Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid suggested Tuesday that the New Hampshire shouldn’t play such a prominent role in determining the Democratic nominee, just a week before Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is expected to beat Hillary Clinton.
“Not many people live there,” Reid, D-Nev., told reporters in response to a question about Sanders’ strength in the polls. “There’s no diversity.”
Democratic leaders Tuesday were scrambling to downplay the importance of both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Clinton barely edged out Sanders in Iowa and is headed for a loss in New Hampshire. Sanders leads Clinton by an average of 18 points in the polls there, according to a RealClearPolitics average.
But those states don’t matter much to the nomination race, or at least they shouldn’t, Reid argued.
“I think the system, I don’t see it changing tomorrow, but it’s kind of not a very good system to have, for decade after decade, Iowa and New Hampshire meaning so much when it has no recognition of what America is all about in terms of diversity and wide ranging economic issues.”
Reid said the states that follow Iowa and New Hampshire matter more.
“Moving into Nevada and South Carolina, there’s diversity as there is in the rest of the country,” he said.
New Hampshire is 94 percent white, according to the 2014 Census, Iowa is 92 percent white. Nevada and South Carolina are 76 percent and 68 percent white, respectively.
