Now it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that President Donald Trump was going to win the New Hampshire primary.
But just like with the Iowa caucuses people are looking at the voting and the turnout to see if the Republicans or the Democrats are more energized.
That’s a little more interesting in New Hampshire because of the open rules of the primary. You only need $1000 to get on the ballot and write-in votes are encouraged, so there’s always more of a percentage that goes to “other” than perhaps in other places that don’t have such rules.
So one way of judging is to look at the vote, compared to other incumbent presidents who were reelected.
Check out this graph and you should feel very good about Trump’s chances. If the president didn’t have a major challenger in New Hampshire, he was re-elected.
Trump at 84% in GOP primary so far — last four reelected presidents (Reagan/Clinton/Bush/Obama) got between roughly 80%-85% in NH in reelection year https://t.co/1gplXRPobo pic.twitter.com/o1UbmyoWWa
— Kyle Kondik (@kkondik) February 12, 2020
It should be noted that when Kondik tweeted it Trump was at 84 percent. He’s now over 86 percent, about on par with Reagan, at the highest in recent memory.
Weld should have done well since he’s a former governor of the neighboring state of Massachusetts. But he’s really not doing all that well considering, hovering in single digits. That bodes well for Trump too.
But what perhaps is really astonishing is the turnout for incumbent Trump.
For the turnout for incumbents going back to Reagan in New Hampshire, here are the respective counts: Barack Obama (49,080), George W. Bush (52,962) Ronald Reagan (65,033) and Bill Clinton (76,797).
Trump has 114,466 without even the final numbers in yet, with 84 percent of the vote in. He more than doubled Obama, the most recent past president.
Now that’s looking like the GOP is pretty darn energized and that graph is making re-election look pretty good.
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