NASHUA, New Hampshire — Even with the official results still a mystery, voters who attended Joe Biden’s first New Hampshire event following the Iowa caucuses expressed worries about his chances in the Democratic presidential race.
“I think Trump got what he wanted even though Ukraine didn’t announce an investigation,” said Frank Despres, a retired Merrimack resident who is still deciding who to vote for in the Feb. 11 primary but likes Biden.
Despres thought that the former vice president, 77, likely lost some voters because of so much focus in the impeachment trial on the Biden and his family. “Hopefully, he can still recover,” he said.
New Hampshire voters tuned in caucus night in Iowa and absorbed some reports that Biden had lackluster support in some areas, as well as posturing from rivals that he had underperformed.
“We did see some of the caucuses where he didn’t have much support,” said retired Nashua resident Wayne Dion, who is leaning toward voting for Biden. He remained optimistic that the full results could tell a different story. “There’s like, what, 1,600 of them? We’ll have to wait for the results there.”
Sue Dickey of Nashua, who is also undecided on who to support, watched Biden’s Monday night speech in Iowa on television and thought it was bad for him to speak too soon and risk ending up eating his works.
“Just keep it down,” she said. “He shouldn’t have said anything. Let’s not all start acting like Trump.”
Biden on Monday kept an optimistic tone when addressing supporters at his caucus night party while results stalled.
“Folks, well, it looks like it’s going to be a long night, but I’m feeling good,” he said. “We don’t know exactly what it is, but we’re feeling good about where we are. So it’s on to New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina.”
Uncertainty about Iowa has coincided with mediocre placement in New Hampshire polls.
“I’m concerned about New Hampshire. I really, really am. Usually, we pick a winner,” said retired Nashua resident Elizabeth Bailey, a Biden supporter who had been wanting him to run for president for years.
A Boston Globe/Suffolk poll released late Monday night found Biden with 18% support among likely New Hampshire primary voters, in second place behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 24%.
