How New Hampshire Voted

Surprise, surprise: Some of Clinton’s best towns (perhaps more accurate: least worst towns) tonight were some of her weakest towns in 2008. It looks like she’s taken 46 percent in Exeter, 43 percent in Portsmouth and 43 percent in Concord. Most surprisingly, there’s even one report she took 47 percent in Hanover, home to Dartmouth College (this has not yet been reported by the AP). Clinton appears to be doing better with academic types in New Hampshire this time, but has cratered with rural and blue collar Democrats.

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.