who can get on TV last to have the final word.

The media narrative often focuses on the “surprise” candidate who outperformed polls, rather than the winner. That benefits Klobuchar. But she got almost no national bump out of Iowa and has little support so far in the next states, so she would need a large continued media focus to make up ground.

In the Republican primary, Bill Weld is at about 9 percent, Trump 86 percent. The president is very popular among Republicans. But I wonder if his success in snuffing out a real primary challenge is also a combination of:

1. GOP elected officials canceling primaries in some states, making the path really hard for a challenger.
2. No real credible challenger (say, Kasich or Romney) running against him.
3. The media, myself included, not covering the GOP primary, in part because of the first two reasons and also because Trump creates so much chaos I don’t have time to cover much else.

Micah, I’d say Sanders has not yet proven that he is more than a factional candidate. To be fair, none of these candidates have really proved that. That said, I’m not sure that means there’s a ceiling to his support. I do think, however, he needs to make more overtures to moderate voters to grow his base. I say that because about half of voters said Sanders was too liberal in the exit polls, which means there is a fairly large share of the electorate Sanders’s message isn’t reaching.

In response to Micah’s question, my question is this: Who at this stage is not a factional candidate?

I saw someone make this point earlier and I can’t remember who, so apologies, but is it significant that Sanders (about whom there are questions whether he’s a factional candidate) will finish in New Hampshire with ~26 percent or so and Trump (who also faced questions about being a factional candidate) won with 35 percent? That is, has Sanders yet to prove that he is not a factional candidate? Or are we making the same mistake many (including some of us) made with Trump in assuming that there’s some type of ceiling on Sanders’s support, when there isn’t?

The votes continue to trickle in, but this is heading for a delegate allocation that looks something like:

Sanders: 9

Buttigieg: 9

Klobuchar: 6

There just aren’t that many delegates to go around, and the candidates are too clustered together to see much separation in the delegate count.

Among voters who prioritize beating Trump (about 6 in 10 voters said they preferred a candidate who could beat Trump over someone who agrees with them on the issues), exit polls have Klobuchar in third behind Buttigieg and Sanders, according to The Washington Post. Sanders leads among voters who prioritize issues, with 39 percent.

I feel especially bad for Yang’s supporters tonight! And in particular, I feel bad for the Lyft driver who picked me up from the Warren party. I was chatting with him about the night and mentioned that Yang had dropped out — and it turns out he was a Yang supporter who hadn’t heard the news yet! He seemed very bummed out. And I felt bad for bumming him out. Sad feelings all around.

Nathaniel, that’s absolutely true. As long as we’re talking water park/voting correlations, I will say that Sanders is ahead by 3 points in Portsmouth, home of Water Country. Great jingle. (C’mon Salem, give me some votes to talk about.)

Joshua, the Boston Tea Party is hands-down the best ride at Canobie Lake Park.

Salem is my personal Iowa right now. I need those results. Here’s a picture of the Boston Tea Party waterslide at Salem’s Canobie Lake Park while we wait.

An interesting tidbit in the exit polls — it’s Klobuchar, not Buttigieg, who has an outsize share of voters who attend religious services weekly. That’s noteworthy because Buttigieg is quite religious, and has been making the case that he can reach religious voters. That doesn’t seem to have been the case here in New Hampshire! Sanders, less surprisingly, has the edge among voters who never attend religious services.

With Buttigieg and Sanders neck and neck, seems like a good moment to share this video of a New Hampshire Trump supporter who likes (well, doesn’t hate) Buttigieg. We filmed him on a frozen lake after a day of ice fishing:

These are incomplete results (67 percent reporting), but so far, not just is Sanders underperforming his 2016 vote share — but he’s underperforming it more in the places in which he did particularly well in 2016.

Sanders’s ability to appeal to Latino voters in delegate-rich California has been really interesting to me. (This is a good example.) Some of the people The New York Times talked to cited his family’s immigrant experience.

Sanders just netted about 500 votes more than Buttigieg out of Durham, which is where the University of New Hampshire is and where he held his concert/rally last night.

Now is not the time for this, but I have a lukewarm take at some point that electability would be a much more coherent concept if instead it were called “chances against Trump.” There is probably some correlation between chances against Trump and how you do in the primaries, but it’s a messy one and a lot of the hot takes about it are kind of dumb.

Amelia, if I were Warren, I would get on the phone with former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (who reportedly is a big Warren fan) and ask him to deploy the nuclear option — i.e., make his famous Nevada field organization go to work for her.

The close result also may continue to delay attacks on Sanders, even as he moves into a national lead. It certainly did not help Biden to go negative, but it also did not help Warren to stay above the fray. Warren and Biden are losing support from multiple directions so it’s not clear they can focus their attacks.

Maybe Warren comes out swinging in the next debate? That’s what a couple of her supporters at the primary party told me they want her to do. They think she hasn’t been standing out enough, which feels like kind of a fair critique of her past few debate performances. And at this point, she might need a Hail Mary.

We are in a weird place for someone like Klobuchar and Buttigieg, because we now have polls suggesting that Bloomberg is improving among black voters. So he might be attracting support in diverse Super Tuesday states and later ones, too. But he’s not on the ballot in Nevada or South Carolina, so what do voters of color do in the meantime even if they’re moving toward him? Stick with Biden a bit? Move to Buttigieg or Klobuchar? Those two haven’t attracted much nonwhite support. Move to Sanders? That’s possible, especially among Latino voters, but I’m skeptical about black voters moving firmly into Sanders’s camp considering their relative moderation and political pragmatism (as seen by Bloomberg’s increasing support).

Nate and Galen walk and talk about the Klobucharge! (I tried to get my Aaron Sorkin on without a steadicam.)

Ha, well, you can bet candidates will be eager to replicate Klobuchar’s success on the stage, which seems to have been one key component of her performance tonight, according to exit polls.

With all of this in mind, how crucial is the debate next week?

Yeah, I think Buttigieg is probably much better funded and organized than Klobuchar in upcoming states, just because he has had several great fundraising quarters.

It’s not like Buttigieg has ignored Nevada: according to his website, he already has 11 field offices there. That’s more than Sanders’ 10 offices.

Micah, the national polls that came out after Iowa did not show Klobuchar or Buttigieg making up any major ground with voters of color. It was Sanders who was showing strength, leading among Latinos and other voters of color by margins larger than Biden’s lead among black voters.

Steyer (Nevada and South Carolina) and Bloomberg (Super Tuesday states) have been courting black leaders. Biden is still in the race. Sanders has strong numbers with black voters under 40 and Latino voters broadly. I think it’s less that Buttigieg and Klobuchar are disliked by black or Latino voters and more that those voters might simply like other candidates better. Buttigieg and Klobuchar have campaigned for months in Iowa and New Hampshire. They won’t have that kind of time in future states. We are headed towards a phase of the campaign that rewards national media attention, television advertising and a familiar brand. I don’t think that’s great for Buttigieg or Klobuchar. They will get some media attention, but Klobuchar in particular I don’t think has enough money for a big TV budget.

Just an update from the restless room at the Buttigieg rally. Every once in a while, a cheer goes up as John King dissects a positive county result for Buttigieg on CNN. There are some “President Pete” cheers that are happening often enough to grate on this reporter’s nerves (it’s done in the “USA! USA!” cadence). Mostly people are keeping an eye on the margins between Sanders and Buttigieg. And, of course, keeping an eye out for Kevin Costner.

I also wonder if other moderate candidates have an opening with voters of color in a state like Nevada now that Biden isn’t looking so hot. Today, an organizer for a Latino advocacy group in Nevada pointed out to me that Buttigieg has been staffing up in Nevada. If Buttigieg did well among, say, Latinos in Nevada, that could help dispel some of the concerns about his outreach to voters of color. But of course, that’s a big “if” at this point.

That’s a great question, Micah. As Nathaniel said, we don’t currently have any evidence of either Klobuchar or Buttigieg doing well with voters who aren’t white. Overall, their bread and butter seems to be white, college-educated voters, so I’m very curious how either of them do in a state like Nevada or South Carolina. My one argument for why Klobuchar might have an edge is that she has more government experience. I think that might appeal to more moderate black voters in South Carolina, who seem interested in a candidate who has that kind of experience (at least, that’s one reason why I think Biden has done so well there).

Well, Klobuchar doesn’t seem to have factored in The Washington Post’s January poll of black Democratic voters, whereas Buttigieg won 2 percent.

Micah, I think that’s going to be one of the biggest questions out of tonight. Klobuchar hasn’t shown strength with voters of color so far, but maybe they will be casting around for a new candidate with Biden on the ropes. I’ll be looking to see what national polls say for the next week or so (plus, obviously, Nevada and South Carolina polls).

Are there reasons to think Klobuchar can make a stronger New Hampshire showing than Buttigieg? In a lot of ways, she’s a more impressive/formidable candidate, but does she have some of the same issues as Mayor Pete (namely, appealing to nonwhite voters)?

As we’ve noted before, the party composition of the electorate this year has shifted — quite possibly because of the lack of a competitive Republican primary, which means that independents might have been more interested in voting in the Democratic primary. The percent of independents voting in 2020 isn’t as high as it was in 2004, but at 46 percent, it’s higher than the percentage that turned out in 2016.

You know, earlier tonight turnout looked to be lagging a bit behind the 2008 Democratic primary and slightly ahead of the 2016 race. But since then, it’s looking more likely it’ll match 2008. Looking at places that are 100 percent reporting and comparing their turnout in 2008 and 2016, the 2020 Democratic primary is now only 1 percent behind turnout in 2008 and is about 14 percent ahead of the 2016 primary.

Less noticed, given the last-minute Klobuchar surge, is that Buttigieg did get a significant bounce out of Iowa despite the messy results. He’s currently 11 percentage points above his pre-Iowa polls in New Hampshire. Early national polls also show a bump, but much smaller.

That odd noise? Oh, that’s political scientists the nation over searching for long-lost copies of Klobuchar’s book from the 1980s on the politics of the Metrodome.