As I was writing the article on the history of the New Hampshire primary for today’s Examiner, it struck me that the 2008 New Hampshire results seemed to be similar to those of the later primaries of both parties. So I calculated the figures, and it turns out to be so. In the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama by a margin of 39.1%-36.5%, a margin of 2.6% (I’m using tenths of a percentage, which I ordinarily don’t do, to make this particular point). If you aggregate the total votes in later primaries, including those in Florida and Michigan which were contrary to Democratic party rules, you find that both Clinton and Obama had larger percentages, for the obvious reason that John Edwards, who finished third in New Hampshire with 16.9% of the vote, dropped out. But the percentage difference between their totals was very similar to that in New Hampshire. Overall, Clinton beat Obama 48.3%-47.1%, a difference of 1.2%. Obama won the nomination, despite getting outvoted in the primaries, because he won by big margins in the caucuses and among the superdelegates.
John McCain led Mitt Romney in the New Hampshire primary by 37.0%-31.6%, a 5.4% margin. In the succeeding 18 primaries in which both competed, up to Super Tuesday February 5, McCain beat Romney in the total popular vote by 38.6%-32.1%, a 6.5% margin. That’s pretty darn close.
Does that mean there’s a political science rule that New Hampshire foreshadows later primary results? Or that if Mitt Romney, as expected, wins by a big margin in New Hamsphire he is fated to win later contested primaries by a big margin?
I don’t think so. For one thing, Romney has advantages in New Hampshire he does not have elsewhere: he has campaigned there a lot over the last five years, he has had a chance to assemble an in-depth organization, he was governor of next-door Massachusetts whose news is transmitted to many New Hampshire television viewers over Boston TV stations and he has a vacation house in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, on Lake Winnipesaukee.
More important, not all New Hampshire primary winners have seen their margins replicated in later primaries. John Kerry won New Hampshire 38%-26% over Howard Dean in 2004 and won by increased margins in almost all primaries till Dean dropped out. John McCain beat George W. Bush 49%-30% in 2000, but lost the nomination to George W. Bush: New Hampshire presaged his results in the Northeast, but not elsewhere. Pat Buchanan won New Hampshire over Bob Dole 27%-26% in 1996 and got 37% against incumbent President George H. W. Bush there in 1992. But in 1996 he wasn’t able to increase those percentages much elsewhere (he topped out at 34% in Michigan and Wisconsin) and lost to Dole in every single later primary. And in 1992 the closest he came to equaling his 37% in New Hampshire was the 36% he won in Georgia and 32% in Florida and Rhode Island. On the Democratic side in 1992 Bill Clinton finished second in New Hampshire (while shrewdly declaring himself “the comeback kid”) but won 52% of the total primary vote to 20% for Jerry Brown (who lost even in California) and 18% for New Hamsphire winner Paul Tsongas.
I could go back in time, but you get the point. Mitt Romney can’t count on the results in subsequent primaries closely resembling those in New Hampshire.
