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.