Who won the Lamar Alexander prize in the New Hampshire primary? The reference, as I noted in an earlier blogpost, is to the 1996 Republican primary, when Lamar Alexander finished 3.63 percent and 7,590 votes behind Bob Dole in the contest for second place behind Pat Buchanan. Dole went on to win the nomination, as any candidate going one-on-one against Buchanan would have, and Alexander went on to the presidency of the University of Tennessee and, since the 2002 election, a seat in the United States Senate.
As I write, with 89 percent of the New Hampshire towns, cities, boroughs, plantations and gores in, the Republican numbers are even tighter once you get past Donald Trump’s 35 percent win. John Kasich has won second place by a larger margin than Dole’s; he’s currently ahead of Ted Cruz by 4.96 percent and 11,436 votes (these numbers will change slightly as the day goes on). He goes on to South Carolina with hopes of doing well enough in the South to go on to March states like Michigan and his own Ohio.
Then it gets tight. Ted Cruz leads Jeb Bush by 0.47 percent and Bush leads Marco Rubio by 0.53 percent. In raw numbers, that’s 1,222 and 1,439 votes. All three, unlike Alexander, seem sure to stay in the 10 days left until South Carolina: they have money, high hopes, a big debate Saturday night in Greenville. Unlike 1996, this is a race with a clear leader who has a high floor but may turn out to have a low ceiling. None of these three has cause to rule himself irrevocably out of the running.
That leaves the Lamar Alexander prize winner as Chris Christie, who ran 3.05 percent and 7,991 votes behind Rubio. Those numbers are tantalizingly similar to those facing Alexander 20 years ago. Christie, even more than Alexander, concentrated his time and effort in New Hampshire and came up short. In 1996 that left a two-man race with a predictable outcome. Today we have a four-man race for a chance to go one-on-one, with both races highly unpredictable.
You know that stuff that candidates always say, that every vote counts? Actually, it’s sort of right.
