Trump and Biden Win New Hampshire!
Shockingly, both "incumbents" are going to win their party's 2024 nominations.
CNN (“Trump wins New Hampshire GOP primary as Haley says she’s staying in race“):
Former President Donald Trump took a huge step toward winning a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination Tuesday, winning the New Hampshire primary in a one-on-one matchup with his last challenger standing, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Haley vowed to remain in the Republican race, saying she’ll now focus on the February 24 primary in her home state of South Carolina. As Haley seeks to prove she remains a viable contender, President Joe Biden began preparations for a general election rematch with Trump.
NPR (“Biden wins the New Hampshire primary after Democrats write him on the ballot“):
President Biden won the New Hampshire Democratic primary on Tuesday, an unusual race that he skipped after his party changed its rules in favor of seeing South Carolina hold the first nominating contest of the year.
As a result, Biden wasn’t on the printed ballot. But Biden won regardless, according to a race call by The Associated Press.
The victory comes after a grassroots campaign urged Democrats to write in his name and a super PAC raised about $1.5 million to back the effort.
For the record, Trump won 164,700 votes (54.5%) to Haley’s 129,646 (43.2%), with no other candidate cracking the 1% mark. Biden got 54,570 votes (51.5%) to Dean Phillips’ 20,976 (19.8%), Marianne Williamson’s 5016 (4.7%), and Derek Nadeau’s 1180 (1.1%). “Unprocessed write-in” got 14,967 votes (14.1%) and “Other write-in” got 6583 (6.2%).
Neither result, of course, was a surprise. The Democratic “contest” was more disorderly because it’s not an official event, so there’s not much point in analyzing the support of the vanity candidates.
But, of course, you can’t sell papers with that kind of thinking.
AP (“New Hampshire takeaways: Trump’s path becomes clearer. So does the prospect of a rematch with Biden“):
This time, New Hampshire didn’t surprise.
Instead, its famously fickle voters stuck to the script of delivering a ringing ratification of the front-runner, Donald Trump, the former president. His victory over a defiant Nikki Haley cemented his hold on core Republican voters and substantially reduced the chances of any challenger overtaking him.
Never before has a presidential candidate won the first two contests on the primary nomination calendar — as Trump has now done — and failed to emerge as the party’s general election nominee, substantially increasing the already quite likely prospect of a rematch between him and President Joe Biden.
Even so, there were signs of restiveness among voters for both men. Here are some key takeaways from Tuesday’s New Hampshire Primary.
POLITICO (“Tonight’s results show voters’ discontent with Biden and Trump“):
More than three-quarters of the vote is in, and the discontent is clear: More than two in five voters so far favored someone other than Trump or Biden.
The looming rematch of the 2020 election has become even likelier in recent weeks — and both presidents emerged from New Hampshire on a glide path toward their party’s nominations. But more than 148,000 voters so far — about 42 percent of ballots counted so far — voted for challengers like Nikki Haley, Dean Phillips, or others.
On the Republican side, Trump seems poised to win about 55 percent of the GOP primary vote, while 45 percent of Republican primary voters chose someone else. Biden should come in closer to two-thirds of the Democratic primary, depending on the breakdown of the remaining write-ins and the final tallies in outstanding towns.
POLITICO (“After Trump’s NH win, Biden gets the opponent he wants“):
The general election has all but begun — and it’s the race President Joe Biden’s team wanted.
Former President Donald Trump’s victory in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday dealt a blow to the hopes of his strongest challenger and strengthened Trump’s hold on his party’s nomination. Biden’s reelection team took Trump’s win over Nikki Haley as the starting gun for what will now be the longest and most grueling general election campaign in modern American political history.
Those aides believe that Trump poses a far greater threat to the nation’s democracy than any of his Republican rivals would. But they also feel the most confident about their chances in that looming matchup. That’s despite some reasons for concern — top among them Biden’s low approval ratings and recent polls showing the president trailing Trump in key battlegrounds. A wide swath of his own party doesn’t want Biden to seek a second term.
AP (“Why AP isn’t using ‘presumptive nominee’ to describe leading presidential candidates“):
There often comes a time in modern presidential campaigns when the last bit of drama has been drained out of a party nomination fight and the crowning of the eventual standard-bearer seems like a foregone conclusion. But we’re not there yet.
Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump are the front-runners for their respective parties’ presidential nominations. Though you may start to hear them referred to as their parties’ “presumptive nominees,” The Associated Press only uses that term once a candidate has captured the number of delegates needed to win a majority vote at the national party conventions this summer.
That point won’t come until after more states have voted. For both Republicans and Democrats, the earliest it could happen is March.
WaPo (“How soon could Trump have the nomination wrapped up?“):
Donald Trump is on track to make this the shortest primary in recent presidential history.
Just two states have voted so far. But he has won both, and a look at the math and polling in the states to come suggest that Trump could win the nomination by mid-March — even though former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley says she’s staying in the race, and voting goes through June.
The last time the nominee in a competitive primary was evident so quickly was in 2004. In recent elections, the primary in both parties has been drawn out until May or even June.
Trump is on track to win the Republican presidential nomination mathematically, by securing enough delegates to be the party’s nominee, and politically, by having everyone assume there are no viable competitors left who can beat him.
[…]
There are 2,429 delegates awarded in the Republican primary. To secure the nomination, a candidate needs to win 1,215 delegates, which is exactly one more than half of the total.
So far, only 62 have been awarded, but half of them have gone to Trump.
“If you look at the calendar and the number of delegates awarded, the earliest time mathematically someone could get to 1,215 is March 12,” said Nicole Schlinger, an Iowa-based Republican consultant.
But that would require winning every single delegate, and not even Trump can wrap up the nomination that quickly. That’s because in many states, the second-place winner gets delegates, too.
WaPo (“Haley faces uphill odds as GOP race goes to South Carolina“):
Nikki Haley’s underdog campaign against Donald Trump for the GOP nomination next ventures to surprisingly unfriendly territory: her home state.
Haley pledged to stay in the 2024 primary after Trump romped to a second primary victory on Tuesday night, winning New Hampshire by 11 percentage points with nearly 86 percent of the vote tallied. Trump on Tuesday night ridiculed Haley’s performance as fellow Republicans rallied behind him, boosting his formidable advantages ahead of the South Carolina primary.
Speaking to supporters at a watch party on Tuesday night, the former South Carolina governor acknowledged Trump’s win and said “he earned it.”
“New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation. This race is far from over,” Haley said, adding later: “But South Carolina voters don’t want a coronation. They want an election. And we’re going to give them one because we are just getting started.”
So—who knows?—anyone could win this thing.
Damn, I was sure it would be Cenk Uygur.
I know the polls suggest otherwise, but it’s worth remembering that in 2020, Biden lost both Iowa and New Hampshire, so there is historic precedent for party reevaluations after the caucus and first primary.
Also, for those sid-eyeing the Democrats for a lack of a primary, the Republicans did the exact same thing that year too.
[Copying this over from the open thread, if for no other reason than I can get the formatting and spelling right]
Trump again just clearing 50%, with Haley as almost the generic non-Trump candidate getting over 40%. And by the time all the write ins are counted Biden will be over 60%, as a write in.
Of course it is terrible for the country that Trump is going to be a major party nominee, but given that, these results are good news.
@mattbernius: In this case, the Dems have intentionally re-arranged their primary schedule so that tiny, lily-white states aren’t first. It’s just that New Hampshire is having a snit about it.
@MarkedMan: While I think it’s right that Trump is more unpopular with Republicans than Biden is with Democrats, I don’t think we can glean much from the non-primary in New Hampshire. Nikki Haley is at least a plausible President, in a way that Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson are not.
@James Joyner: Completely James. And it was a plan that Biden heavily supported!
Conversely, Iowa and New Hampshire demographically are far more in line with the core demographics of the Republican party–so that arguably makes them more predictive.
I realize my first post was confusing. It was an argument for Haley to stay in the race and to not let a caucus and single small state primary determine a party’s nominee.
I’m guessing Haley is betting on the long odds Lardass gets convicted or otherwise implodes*. She may stay in as long as the donor money allows it. Then she can try again in four years, or run for the Senate or something.
*I know he could go full bonkers, and say and do things that show him to be in full dementia, and his deplorables would 1) not care, 2) cheer him, 3) deny the implosion as fake news.
Apparently Haley thinks different.
My Facebook feed is full of friends whining about “the power” of IA and NH. Mostly Republicans who are irritated that Trump is looking like the nominee, and blaming two states with barely any delegates for “making it happen.” I try not to engage, because one of the bigger irritations about having worked on campaigns is that everyone who has a political OPINION believes it to be as valid, if not more so, than the actual work I’ve done.
So, I will ask here: what state or states could have gone first that would have altered this outcome? I’m not asking about a more diverse electorate, I’m asking which state, or states–had they gone first/second–would have produced a non-Trump, viable-going-forward, candidate?
@James Joyner:
If by “snit” you mean “following state law,” then yes.
@Kathy:
Implodes? Maybe. But there is no chance he is convicted on anything but the New York Fraud thing (which happened months ago – all that remains is the penalty judgement) before the primary season is effectively over.
The media refuses to explore the (likely) possibility that Trump is mentally ill. The media refuses to discuss the fact – in the context of the primaries – that Trump is in dire legal jeopardy. The media refuses to acknowledge how laughably unrepresentative of America Iowa and New Hampshire are. The media declares the primaries over with 48 states yet to weigh in. Maybe Steve Bannon is right when he proclaims the media the enemy of the people.
@MarkedMan: The New York fraud case is civil. The hush-money case in NY, though, is criminal.
Without making predictions about how a criminal conviction could change the race, we already know his losing civil trials (like E. Jean Carroll) so far hasn’t.
@MarkedMan:
Ergo the long odds.
There’s a chance the NY hush money trial may conclude before the general election (again, long odds), but that wouldn’t help Haley. By then we’ll hear that “a criminal conviction doesn’t disqualify anyone from the election,” as to be sick of it.
Haley has said some moderately, almost kind of bad, almost criticisms of Trump. That means she wont be vice president. So as long as she doesnt spend a lot of money the cost of staying in the race is minimal and there is always the chance that Trump drops dead, which I think would make her the leading candidate. It reminds me of Father Guido Sarducci who said that if you are Catholic you should never give up your membership in the church. If it ever broke up the proceeds from selling off the Sistine Chapel and all the other art had to be worth at least many thousands for every member.
Steve
@James Joyner:
On the other hand, it’s relevant to party unity and candidate strength that Biden scared away plausible challengers, while Trump did not.
@Jen:
None and none. Complaints blaming Trump on small, non-diverse states don’t hold up. He lost Iowa in 2016. And, today, he’d still be on a glide path to nomination even if New York and California had caucused first. The Nevaaada caucuses are up next. Don’t-call-me-Nevaughda is “diverse.” Trump will win there too.
Republicans who did not want a Trump 2024 primary juggernaut should have organized a campaign to urge Senate Republicans to convict him after he incited the Jan. 6 terror attack.
@steve:
What?!
That cannot be a real name!
@Charley in Cleveland:
Two words: Thomas Eagleton. To discuss mental illness, “the media” would need to interview experts, who are bound by their professional ethics not to diagnose a patient they have not seen.
This…strains credulity. His legal woes are EVERYWHERE. That there is a segment of the population that believes this to be politically motivated and therefore able to ignore is the real problem.
Again, this is everywhere. Almost every article I’ve read has made some mention of either how white IA and NH are, or that the Democratic Party has negated the delegates in NH, etc.
I’ll ask you directly what I asked everyone above: which state or states could have gone first that would have altered this outcome? Which states had any GOP candidate other than Trump leading? Bonus points if you include the delegate math.
Trump’s “stickiness” as a GOP front runner isn’t the fault of the media, or Iowa, or New Hampshire. It’s because the voting base of the GOP likes him, and what he stands for–which is appalling.
@Jen:
But the state law is itself a reflection of the snit! There’s no reason on earth a state with a population of 1.3 million should always get to go first in line.
@DK: I don’t think he “scared away challengers” so much as that the DNC and its apparatus would severely punish anyone running against a sitting President. Phillips is finding that out even though he’s barely running a campaign at all.
@DK: It’s not. It’s a fictional character, launched on Saturday Night Live, by Don Novello.
Trump was up by 20+ points in polls just days before the NH primary. Came in up just 11. In Iowa he underperformed the polls by about 4 points and barely achieved a majority. He is, in effect, the incumbent. 51% and 54%? For the mighty, unstoppable Orange Jesus?
Two races and Trump underperformed in both. Meanwhile in NH, Biden slightly over-performed. As a write-in who didn’t even campaign in NH.
Something does not compute. There’s a story we’re not seeing.
Opinion: Donald Trump is very confused
Gift link.
@Jen:
FWIW, the media is not ignoring Haley’s attacks on Trump’s mental flubs and fitness, or Biden’s co-signing of those attacks.
It’s not the leading the hour, but there is coverage. For this reason alone, Democrats should hope Haley stays in for a while.
@Michael Reynolds: Both Trump and Biden are less than popular within their party. And it’s logical that Trump, who is a horrible human being, would be less popular than Biden, who seems like a good guy. But Biden was essentially unopposed while Trump was running against multiple sitting or former state governors.
@James Joyner:
Omg okay, lolol
I’m assuming this is before my time, I don’t remember the character or the player. Heading to YouTube.
@Jen:
I’m kind of reminded of “Have the Rolling Stones killed.”
A few weeks ago on Joe Rogan, they played a clip of Biden supposedly talking about airports during the Revolutionary War. Rogan asked how anyone could take Biden seriously after hearing that comment. A few moments later, he was informed by his fact checker that Biden was actually mockingly referencing something Trump had said years earlier. So they played the Trump clip where he talked about airports during the Revolution. Rogan’s response was…well, he fucked up there.
When they thought Biden said it, they treated it as a smoking gun proving his mental incompetence. As soon as they realized it was a Trump quote that Biden was merely riffing on, suddenly it was a minor verbal gaffe.
Now, I realize Rogan is hardly representative of “the media” at large. He caters to a specific right-leaning audience. I’m just using it to illustrate how people’s biases affect how they interpret the behavior of Trump or Biden, and I do think the mainstream media has fallen into a habit of filtering their view of Biden through a narrative of his old age, while being more charitable toward Trump’s foibles based on a preexisting narrative of him as some kind of improv trash-talker.
@Jen:
trump reminds me of my late mother-in-law, during the last couple of years of her life, sit with her for an hour and she’d tell you the same story 4 or 5 times. Even if you redirected her, she’d return to that stream of thought.
@James Joyner:
Luckily for us Iowa – populaton 3.1 miilion, 88% White, 26% evangelical protestant and that probably translates to well over 50% of Republicans – took one for the team. That crew campaigned for what, 4-5 months up there? As uninspiring as it was it served one important purpose; it weeded out the ones running for cabinet positions and vice-president. And get this, all of this was for a Caucus, a fake vote. Is this a used-to-be-great country or what?
Seriously, can you imagine the political landscape today if California had gone first? Say that Vivek won CA (a winner take all state)? So, I don’t mind that all the damage was done in Iowa, where they love that crew. They deserved all those months with Trump, Haley, DeSantis, Tim Scott, Christie, and Vivek.
@Kylopod:
I tend to agree on your take as to why this happens.
Also, I do believe that the so-called Main Stream Media is kind of cowed by the constant, decades long, conservative criticism that the MSM is liberal and biased. Over the years this has increased the tendency to pull back or run a sloppy false equivalency out there.
@James Joyner:
Just want to note in passing that this statement argues against the notion of “weak parties” we were discussing just yesterday.
Then again, I don’t think the statement is accurate to begin with. For example, what “severe punishment” can the “DNC and its apparatus” levy against Phillips for having the effrontery to run against a sitting President? Throw him out of the party? Force him out of the Senate? The fact that he is barely running a campaign is reflective of his inability to get enough money to run a larger one and his unwillingness to self-finance more than a reflection of the power the DNC holds.
Of course, it could be that DK was accurate yesterday when he suggested that “weak parties” only really means that white guys don’t always get their way. Being a cracker myself, though, I tend to reject arguments that gravitate to “always blame honkey” for whatever is wrong, no matter how accurate such formulations may seem.
@Charley in Cleveland: Odd. Everything I’ve learned about all those things came from the media.
@al Ameda: I’m not persuaded that having CA or NY or TX go first would be a better idea, or even a less-worse one. There are other choices available if DEI is the goal. Nevada has a decent sized population with enough diversity, as others on this forum have already noted. Florida, Arizona, Georgia, SC, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon all are viable choices that don’t afford the sort of inevitability counterargument that can be made against the big 3. I still favor one national primary day–partially in hopes of coopting Vermin Supreme ane the like from mocking the system by making vanity runs in single states.
Then again, I’ve never enjoyed the circus that much either.
@Kylopod: I was simply pointing out that the very first criminal is scheduled to start the day before Super Tuesday and should take weeks, possibly months. All the others start even later.
@DK: Father Guido Sarducci was the Vatican Gossip columnist for Saturday Night live’s Weekend update. His stuff holds up pretty well.
IA and NH have always been about generating hype for a candidate. This year they cleared the field on the Republican side, with Haley spending Never-Trump money continuing.
On the Dem side, an unknown from MN got 20% of the votes where Democrats were pushing the un-affiliated voters to vote Haley. That will slowly creep into the chattering class commentary as Feb 3 approaches. And that is an all Democrat affair with SC Republican primary being 3 weeks later. So the SC Democrat primary will be analyzed for every scrap of commentary content. And should Phillips have a decent showing in SC, well then the chattering class will be chattering up a roar. Even more if the black vote falters for Biden. Now that would be good television.
Right now, the election is all about generating content for the news media and commentary content creators.
@JKB:
In 2012 a prison inmate who never held public office got over 40% of the vote in the WV primary, where Obama was on the ballot. I don’t recall that mattering much in the long run.
It seems best to reply to @Liberal Capitalist here:
I seriously hope Biden won’t pardon Lardass. I think he will commute the sentences, but not issue a pardon.
But most important, Biden can’t neither pardon nor commute in the Georgia and New York cases. The governor of Georgia can, and probably will (the law and courts permitting). If New York delivers a conviction, I don’t think any likely governor will pardon Lardass; but might commute their sentence.
I wonder what better prevents the next coup. The lesson learned, after all, might be to do the coup right next time.
@Kathy:
The Georgia governor doesn’t have the power to pardon.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Parties aren’t completely toothless, just weak. Phillips is a backbench member of the House. He can easily be primaried and denied party money re-election, key committee assignments, support for a potential run for the Senate or a Governorship, etc. At the same time, a party can’t force a sufficiently popular Senator like Bernie Sanders to drop out early and quit taking pot-shots at the guy who’s obviously going to be the nominee, which was a real nuisance in 2020.
Trump said of Melania participating in his campaign that “she will be very active in the sense of being active.”
Do tell.
@Kylopod:
Neither is likely Phillips showing, in the long run. But in the next few weeks of media and chattering class content…
@Kathy:
Keep playing the Trump card.
Trump in New Hampshire back in October
Disagree all you want, that is effective messaging.
@CSK:
He’s a sore winner, too.
I think this is common behavior for toddlers when they get their way, but see someone else getting something as well.
@Kylopod:
I remember reading that. Unless it requires a constitutional change, though, I’d be willing to bet my own money the law will be changed in some fashion to allow the governor or the Georgia Congress to pardon him.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Not sure what’s best, but this I believe; putting CA, Texas, or NY up front and giving attention-whores like Vivek or Kari Lake a chance to somehow win is not what I want. I like the idea that Iowa caused 4 or 5 of these candidates to quit.
@JKB:
Despite all your “effective messaging” thoughts, you have still yet to explain how a former President, who has been campaigning since he lost the last election in both popular and electoral votes and is still only got 51% in the Iowa Caucus and 54% in New Hampshire against supposedly weak candidates is going to do in the general.
I mean, if Trump was the incumbent, there would be a lot of concerns… but I get that your faith-based devotion means you can’t speak those thoughts out loud.
BTW, should we remind that he has never won the popular vote either?
BTW, should we also talk about the overall under-performance of candidates he endorsed in 2020 and 2022?
I mean, I know you are smarter than all of us, but color me skeptical.
@al Ameda: My hunch is that most wouldn’t bother to try.
I pointed this out yesterday in the thread about the “faux” Republican primary…it’s expensive to run a campaign, even in a small state you’re spending money on staff, food, lodging, gas/mileage, advertising, fundraising pleas, tech setup, office space, and more. A bigger state needs more coverage, so lots more of all of the above. Now add in the cost of media markets in those states.
Iowa and New Hampshire are NOT representative of the population. My hunch is that if we switch the primaries to more diverse states in search of a more diverse electorate, we will end up with a much smaller pool of candidates, comprised of more vainglorious billionaires and PAC funded candidates.
@Kathy:
Most of the toddlers I’ve known have, unlike Trump, been remarkably gracious and adult toward those coming in second.
@James Joyner: I didn’t say parties were completely toothless. I only said that your argument that the DNC can severely punish a person argues against the notion of “weak parties” and that I also don’t believe that the DNC of its own power and authority can exact punishments that would count as severe to begin with–which seems to me at the core of what “weak parties” theory claims.
@CSK: Glad he cleared that up. 😐
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Hehe. Speaking of accuracy, some of y’all love putting my name on your own strawman arguments, rather than responding to my actual words.
1. I specifically wondered if all the weak party talk is really about “educated whites” feeling upset at their alienation from ability to control the Republican Party — a rather more specific demo than a reference to “white guys” regardless of education level. Any thoughts on what I actually wrote lol?
2. I wasn’t placing blame, because unlike others, I quite clearly don’t see rank-and-file voters having more power than establishmentarian elitists as indicative of something gone “wrong.” Quite the opposite.
@JKB:
Must be why just weeks later in November, Trump’s party lost another round of elections to a mini Blue Wave.
(We fully intend to keep playing the Trump card lol)
@Jen:
Thanks for the link. Great article, the way it relentlessly itemized all of Trump’s bullshittery.
@DK: the Republican party is definitely controlled by white people. The only question is which white people.
And there are things to be said in favor of both strong and weak parties. With our very entrenched two party system, strong parties would cut a lot of people out, until a party collapses like the Whigs or something. On the other hand, some of the people being shut out would be Donald Trump.
(Keeping Trump and his followers off the political stage and unrepresented would be fine, since we are a republic, not a democracy 😉 )
TFG is very confused:
Dana Milbank at Post:
“Gift_WaPost”
Snip
This is perseveration – repeating stuff – a common symptom of senile dementia.
Snip
Snip
As usual, lots more at the link.
@charontwo:
Perhaps when Trump claimed to see the whale, he was actually looking in a mirror.
Apologies to whales. I like them, which is far more than I can say of Fatso.
@Gustopher: Worth pointing this out:
Many years ago I remember seeing a survey that asked people what percentage of the population was African American. If I remember correctly the guesses were in the 25-45% range, depending on the ethnicity of the responders. According to the Census bureau, in 2020 58% identified as Caucasian, 19% as Latino, and 12% as African American.
@DK: I was working from memory and “blame honkey for everything” was intended as snark not as a strawman argument. My apologies for offending your delicate aesthetic sensibilities, and I will send my snarker to the shop for repairs post haste.
@MarkedMan:
People suck at two things: understanding fractions and percentages, and estimating proportions.
If NASA had the percentage of the federal budget many people think it does, we’d have luxury hotels on Mars by now.
@Jen: Thanks for that gift link. I had no idea that drug dealers on average kill 500 people. Seems like I know quite a few people who are WAAAAy behind on their quota at this point. The speech was vastly worse than I realized based on the MSM reporting.
As further evidence of Iowa and New Hampshire being solely for media and narrative content, we see from the exit polls that 70% of those who voted for Haley had never voted in a Republican primary before.
And we have this from NPR, Jan 17th
So March 3rd will be telling for Democrats. As will March 24th be for Republicans.
@JKB:
As per usual, this is wrong. I’m going to be generous and presume that you simply read the headline and swapped in your own interpretation.
For those interested in facts, the actual information is that 7 in 10 of Haley’s voters were not registered Republicans. Which is not the same as saying “never voted in a Republican primary before,” especially in New Hampshire, where there are more “undeclared” voters than registered members of EITHER PARTY.
If you want to parse the meaning of this, JKB, you might want to consider the fact that this means independent voters–7 in 10 of them, in fact–are opposed to a second Trump term.
@Jen:
I am shocked, SHOCKED!, that JKB might be engaging in a sloppy motivated reading that is more about feels than facts.
Also, that they have not considered the counterfactual implications of their assertion.
@Jen:
It should be noted that a significant amount of those unregistered voters are essentially Republicans or Democrats and will freely say so if asked by a pollster or interviewer, but who remain undeclared in terms of their voter registration. Part of the reason is so they can choose which party’s primary to participate in. I saw an interview the other day with a guy who said he voted for Haley, and when he was asked what party he identified as, he said Democrat. The fact that some Democrats chose to vote in the Republican rather than Democratic primary, and yet Biden still won overwhelmingly when he wasn’t even on the ballot and didn’t actively campaign in the state, strikes me as an additional data point that the results were good news for him.
@Kylopod: Yes, correct. I am a NH resident and am registered undeclared. That’s because I hold a non-partisan town position, and don’t want my party affiliation to get pulled into what should remain non-partisan discussions.
I will note further that unaffiliated Democrats crossing over and voting for Haley, despite some polling that indicates she’d be a tougher race for Biden, shows how concerned many are about a second Trump term. They’re putting their own candidate at a potentially higher risk.
@Jen:
I get that, and that was the vibe I got from the fellow I saw interviewed. Speaking from my own hyper-partisan strategic perspective, I think it’s a little worse for Trump the longer Haley stays in the race (though I doubt it’ll make too much of a difference). It’s kind of what Limbaugh was aiming for in 2008 with Operation Chaos when he encouraged his listeners to cross over to vote for Hillary in the primaries after it was clear Obama was overwhelmingly likely to be the nominee. He thought drawing out the fight longer would harm the Dems–and he may not have been wrong in that assumption (though the operation itself was a failure, as Obama easily won the primary Limbaugh focused on).
Another factor (and I’ve spoken about this ad nauseum) is that if Haley were somehow to beat Trump in the primaries, he would almost certainly cry fraud and refuse to support her in the general, which would likely tear the party apart and make it very hard for her to win. Her apparent strength in the general depends on Trump either disappearing into the ether or throwing his support behind her. The former is only possible if he dies, the latter if pigs fly. Therefore, having Haley become the nominee by outright beating Trump would probably be beneficial to the Dems.
Now I don’t know if that’s what those Undeclared In Name Only Dems had in mind–quite possibly they thought they needed to do anything they could to save democracy, even things that made a Republican victory in November more likely.
@Kylopod: Speaking only for myself, I find Trump to be so much of a threat that I’d rather have her on the ballot than him, even though I don’t support her positions. The fact that she’s at least going to act within the boundaries of established institutions is key.
@Jen:
100% this.