On Politics: New Hampshire Buzz


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  • The race for the New Hampshire primary is winding down today in extraordinary fashion. It isn’t the usual deal where there are only two or three candidates to watch. There are five candidates whose political fortunes hang in the balance, with either momentum or humiliation awaiting them late tonight.

  • The buzz among Democrats favors Bernie Sanders to win, but the big question is by how much of a margin. If the liberal Vermont senator were to win by five percentage points or more, he becomes the front-runner out of New Hampshire. If the margin is tighter, it remains a race with no clear top contender — especially if the moderate candidates win a plurality of the vote, as they did in Iowa.

  • The two momentum candidates in New Hampshire are Pete Buttigieg, thanks to his victory in the delegate race in the Iowa caucuses, and Amy Klobuchar, thanks to her strong debate performance on Friday night. Buttigieg is nipping at Sanders’s heels in the polls. And Klobuchar allies are hoping for a surprise third-place finish here. (Read more on this gust of “Klomentum” below.) That would be a big headline for Klobuchar, though not a surefire sling shot into the next contests in Nevada and South Carolina. She has minuscule support among voters of color and in the polls in those states.

  • Then there are Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. Looking at the polls, the best likely outcome for either is third place, and to be sure, Klobuchar is no lock on third. But if she does end up there, the night will grow very dark for Biden and Warren. Remember, the two of them were leading candidates through much of 2019 — Biden for his poll numbers, Warren for her policy plans and political organization. Now you have the possibility of a former vice president and a next-door-neighbor senator coming in fourth and fifth place. Advisers to Biden and Warren insist that the two candidates won’t drop out after New Hampshire, but such poor results would be damaging.

  • Other variables today: How much of the vote goes to Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Deval Patrick and Michael Bennet, who have all been campaigning hard here? And what of Mike Bloomberg — he is the surprise winner of Dixville Notch, N.H.!

  • While Buttigieg and Sanders were barnstorming around the Granite State on the eve of its primary, their campaigns were filing separate requests with the Iowa Democratic Party to recanvass 143 precincts in total. A recanvass means a check on the handwritten work sheets that caucus chairs used to tally results. After this is done, campaigns will still have the chance to demand a full recount, which will mean hand-counting about 180,000 preference cards from individual caucusgoers.

  • You can follow all of today’s New Hampshire action on our live blog.

  • There’s a new national poll out, and it’s the first of this primary season to give Sanders an outright lead. It’s also the first to put Biden’s support at just 17 percent. The Quinnipiac University poll reflects the danger that Biden is facing — a reflection of his poor performance in Iowa, not to mention what was already a lack of enthusiasm among his core supporters.

  • The flimsiness of that support has opened the door for Bloomberg, who’s now at 15 percent, as well as Buttigieg, at 10 percent. The big difference is that Bloomberg is threatening to overtake Biden in his core demographic: He garners 22 percent of black Democratic voters, within the margin of error of Biden’s 27 percent, according to the poll. Buttigieg, on the other hand, barely has any support there. Sanders has the support of 19 percent of black Democrats, the poll found.

  • Not many of Biden’s backers are migrating to Warren, who sits at 14 percent — roughly even with her numbers since November. Sanders’s total (25 percent) represents his highest showing in a Quinnipiac national poll this campaign. He’s also the only candidate for whom a majority of his supporters say their minds are made up.

Klobuchar changed into more comfortable shoes before starting a photo line at her event in Exeter, N.H., on Monday.

See what New York Times photographers captured in the final hours on the trail.


Buttigieg isn’t the only one benefiting from Biden’s slide of late. Polls taken over the weekend suggest that Klobuchar has a real chance of leaping into third place in Tuesday’s primary.

Two tracking polls released on Monday gave Klobuchar a reason to hope. In a Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll conducted over the weekend, she came in third at nearly 14 percent. In a CNN/University of New Hampshire poll, which had a longer collection period, she garnered 7 percent — but among respondents contacted over the weekend, her number rose to 11 percent.

Klobuchar has drawn overflow crowds across New Hampshire in recent days, and during a speech in Exeter on Monday, she proudly saluted members of the audience who were forced to watch from an overflow space. Those attendees responded by stomping their feet loudly — a sound that could be heard from the stage.

Our reporter Nick Corasaniti was with Klobuchar all day. Here’s his take on where things stand, and what New Hampshire means for her:

Amy Klobuchar feels like she’s on a roll: capacity crowds all weekend, including one event that topped 1,000 people on Sunday; more than $3 million raised online in 48 hours; and a couple of polls that showed her surging to third. It’s a testament both of good fortune (she’s one of seven left who have been qualifying for debates — and she has generally done well in them) and of message.

She may be running the hardest to the center of any remaining Democrat, pitching herself as the best option for those uncomfortable with the party’s leftward shift, and insisting that she has a unique ability to win in the Midwest. But while those appeals found some traction in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, the map will get harder for Klobuchar when voting moves on to Nevada and South Carolina, and then later on Super Tuesday. That day will have a heavy dose of the West and South, and it will mark the entry of Michael Bloomberg, who has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth on ads.

Perhaps no candidate will have to scale up as rapidly as Klobuchar after tomorrow. Of course, the first step would be a strong showing in New Hampshire. And that, as they say, will come down to turnout.

In Iowa, candidates needed at least 15 percent support at each caucus site to be considered viable; when they lacked it, their supporters had the chance to choose another candidate. In winning the most “state delegate equivalents,” Buttigieg relied on second-choice caucusgoers more than any other candidate.

In New Hampshire’s (much less convoluted) primary, there will be no realignments, so Klobuchar won’t lose any of her first-choice voters.


The polls will start to close in New Hampshire at 7 p.m., and the secretary of state has said final results could arrive as early as 9:30 p.m.

We’ll have all of the latest results here.

New Hampshire’s election is a semi-open primary, meaning independents are allowed to vote as well as registered Democrats — but not Republicans.

Since New Hampshire’s election is a primary rather than a caucus, there’s less of a chance that things will get muddled as they did in Iowa. And in New Hampshire it’s the secretary of state, not the parties themselves, who administers the election.

Still, the state Democratic Party chairman, Raymond Buckley, said in a statement, “I don’t think there’s any question that the New Hampshire primary will be 100 percent perfect.”

That remains to be seen, but voting appeared to go smoothly in the three tiny towns that have a tradition of opening their polling places at midnight.

Those places — Dixville Notch, Millsfield and Hart’s Location, which really are tiny — went for Bloomberg, Klobuchar and Klobuchar. With a whopping eight votes in the state, the Minnesota senator has opened up a four-vote lead on Sanders and Warren.

A lot more will happen tonight. We’ll see how it shakes out.

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