NH Primary Results

Ken AshfordDemocrats, Election 2020Leave a Comment

Sanders won the most votes in Iowa, even if he narrowly lost the delegate battle. He won the New Hampshire primary. His support among people of color has grown in polls, while his chief competitor for those voters, Joe Biden, has been fading in the overall contest. He has climbed to the lead in some national polls. And he is raising more money — and has more money — than any of his rivals who are not billionaires.

Four stories coming out of New Hampshire.

(1) Klbacher does well after Friday’s debate, propelling her to third. Can she capitalize on it? As a fiscally moderate Democrat who opposes the “Medicare for all” and free four-year college plans of her liberal rivals, Ms. Klobuchar was in sync with the smaller-government tilt of plenty of Democrats in the state. Her emphasis on bipartisanship and pragmatism was a fit with New Hampshire’s large number of unaffiliated voters, or independents, who could participate in the Democratic primary. And she often mentioned her support for New Hampshire’s two centrist female senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.

(2) What the fuck happened to Elizabeth Warren? And what the SERIOUS fuck happened to Joe Biden? Both were frontrunners (especially Biden) for most of the race so far. If winning is contagious, losing can be an even more infectious campaign disease. It erodes support, money and confidence in a sudden rush of voter and donor panic. And Biden now faces more than two weeks — an interminably long stretch — until the primary on the calendar his advisers have long circled as his political “firewall”: South Carolina’s. It was telling that when he ditched New Hampshire before the polls closed, he headed there instead of Nevada, whose nominating contest is next.

(3) Buttigieg was able to capitalize on his Iowa squaker win and it paid off. His second-place in New Hampshire and a delegate victory in Iowa will lend his campaign major momentum. The question now is what, exactly, will happen to that energy as the contest moves to a more diverse playing field. Buttigieg’s campaign has spent months trying to win over people of color, highlighting policy plans and a handful of endorsements from black lawmakers. Yet in polling, Buttigieg has shown no strength with the black and Latino voters who make up a significant portion of the Democratic Party electorate in Nevada and South Carolina, the next two nominating contests. After that, the race moves to Super Tuesday, a mix of big, diverse states like California and Texas, and Southern states where black people are expected to make up a majority of Democratic voters.

(4) Andrew Yang and Duval Patrick call it quits.

You want to know about the GOP primary in NH? Fine.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Attorney General Bill Barr acknowledged that the department would evaluate Giuliani’s information but waved off any notion that the president’s personal attorney was being given special attention or priority. The Washington Post later reported the District Attorney’s office in Pittsburgh had been tapped to handle the case. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are actively working to gather additional information on the Bidens and Burisma. Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI), Graham, and Chuck Grassley—the Republican chairmen of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Finance Committee, respectively—previously requested the State Department hand over any documents tied to the Bidens or Ukraine. A source briefed on the investigation confirmed to The Daily Beast that it is focusing on witnesses from Blue Star and the State Department who are seen as close to Biden: David Wade, the communications chief for the former vice president; former Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken; and Amos Hochstein, an envoy for energy policy in the Obama administration. As previously reported by BuzzFeed, Senate investigators have said they expect to soon get records from the National Archives about meetings in 2016 between Obama administration officials, Ukrainian representatives and the Democratic National Committee, the source said. Once the archive and State documents come through, investigators plan to set up witness interviews, the source said, adding that investigators have indicated the probe could extend into the summer. “We don’t give our investigations artificial deadlines and we haven’t speculated on any timeframes,” a spokesman for Grassley said. “We follow the facts where they lead and each inquiry is done on a case by case.” Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat who has long claimed the Ukrainian government meddled in the 2016 election to damage Hillary Clinton, has previously stated that he’s agreed to cooperate with the probe into the Bidens. He told The Daily Beast he shared additional documents with investigators on Monday. The lawmakers leading the investigation have sought to investigate claims related to Ukraine and 2016, including Telizhenko’s. Telizhenko said the documents included emails, and did not share further detail about the materials, which he said were in response to queries from the Senate investigators.

Republican voter registration in NH is down roughly 20k voters from 2016 to now. It’s a reminder that Trump’s increased GOP popularity is in part because in some places, the GOP registration rolls have shrunk.

Eager that Democrats were getting attention, Trump tweeted this:

JFC

Up next is Nevada caucauses.