The New Hampshire Primary Points Again to Weakness for Trump
The NH results were a mixed bag from which emerges similar indications as Iowa
As of this writing, late morning on Thursday, Jan. 25, with about 99% of the votes tallied, Donald Trump leads Nikki Haley 54.3% to 43.4%, just under 11 points difference. It appears a double-digit lead will hold after all the votes are counted. This is a perfectly unsatisfying result for everybody, as no one can claim a clear message was gained from the result.
If Haley could have gotten to within the psychologically significant difference of single digits, she and her followers (and anyone hoping that MAGA diminishes in power sooner rather than later) could have said that this was a sign of her strength and built on this momentum to spur energy in upcoming primaries.
If Trump could have won by 20 or more, as the pre-election polls suggested, they could have easily brushed this off as a dominant win over an opponent that was aided by this being a unique state primary that give undue influence to undeclared voters. It would have solidified his hold on the party and given him and his followers clear bragging rights.
Instead, with a margin of just over ten, it’s hard for anyone to build a clear narrative. Haley may have shown some strength, but an 11-point loss would be considered a blowout in any other case. While it may not be a pure blowout here with Trump, who is essentially the Republican incumbent, it’s still pretty decisive. There is a narrative here for her, it just won’t be as powerful as if she could have kept the difference under ten points.
From Trump’s standpoint, it’s hard to say you’re the inevitable messiah-nominee that has completely overtaken a party when almost half of your party’s primary voters vote against you. At 11 points, the difference is not what you want if you’re Trump or a MAGA cultist. You want the optics of a demoralizing 20-30 point-at-least destruction of your opponent.
This is New Hampshire, which does allow for undeclared voters to vote in the primary of their choice. Contrary to popular perception, you cannot vote in the opposite party’s primary if you are registered in one party on election day (if one switches by the October before the primary election, then they have the potential to vote in their newly declared party’s primary). Due to this dynamic, NH was always considered Haley’s best shot in the early primaries, if not the whole primary season. It was expected that she would get a significant number of undeclared independent voters that largely lean to the Democrats in ideology. Therefore, one has to look further than the baseline result to glean any meaningful takeaways.
One apparent sign of strength within the party for Trump is that about 75% of GOP primary voters that consider themselves Republican voted for Trump. This is a quick and dirty way of saying that 75% of Republicans in NH voted for Trump, and only 25% voted for Haley, so therefore he is dominantly crushing the field and is in complete control of the party. Perhaps he is, but these results don’t really necessarily show that.
In much the same way that Iowa had a turnout problem the muted the strength of Trump’s victory there, NH had an enthusiasm gap which worked the other way. There was robust turnout in NH that set records for a primary, but it seemed to favor the non-Trump forces, within the party and in general. According to the same exit poll, and a separate exit poll reported by Reuters and conducted by Edison Research, 50% of GOP primary voters identified as Republican, which was 5% less than in 2016, when this share was 55%. People identifying as Democrats made up a share of 6% of the GOP primary voters, doubling their share in 2016 of 3%. The share of independents was essentially unchanged, but the share that identified as moderate or liberal also went up.
This indicates that the enthusiasm was overwhelmingly on the side of the non-Trumpists. The fact that those identifying as Democrats doubled their share, while Republicans lowered their share by 5 points, shows who won the motivation battle. This picture also emerges in the absolute numbers themselves. Based on the total number of voters in each of the 2024 and 2016 GOP Primaries and the shares of voter self-identification results, we can calculate that Democrats and Independents increased their numbers by 30,000. Republican self-identifiers increased theirs by only 6,000. While it can be argued that Republicans “got out the vote” to some degree, much more so than was indicated in Iowa at least, it is obvious that Democrats and Republicans “got out the vote even more”.
We know Democrats are likely going to vote for Joe Biden in the general election, but independents are also leaning significantly towards voting for Biden, and anywhere from 10-20% of Haley voters based on several recent exit polls, many of whom are independent, also promise to vote for Biden. This spells absolute disaster for Trump and the Republican Party in the 2024 general election.
If Republicans were really excited and MAGA highly energized, and Democrats and independents despondent, then they would have maintained or increased their share in the primary, and Trump would have put the nomination away in a landslide victory. A case could be made that energy is low during the primaries because the drama level is low, as Trump is seen by many as inevitable. But that doesn’t seem likely, due to the overall drama surrounding our politics today. It seems like MAGA would want to come out in full force to support their leader during his time of need, being heavily persecuted by Biden’s DOJ and all.
It’s only been two states so far, very different states in demographic and ideological makeup, but they are indicating similar trends. Non-Trump voters are energized, and independent voters are preferring non-Trump candidates at high levels. If she’s not going to win the nomination outright, let’s hope Nikki Haley can stay in the race for all 50 states just for the social experiment aspect of it, and give us a high enough sample size to produce a reliable conclusion on how the 2024 general election is likely to turn out.