The LA Times reminds us the most important number in the recent NH polls:
But that’s not the most important data in this survey.
What’s most important is the little-noticed numbers revealing that with slightly less than two months to go before the voting, 48% of Democrats and fully 60% of Republicans remain undecided.
Now that’s a volatile setting, just made for stunning surprises in the nation’s first primary vote.
It’s gonna be a wild ride.
Tags: New Hampshire, Polls
I normally don’t write about polls, especially ARG polls. But I was struck by two things in the most recent batch.
The first one, which lots of people have talked about is Mitt Romney’s rise in South Carolina. That’s new. Is it real? Is it TV moving numbers?
But the second thing is Fred Thompson. His collapse. In every state. What happened? Is that why Romney is rising? Are early state voters starting to really make up their minds?
Tags: Fred Thompson, Iowa, New Hampshire, Polls, Romney, South Carolina
I have two questions about the possibility of a December NH primary:
Tags: Calendar, Fundraising, McCain, New Hampshire, Romney
There have been whispers for a while that there could be a December primary. Roger Simon now argues that it is increasingly likely that there could be a December 11th primary in New Hampshire.
On the Democratic side, that seems to favor Hillary Clinton. She is up some silly amount in NH. She is +20 in NH. A little momentum going into Iowa can’t hurt. This reduces the odds of a successful Barack Obama resurgence.
On the GOP side, this opens up the game much, much more. Mitt Romney was hoping to boomerang with Iowa. But, in RCP, Romney is only +4%. While his organization is either the best or second best. (behind John McCain) Who finishes first may well come down to a crap shoot between McCain, Romney, and Rudy Giuliani. It seems unlikely that Fred Thompson will be a first-tier competitor in New Hampshire. That means that he will be competing with, perhaps, Mike Huckabee for fourth.
Can Huckabee survive a 5th place finish? Could Thompson survive a 4th?
I have recommended that McCain and Giuliani skip Iowa. Is there similar advice for Thompson and Huckabee in New Hampshire?
What happens to Romney if he were to come in 2nd or 3rd?
If New Hampshire is first, do independents vote for Democrats? Less likely if Iowa comes first, and Clinton wins it. Then Obama might well drop out.
Tags: Calendar, New Hampshire, Republicans
I saw this press release from Mitt Romney’s campaign. I asked Patrick Hynes, who is the blog-outreach guy for John McCain, what he thought of it. His first response was to tell a joke:
First, I think that John Lynch has higher favorability among New Hampshire Republicans than Mitt Romney.
But then, more seriously:
Second, it is a tribute to the New Hampshire primary process that a sitting Democratic Governor would attend a townhall for a Republican candidate for President. Governor Lynch’s visit demonstrates the decency and respect that New Hampshire voters expect in their politicians. To draw a parallel between Senator McCain’s and Governor Lynch’s mutual respect and Governor Romney’s prolonged and repeated support for liberal Democrats, like Dick Swett and Rocky Anderson, over conservative Republicans, is the kind of intellectual corner-cutting that we have come to expect from the Romney campaign.
Tags: McCain, New Hampshire, Romney
There’s a fight over taxes between Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. Yesterday, Romney accused Rudy of supporting a commuter tax.
But, as always seems to be the case for Romney, whose operating principle seems to be "what is good for me is not good for thee," Romney raised the commuter tax.
The Giuliani campaign put up all the details. I won’t bore you. Here is the bottom line: as governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney raised taxes on New Hampshire voters. Why would New Hampshire voters trust him to not raise their taxes when he has already done it before?
Tags: Giuliani, New Hampshire, Romney, Taxes
| Jan. 5: | Iowa caucuses | both parties |
| Jan. 8 | New Hampshire primary | both parties |
| Jan. 12 | Nevada caucuses | both parties |
| Jan. 15 | Michigan | GOP primary; Dem beauty contest |
| Jan. 19 | South Carolina primary | both parties |
| Jan. 29 | Florida | GOP primary; Dem beauty contest |
Marc Ambinder reports the schedule.
The most interesting thing that I saw was 3 days between Iowa and New Hampshire. Is that going to dampen the effect of (presumably) Romney’s Iowa win. Candidates are just going to move straight to New Hampshire, and there will be little chance for people to see much impact. With three days to go, people in New Hampshire are going to be making their minds before Iowa.
The same thing applies to Nevada, but I am not sure that anyone is really going to care about Nevada anyways.
Tags: Calendar, Iowa, New Hampshire
Earlier today, Jonathan Martin pointed out the new www.phoneyFred.org website:
Clearly, though, this is no amateur effort. The volume of information and the way that it’s sourced reeks of a grasstops hit-job. Repeatingly calling Thompson "Phoney Fred" in the on-message style of political operatives, the site offers up unflattering quotes with the standard attribution style of oppo everywhere.
Turns out it wasn’t amateur at all. According to WaPo, it was put together by Mitt Romney’s paid consultants:
Nowhere on the site does it indicate who is responsible for it. But a series of inquiries leads directly to the website of Under the Power Lines, the political consulting firm of Warren Tompkins, Romney’s lead consultant in South Carolina.
This is another in a long list of thuggery and illegality of Romney associates and campaign staff. Including Romney’s former Director of Operations Jay Garrity, Romney’s former national finance co-chair, Romney’s other indicted former national finance co-chair, etc. And then the Romney campaign threatens voters if they do things like ask questions (note that in South Carolina, the Romney campaign doesn’t even allow that):
On Sept. 3, I attended a house party for Mitt Romney … a gentleman approached me and said if I started any trouble I would be thrown out of the event. … He reiterated I would be tossed out because my "kind" weren’t welcome at such an event. … All the while, he used his 6-foot frame to intimidate my 5-foot-4-inch body. He then introduced the grandson of the homeowner, the man running his New Hampshire campaign, the very same man who attempted to bully me into silence.
Thugs and illegality. If a guy surrounds himself with these kinds of people on the campaign, who is he going to surround himself with if he becomes President?
Tags: Ethics, New Hampshire, Romney, South Carolina
When I was at the New Hampshire GOP debate, I ran into a Republican who is a die-hard volunteer for the ONE campaign. Michael is a former Marine and told me a great story about sharing the ONE campaign’s vision with other Marines at a Rudy Giuliani event a couple of days prior. He focuses on national security, madrasas, etc.
UPDATE: I was rushing to get my content out, so I didn’t finish this. I also talked to a number of other volunteers and got some encouraging information about the ONE campaign in New Hampshire. First, they had told me previously that they really were reaching out to churches. It appears that, to some extent, this is true. They have gotten some significant support through the groups associated with the Micah Challenge. And a number of the local volunteers viewed themselves in the Rick Warren/Saddleback sphere. Second, there appears to be significant Republican support, although, interestingly, this seems unrelated to the church groups. Perhaps the veterans and moderate/business parts of the coalition in New Hampshire have been activated, while the conservative churches have not been as active. It does seem that the conservative churches, which are weaker in New Hampshire, just have not engaged. It will be interesting to see what happens here. All in all, they appear to have bodies and a significant degree of activation. And this week, I talked to a DC-based GOP consultant who tells me that the part of the campaign that he is responsible for is quite enormous. We shall see where this goes.
Tags: National Security, New Hampshire, ONE
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