Some interesting but predictable results from the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election are in the Union Leader this morning. Democrat and Republican primary results are on this morning's front page. The numbers I have here were last updated at 7:21 this morning.
On the Democrat side the results are as follows:
| Candidate |
Votes |
Percent |
Delegates |
| Sanders |
73,470 |
25.9% |
9 |
| Buttigieg |
69,216 |
24.4% |
9 |
| Klobuchar |
55,982 |
19.8% |
6 |
| Warren |
26,266 |
9.3% |
|
| Biden |
23,813 |
8.4% |
|
| Steyer |
10,138 |
3.6% |
|
| Gabbard |
9,255 |
3.3% |
|
| Yang |
8,023 |
2.8% |
|
| Others |
7,277 |
2.6% |
|
On the Repubican side the results are as follows:
| Candidate |
Votes |
Percent |
Delegates |
| Trump |
120,147 |
85.7% |
20 |
| Weld |
12,747 |
9.1% |
|
| Write-ins |
3,511 |
2.5% |
|
| Maxwell |
864 |
<1% |
|
| Walsh |
844 |
<1% |
|
| Merrill |
485 |
<1% |
|
| Murphy |
393 |
<1% |
|
| Matern |
258 |
<1% |
|
| Others |
886 |
<1% |
|
Voter registration and primary voting breakdown were as follows:
| Party |
|
|
Registered |
|
|
Voted |
Participation
|
| Democrat |
|
|
276,385* |
|
|
283,440 |
102.55% |
| Republican |
|
|
288,464* |
|
|
140,135 |
48.58% |
| Undeclared |
|
|
415,871* |
|
|
|
|
* Party affiliation numbers are as of February 4, 2020.
Notice that more voters voted in the Democrat primary than there are registered Democrats in the state. That is because undeclared voters may vote in the New Hampshire party primaries by asking for either the Democrat or Republican ballot to take with them into the voting booth. However, undeclared primary voters must fill out a card or sign a list before leaving the polling place requesting return to undeclared status. Otherwise they are automatically registered with the party of the ballot they've chosen to submit.
So what do the numbers mean? At the moment there is no way to tell how many undeclared voters participated in the election, only that thousands did. Nor can we tell how many asked for Democrat ballots and how many asked for Republican ballots. It's a safe bet to say that the majority of undeclared voters voted for a candidate on the Democrat ballot. It's also a safe bet to say that participation rates among registered Democrats was high. The turnout rate for the Democrat primary election was 102.55% That means there was a substantial number of undeclared voters participating.
Trump winning the Republican primary was a foregone conclusion. In fact, Republican that I am, I didn't decide to vote at all until the morning of the election. Hell, I wasn't sure there was even going to be a Republican primary, but when I found out there would be, I went out to vote. Turnout rate for the Republican primary was 48.21%. If any undeclared voters turned out, I can't imagine there were a lot.
That might lead you to think that voter enthusiasm is much higher among Democrats than Republicans, but remember that votes in the Democrat primary have an impact on who gets New Hampshire's delegates. On the Republican side Trump is a lock for the presidential nomination, so there was less urgency to voting in the Republican primary. That means different rates of voter turnout do not necessarily reflect different levels of voter enthusiasm.
Consider these numbers tweeted by Brad Parscale, digital media director for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. They show the political makeup of the ticket holders for Trump's rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on the night before the primary vote.
Big Data from New Hampshire:
Several things strike me about Parscale's numbers. The capacity of the SNHU Arena is just under 12,000, so the number of tickets given out is much higher than the number who got into the arena. Trump estimated the crowd both inside and out at 40,000 to 50,000 people. I haven't found any other estimates that would indicate the size of the crowd outside, but people began lining up the day before to get inside. Camping out in the cold overnight signals a high level of Trump voter enthusiasm.
Of the voters who identified themselves as registered voters, only 41% said they were from New Hampshire. Others are reported to have traveled from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont to attend, and some maybe even farther. Approximately 4,200 of the registered voters said they did not vote in the 2016 election. Parscale does not say how many were new voters and how many were registered in 2016 but did not vote.
It's astonishing that a quarter of the tickets went to people who said they were Democrats, But it does not strike me as farfetched. After all, Trump flipped Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania from solidly blue when he won the presidency in 2016. Such a large of a percentage of ticket holders is evidence of a high level of Trump enthusiasm among a particular group of Democrats, but it's hard to say how large that group is compared to the universe of Democrats.
Going only by those numbers — from the Trump rally and the New Hampshire primary — 2020 seems to be stacking up in Trump's favor. And now the Trump campaign can begin.
Scandals contrived by Democrats to sink Trump failed. There is evidence that Democrat skullduggery and possible criminality went on in the construction of those scandals. We already know from the DOJ Inspector General's report that evidence was falsified in order to get the FISA warrants that the Obama administration used for spying on the Trump campaign. That falsification could mean that the entire basis for the Mueller investigation was illegally obtained, and if that's true, all of the charges coming out of that investigation could get tossed. And that could be just the tip of the iceberg.
We will find out — probably in bit by bit fashion — between now and November. He is the showman, that Trump. So don't be surprised if it all culminates in a Republican landslide in November.
