The 2012 New Hampshire Primary

Last week I wrote about the Republican results in the Iowa caucuses, so here are my thoughts on the New Hampshire primary. First, the results, with about 95% reporting:

Mitt Romney 95669 (39.4%)
Ron Paul 55455 (22.8%)
Jon Huntsman 40903 (16.8%)
Newt Gingrich 22921 (9.4%)
Rick Santorum 22708 (9.3%)
Rick Perry 1709 (0.7%)
Buddy Roemer 919 (0.4%)

1. The polls mostly got this one right. They suggested that Romney would win with between 33-42% of the vote. They suggested that Paul and Huntsman would fight for 2nd with about 20% of the vote; the thing the polls were most wrong about was that it was never very close. The polls suggested Gingrich and Santorum would struggle for 4th around 9-11%; Gingrich was mostly ahead by 200 votes or less as the results came in, although Santorum briefly caught him for a little while, and it’s still feasible that the last 5% could push him ahead again. Finally, the polls suggested Perry and Roemer would battle for 6th place with about 1%; they were mostly right again, except that neither of him hit the 1% threshold and Perry was healthily ahead of Roemer all night.

2. Mitt Romney had a strong finish. Unlike Iowa, where Romney essentially managed to repeat his 2008 performance in terms of voters and percentages, Romney handily beat his 2008 numbers in both percentage (less than 33%) and raw numbers (around 75,000; he will get close to 100,000 from NH this time). Some early returns suggested he might only get around 35%, but that number started climbing, reaching 38% by the time I went to bed and past 39% by the time I woke up. I don’t know how his performance will affect the polls for the next Primary – South Carolina on Saturday the 21st – but it can’t be too encouraging for his opponents.

3. Ron Paul had a strong performance. Paul had gotten 24% in a poll a few days ago, but more recently had come in around 17-20%, so it was great to see him get almost 23%. He more than doubled his 2008 totals in Iowa, and he almost tripled them in New Hampshire (from 7.8%); “peak Paul” theory still has not been proven. Hopefully his 2nd place finish will cause traditional Republicans to be open to giving him a second chance; his most glaring weakness is his strong unfavorability ratings. I can’t find it now, but I think I saw a poll for Florida (the fourth state to vote) that showed most candidates with positive favorability ratings (like 50 to 30 or something) but Paul had something like 35 favorable to 47 unfavorable. It will be interesting to see what kind of media coverage this generates as well.

4. Jon Huntsman had an OK performance. Huntsman is kind of competing with Romney as a moderate-ish Mormon candidate, and he was the only regular candidate (i.e. been in most of the debates, etc) who hadn’t surged to double-digits anywhere until he started surging in New Hampshire a few days ago. He didn’t catch Paul for second like some polls suggested, but 17% of the vote is still pretty good. It will be interesting to see how that translates to South Carolina, where he was last seen in the low single digits.

5. Santorum had a fairly weak performance. Santorum is kind of like this cycle’s Huckabee, but not as strong. Huckabee handily won Iowa in 2008 and coasted to a third-place finish in the more moderate New Hampshire. Santorum tied Romney for first in Iowa and is struggling for a fourth-or-fifth-place finish in New Hampshire. It feels like he’s still competing with Gingrich for a lot of the social conservative constituency, and they’re both pretty equivalent both nationally and in the next state of South Carolina. If either dropped out and threw their support to the other they would have a stronger chance of overcoming Romney, but they have different strengths and it’s a game of political chicken for now – we’re looking at the potential of a three-way fight between Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum for South Carolina (Many will point out, for instance, if Gingrich dropped, Santorum might soar to a huge lead).

6. Buddy Roemer couldn’t beat the floundering Perry. I had hoped that, after a bit of media coverage and hopeful polls following Iowa, Roemer might beat a floundering candidate who had still been allowed to debate and so forth, but the name recognition was hard to overcome, and Perry had a 0.7% or so lead over Roemer’s 0.4% all night. Still, that’s an impressive improvement over his 0.00025% finish in Iowa just a week ago!

As for me, I hope Paul continues to get more attention. As I’ve said elsewhere, even though I’m really as confident as he is about his foreign policy and monetary policy, the issue of civil liberty is so important, and so under attack right now, that for now I’m supporting him if for no other reason than to give attention to the fact that I and so many others think it’s so important. He’s the only major candidate (to my knowledge) who has said anything about opposing SOPA and NDAA, and those are just the most recent and pressing examples, to say nothing of Paul’s consistent opposition to the encroachment of our freedoms by the “war” on terrorism and the “war” on drugs over the last decade. (Buddy Roemer opposes SOPA and NDAA too, and I’m hoping he continues to get some more attention.) It was unthinkable four years ago that Paul would take third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire; we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.