New Hampshire Primary: 80% of GOP winners go on to bag presidential nomination while only 60% of Dems do so
The first battle of this primary season happened in Iowa on February 3 and while President Donald Trump won the Republican caucus easily, the Democrats found it a not-so-smooth affair. The results came out after days and former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg was the winner by a narrow margin, bagging less than a percent of the votes more than the second-place holder Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont.
The focus now shifts to New Hampshire, the tiny northeastern state, which will hold the first primary on Tuesday. Like Iowa, New Hampshire also attracts a lot of media attention because it sees the first primary even though some feel it does so “unfairly” since the Granite State little resembles America. The state is mainly rural and has a relatively small and demographically homogeneous population.
More than 93% of New Hampshire’s 1.36 million people are white while for the US, the corresponding figure is 76.5 percent. These facts boost those who believe that the state cannot fathom the mood of the nation when it comes to electing representatives.
However, for the two major political parties — Republicans and Democrats — the outcomes of the primaries in New Hampshire have not been disappointing. According to a report on the personal finance website, WalletHub, New Hampshire makes quite impressive predictions when it comes to picking nominees. In the case of the former, 80% of candidates who won the primary in New Hampshire went on to bag the party’s presidential nomination. In the case of the Democrats, the figure is 60%.
Between 1992 and 2016, six of the GOP candidates who won the New Hampshire Primary went on to win the presidential nomination (the only exception was John McCain in 2000 when George W Bush bagged the nomination). President Trump won his first primary battle in New Hampshire in 2016 after losing Iowa to Ted Cruz. In the Democratic camp, it has happened only four times in the seven elections between 1992 and 2016. Among those who won the New Hampshire Primary, but could not still claim the nomination were: Bernie Sanders (2016), Hillary Clinton (2008) and Paul Tsongas (1992).
Experts analyze impressive predictions
WalletHub spoke to experts on the high percentage of candidates from either party winning the New Hampshire Primary and going on to win the nomination even though the state’s racial composition not necessarily tallying that of the country as a whole.
Robert Y Shapiro, a Columbia University professor, explained it this way: “The effect of NH and Iowa has nothing to do with their representativeness but the capability they demonstrate in persuading voters in these states and in what later voters learn from seeing the candidates in action beyond what they learn about the candidates from the debates and other news coverage of them. This produces "momentum" for them in the primaries and caucuses that follow.”
Morgan Marietta, associate professor, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell, said on the other hand that Iowa and New Hampshire do not represent the US as a whole. He said this explains why New Hampshire does well in predicting the GOP winner but not so much when predicting the Democratic winner.
Lack of African-American voters
Explaining the Democrats’ story, Marietta added: “The problem for the Democratic ticket is the lack of the African-American voters who form a decisive part of the Democratic coalition. In 2016 Sanders won New Hampshire, but Clinton had far more support from black voters as the campaign went on.
In 2008 it was the reverse, with Clinton winning the state but Obama gaining more support down the line. For the same reason, Sanders victory this year in New Hampshire may not mean what some will think if that is the outcome, as Biden's support among African-Americans becomes more apparent later. But it is important to remember that white and minority voters do not always have deeply distinct preferences, as they do this year between Biden and Buttigieg. When the different demographic groups of voters align, New Hampshire is quite predictive of the outcome.”