Can anybody beat Trump in the New Hampshire primary?
How Well Can We Prevent a Republican-Gouvernor Rematch? A Comment on the Campaign of Virginia Governor Haley Ginsberg
The South Carolina electorate is very conservative, and a Trump win would make Haley very unpopular in the state that elected her governor. That will be difficult for her and her campaign to explain away.
Even if winning New Hampshire weren’t a reach, Ben Ginsberg, a retired Republican attorney who is a leading expert on the nominating process, says the deck is already stacked against her.
“If you look there was a poll that came out today: Trump is down by 7 points,” she said, pausing long enough for the crowd to begin to clap. But she had to clarify. It is against Joe Biden, by the way. Trump is down by 7 points. And I beat Biden.”
“Do you want to be scared in November or not?” she asks in a call and response near the end of her stump speech. “Do you want your kids to be proud in November or not? Let’s do it.
As she closes out her campaign in New Hampshire, Haley is imploring voters to give her a chance to prevent a Biden-Trump rematch few in America seem to really want.
Haley and her allies have run at least 31 million dollars in ads in New Hampshire. More than $5 million of it in the past week according to an NPR analysis of data from the tracking firm Ad Impact. Trump and his allies have spent less.
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“Now we have the chance to change the election for our entire country,” he says. Nikki is the only one who can beat Donald Trump.
He said that if enough Republicans and independents got a sense of sanity, they would be less interested in drama and even pettiness. We think we’re tired of pettiness. That’s what Haley would take away from us.
A couple of days earlier at Grill 603 in Milford, N.H., the former South Carolina governor delivered her now-familiar pitch that she is the most electable Republican in the race.
She was talking about a hypothetical general election result and not the primary, though she was referring to a poll. There are no public polls that show her ahead of Trump in New Hampshire. At multiple daily events in the lead up to the primary, Haley has tried to connect one on one with potential supporters, including 10-year-old Hadley Craig.
I told you from the beginning I wanted to be strong in Iowa. Haley snapped back at reporters when they asked about her path to victory.
It was the opposite in 2008. Hillary Clinton got choked up during an event answering a question from a voter. That gained lots of attention and may have actually turned around her fortunes in the Granite State.
The First 100 Years of the New Hampshire Primaries: Eleven Years After, and Why Is He Still Standing Against His Oath
Muskie said it changed people’s minds about what kind of guy he was. “They were looking for a strong, steady man, and here I was, weak.”
A couple of examples stand out. The letter was planted by Richard Nixon’s campaign. Edmund Muskie, a leading Democrat, was accused of using an ethnic slur, which caused him to cry in public, and also of defending his wife, whom a local newspaper accused of liking to tell dirty jokes and smoke cigarettes.
If there is a similar election in any state, the presidential primary election must be held on the second Tuesday in March or earlier if the secretary of state deems it necessary.
For more than 100 years, New Hampshire has been the first state to vote in primaries. People in the state take a particular pride in the kind of retail campaigning and town halls it has traditionally taken to win the state. New Hampshire has had a rebel streak as evidenced by the fact that Trump has upended those traditions.
That had an impact on the GOP too. Democrats made changes to open up the primary process. More states gained influence, and New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status was threatened.
In 1968, Johnson’s win over McCarthy was an early sign of his unpopularity with his party. LBJ decided against running. McCarthy was popular with anti-war Democrats, but he was snubbed at the 1968 Democratic convention. The party selected Hubert Humphrey as its nominee, and that inflamed an already volatiles situation in Chicago outside the convention hall between police and protesters.
It had an almost immediate impact. In 1952, with the Korean War continuing, Democratic President Harry Truman was unpopular and lost the New Hampshire primary. He decided against running for another term. Republican Dwight Eisenhower was the party’s nominee, despite being seen as the party’s choice by the establishment.
It’s why former Governor of New Hampshire John Sununu used to speak about the early states that made up the presidential race.
It has resurrected the campaigns of candidates thought to be finished in the primary, or solidified a candidate’s position. John McCain, who was trailing in the polls and ran out of money, went to New Hampshire and won the Republican nomination even though he didn’t have a lot of money.
Bill Clinton’s closer-than-expected second-place finish in 1992 led to him being labeled the “Comeback Kid,” and he won the nomination. Sixteen years later, Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, was trailing Barack Obama in the polls after his surprise Iowa win. But Hillary Clinton pulled out the victory in New Hampshire. She didn’t win the nomination but her New Hampshire win made a difference in the race and resulted in a long, drawn out primary fight.
This is perhaps the biggest difference in the Iowa caucuses. Not only is this a state-run primary, rather than party-run caucuses, New Hampshire also allows independents, or undeclared voters, to cast a ballot in either the Republican or Democratic primary.
In addition to being generally a more moderate, suburban and less religious set of Republican voters than in Iowa, undeclared voters make up almost 40% of the state’s registered voters.
Even though most of the coverage has centered around the leading Republican candidates, there will be two dozen names that New Hampshire voters will see, including candidates who have already dropped out of the race. (Here’s a sample ballot.)
Among Democrats, it’s similar to 21 people including Paperboy Love Prince and Vermin Supreme. President Biden won’t be included.
New Hampshire’s primary won’t be counted in this year’s Democratic primary, because the Democratic Party demoted it in favor of South Carolina, which propelled Biden to the 2020 nomination.
The party establishment has to hope for a write-in victory for Biden. Otherwise, it would be a major black eye for the president.
The New Hampshire Primary: A Big Foot Outfit for a Big Foot, or How to Get Your Occasion Before Choosing a Presidential Candidate
Phillips, a wealthy former co-owner of Talenti Gelato, and a group supporting him have spent $5 million in ads in New Hampshire, including one employing Big Foot, or at least a man in a Big Foot outfit … or is it?
Secretary of State David Scanlan is predicting a record turnout of 322,000 for the GOP primary. The Republican turnout record is 282,979 set in 2016. New Hampshire traditionally has been one of the states with the highest participation rates in the country.
In the 1960’s and 70’s, the most notable example of this is Dixville Notch, which predicted the eventual Republican nominee in each election. That was broken in 2016 when it supported Kasich over Trump. The town is only 20 miles from the Canadian border and has a population of 5. The vote in 2016 for Kasich was 3-2.
Some of the most rural towns in the state make use of the flexibility in their hours to get some attention by starting voting at midnight.
All polling places must be open from at least 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. ET at a minimum, according to the Secretary of State’s office. Some polling locations have earlier hours or extend theirs, but all polls will be closed by 8:00 p.m. ET. (You can find hours for each polling location here.)
Source: 10 questions about the New Hampshire primary, including, ‘Can anyone beat Trump?’
How General Will Donald Trump Win the Republican Presidential Nomina? The Survey of New Hampshire, Haley’s Support, and the Prescriptions of the Crying
The survey underscored, though, Trump’s potential general-election problems. According to a poll, twothirds of the electorate of New Hampshire think he shouldn’t have immunity.
While New Hampshire certainly features a more moderate electorate than Iowa, there may be a ceiling to Haley’s potential support. New Hampshire has surprised voters before the presidential elections and will again on Tuesday.
Almost the entire Republican Party believes that Donald Trump will win the GOP nomination again and is behind him, unlike a minority of ex-candidates who are against him.
Former President Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses in a blowout last week, confirming his dominance with conservatives. Candidates have dropped out and endorsed Trump, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who did so on Sunday.
The party will award delegates based on the caucus. Trump will be on that ballot but Haley won’t. Haley will be on the primary ballot, but Trump won’t.
South Carolina is on Feb. 24. There are about $9 million in ads that have been run in Iowa and New Hampshire, less than in a place where he leads by a large amount in the polls.
It’s possible that Trump ends up with the nomination by the end of March. It will be, for anyone not named Trump, all over but the crying, as the song goes.
The First Counting Winner of the 2024 New Hampshire Primary: Nikki Haley’s Voting in Dixville Notch, N.H.
snowmobilers, Nordic skiers, hikers and golfers can all find a place in the winter and summer at Dixville Notch. For the primary, it had four registered Republicans and two undeclared voters.
Otten did not agree with those who said the New Hampshire primary had fallen flat, with President Joe Biden not on the ballot, and Republican contender Ron DeSantis withdrawing in the last minute.
It’s special. It really is,” Otten said. Everybody votes in a community where there’s 100% participation. None of the six of us can complain about the outcome of the election, because we’ve participated.”
The voting took place in a new location, the living room of Tillotson House, with the Balsams Resort undergoing renovations. It made for a good setting, with a golden retriever named Maxine greeting the media and voters.
DIXville Notch, N.H. The six registered voters of tiny Dixville Notch in New Hampshire all cast their ballots for Nikki Haley at midnight on Tuesday, giving her a clean sweep over former President Donald Trump and all the other candidates.
The resort town was the first place in the nation to vote in the 2024 primaries. The voters were outnumbered more than 10-to-1 by reporters from every corner of the globe — not to mention by a pile of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.
With such a tiny sample of voters, the results are not typically indicative of how an election will end up. But they do provide for an early curiosity.
