How New Hampshire Voted

In their book “Why Iowa?” David Redlawsk, Caroline Tolbert and Todd Donovan argue that early contests allow candidates to demonstrate viability and electability — they show voters in later contests that they can win the nomination and be competitive for the general election. Tonight’s victories have probably done a lot for perceptions of viability for Sanders and Trump. But what about electability? I’ve argued before that Trump might be more electable than he seems. Maybe that’s true of Sanders too. But, based on my experience studying political rhetoric, I’m not sure either of these speeches sounded like a successful general election candidate quite yet. We probably want to see some more contests — in more populous and diverse states — before the electability question is resolved.

Just as he was during his concession speech in Iowa, Trump was a standard, polite politician during his New Hampshire victory speech — for the first couple of minutes, anyway. As Farai pointed out, the transition came — with normal Trump un-subtlety — with, “Now that I got that over with!” Then Trump took a more Trumpian path: He’ll strengthen the border, rebuild the military, preserve the Second Amendment and make America great again “the good ol’ fashioned way” — because he has friends, because he loves his supporters and because his supporters love him.

The next two states to vote in the Democratic primary are Nevada and South Carolina. (Nevada votes before South Carolina for Democrats; the reverse is true for Republicans.) In both cases, there’s been a conspicuous absence of polling: Nevada hasn’t been polled since December, and South Carolina was polled a few times in January but hasn’t been surveyed since Iowa. Still, one thing that’s clear is that the terrain is going to be tougher for Sanders from here forward. Here are the current FiveThirtyEight polling averages for Clinton and Sanders in all of the states where we’re keeping track of them.

FiveThirtyEight polling averages as of Feb. 9

DATE	STATE	CLINTON	SANDERS
2/20	Nevada	50.3	28.1
2/27	South Carolina	60.5	29.3
3/8	Michigan	59.9	29.0
3/15	Florida	61.0	26.0
3/15	North Carolina	55.9	28.3
3/15	Ohio	52.8	38.6
4/5	Wisconsin	45.6	43.4
4/26	Pennsylvania	51.4	28.0
6/7	California	46.3	32.9

Sanders has a bright spot in Wisconsin, and Ohio and California look better for him than some of the other states. But he starts way behind Clinton in most other places and will need a lot of momentum out of tonight.