Updated |
How New Hampshire Voted
| CANDIDATE | TOTAL VOTES | VOTE PERCENTAGE | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | Donald Trump | 44,980 | 34.2% | |
| 2 | John Kasich | 21,046 | 16.0 | |
| 3 | Ted Cruz | 15,302 | 11.6 | |
| 4 | Jeb Bush | 14,776 | 11.2 | |
| 5 | Marco Rubio | 13,725 | 10.4 | |
| 6 | Chris Christie | 10,280 | 7.8 | |
| 7 | Carly Fiorina | 5,735 | 4.4 | |
| 8 | Ben Carson | 2,990 | 2.3 |
Tonight’s victory speeches include the “political revolution” Sanders called for and Trump admitting that his ground game in Iowa wasn’t up to snuff. The crowd chanted “USA” during interludes in Trump’s speech, and Trump himself played around with the “nice Trump”/pugilist dichotomy. “I’d like to congratulate the other candidates,” he said at one point, quickly parrying: “Now that I got that over with! …” As he heads to South Carolina, surfacing the “nice Trump” and running a tight ground game may be critically important. Although Trump leads in South Carolina, Cruz’s following among evangelical voters may sway votes in numbers larger than polls indicate. That’s what happened in Iowa. (I’m also struck by how domestically focused Sanders’s speech was compared with a large focus on trade and world influence in Trump’s speech.)
To a first approximation, I agree with this tweet from New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza:
But one irony is that the Republican Party finally did seem to be doing a bit of deciding — Rubio received 10 endorsements, including quite a few high-profile ones, between the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. The failures more came earlier in the election cycle, when the party didn’t do a good job of clearing the field or vetting its candidates. It’s like when you leave for the airport with exactly enough time to get to your gate. Maybe you’ll make it, but you have no one to blame but yourself if you encounter a long security line and miss your flight instead.