Republicans fight for New Hampshire

Reflecting the views of many candidates and journalists, one writer recently noted: “Over decades the primary voters of New Hampshire have come to revel in their “First Primary in the Nation” status”. They are the co-authors of “The First Primary: New Hampshire’s Outsize Role in Presidential Nominations”. This pack of four – Rubio, Cruz, Kasich and Bush – has been jockeying for second place in the state for some time.

“I don’t put a ton of faith in the polls right now because I’m 43 and my wife and I have three kids”, said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party (and son of Irish parents). Because they can vote in whichever ballot they like and can register so close to primary day, the state is notoriously hard to poll. A primary may be open (allowing any voter to register a preference) or closed (allowing only pre-registered party supporters to vote). Kasich joked on Saturday during a campaign stop in New Hampshire, according to CBS.

As the New Hampshire presidential primaries approach, a new poll of polls by CNN finds that Sanders and Trump are holding sizable leads in their races, with each facing an opponent that has support that is quickly rising.

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is expected to win, but Hillary Clinton will still have strong support in the other primary states.

But this time around, other factors have cut into New Hampshire’s significance. The primary was originally scheduled for May, but “frugal New Hampshirites had realized it was wasteful to light the Town Hall twice”, and the date of the first official primary was moved up to coincide with the annual town hall meeting day on March 14.

Businessman Donald Trump, U.S. Sen. After winning New Hampshire, Republicans Patrick Buchanan in 1996 and McCain in 2000 were quickly dispatched in subsequent contests. And winning the New Hampshire primary gives candidates big boosts in momentum.

The primary will also reveal who, if any, of the more moderate Republican candidates – among them Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Chris Christie – will survive.

“They really need to get clarity in this field because there are too many candidates for the voters to sort out”. Advantage: Trump, because any coalescing around Rubio as the Trump alternative is stalled. There was a new aggressive Clinton in last week’s final debate before the primary where she lashed her rival, accusing him of an “artful smear” for suggesting she is beholden to her Wall Street donors. And while (unlike Iowa) it has no powerful evangelical Christian element, it retains a very distinctive tradition of small-town New England politics that demand a particular kind of face-to-face, low-to-the-ground campaigning. “People who don’t agree with him ideologically nevertheless think he has diagnosed the problem correctly, if not the solution, and they know these are beliefs he has had for his whole life”.