Something rather odd is happening in New Hampshire, and for once it has nothing to do with my Nashua based in-laws. While bearing in mind that what follows may be a Romney guy struggling to keep hope alive… Rasmussen’s polls show the race tightening. In their numbers from yesterday, Romney trailed John McCain by five points. Today, he trails by only two. In the WHDH/Suffolk tracking poll, Romney is up three. Last Wednesday, the day before Iowa, WHDH/Suffolk had McCain up nine. That’s a net twelve point pick up for the purportedly beleaguered Romney. Not that we should care, but Zogby shows Romney picking up a net five points over the weekend and leading by a point today. Iowa was supposed to presage a McCain rout in New Hampshire. But the polls tell a different story. Mason-Dixon released a poll today showing McCain with an eight point lead, the senator’s best showing in any poll; half of the poll was conducted before Iowa. In other words, even the poll that shows McCain’s biggest lead buttresses the notion that post-Iowa, the race has tightened. So what gives? The media narrative coming out of Iowa was that the results there fatally wounded Mitt Romney, and that John McCain would run away with New Hampshire like a maverick freight train. Instead, his momentum has apparently stalled. I have a few theories about why this is happening, listed in order from the most plausible and important down to the least:
One last thing: All the polling data cited here presumably came from before yesterday’s tussle. Last night’s debate didn’t provide much encouragement for the typical Republican. During the festivities, a friend and I exchanged emails trying to figure out which sparsely populated Western states the GOP still has a chance of holding on to in November. The “pox on all their houses” stuff aside, last night was a particularly wretched evening for Senator McCain. Much of the debate served to remind the New Hampshire GOP of the McCain/Kennedy fiasco. But the Senator’s style probably did even more damage to his prospects. At times, he came across as bitter, angry and mean. Check out this footage of his little “candidate of change” hilarity:
If the Senator wanted to remind GOP voters of seven years of off-puttingly testy behavior, he brilliantly accomplished this goal last night. According to the assembled focus group, the “change” barb was the worst moment for any candidate during the entire debate. Brit Hume said of McCain’s effort, “I think what they saw was John McCain perhaps at his least attractive. He was scornful. He seemed almost an occasional moment even petty. That’s not the John McCain people have come to admire and like.” After Iowa, we all thought McCain would cruise to an easy victory in New Hampshire. He’s still the prohibitive favorite there, but the cruising has yet to commence and the voting starts in two days. It turns out tonight’s debate may be a lot more important than any of us thought it would be.
