Within the Margin

With the waves of spin that have emerged from Tuesday night’s Caucus in Iowa it’s time to really look at the next state: New Hampshire and try to figure out what’s next in the reality show that is the Republican Primary for President (if MTV filmed this whole thing, I’d actually have respect for that network). New Hampshire isn’t a state with a large portion of evangelical voters, so right off the bat the likes of the Ricks (Santorum and Perry) are going to have a hard time winning over voters who may be church going, but not CHURCH GOING. Ron Paul’s economic vision should play well here, and it likely will to a second or third place finish, but Ron’s been running for President for 24 years and has no shot at the nomination.

Then there’s Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. Huntsman has said that all the cards are on the line in New Hampshire, and after a paltry 700+ vote performance in Iowa, you certainly can’t blame him. Huntsman has probably taken to New Hampshire the way Santorum did to Iowa and actually did something that the major players haven’t particularly done well this year: campaign. Santorum’s over-performance wasn’t magical polling that the major firms missed, just look at his itinerary, he took Iowa seriously and Romney and the others didn’t. Huntsman’s doing the same in New Hampshire. Yesterday’s endorsement from the Boston Globe for the former Ambassador to China and Utah Governor is certainly nice, but how much pull does it have; that remains to be seen, it’s timed just late enough to sway some undecideds, but it likely won’t have the penetration into NH to make the endorsement a game changer by any means. Huntsman could finish top three in NH despite a ridiculous “surge” for Santorum which would be the product of a week of pretty good press and not voters doing their due diligence with regards to the candidate. Jon Huntsman won’t win New Hampshire, but he sure could help the “Anti-Romney” crowd with a Santorum-like over performance due to actually campaigning and winning folks over.

Then there’s Mitt Romney. He may or may not have won the Iowa Caucus, and the polls have him winning New Hampshire by 25 points, but that’s not going to be good enough for Romney if his end game is a short primary and a long general election. if he wants to shorten the primary, he needs to push his numbers to >50% in polling. Yesterday’s Suffolk University tracking poll had Romney at 43% and Paul at 18, impressive, but when you’re the “favored son” in that Primary/Caucus you have to be getting greater than 40% in the polls. The conventional wisdom of this whole primary was that Romney wouldn’t preform great in Iowa (and he didn’t) and would preform exceptionally in New Hampshire, leaving Nevada, South Carolina and Florida as his biggest stepping stones to the nomination. Romney’s still upside down in South Carolina and Florida, and a sub-50% finish in his “home state” isn’t going to ward off the rabble-rousers who hate Mitt Romney. Mitt’s still the favorite for the nomination, he’s the only one with any realistic chance of beating President Obama, or so the conventional wisdom goes. Romney needs a big win, and a win in terms of a majority of the votes cast, not being the highest total of the plurality.

Iowa and New Hampshire are places to whittle the field, Iowa claimed Tim Pawlenty early (I wonder what his numbers would look like right now had he decided to stay in) and Michele Bachmann late (thank god for that). Both parties nominations will never be won in either state, let me be clear about that right now, but impressive wins in either makes for shortening the primary season, which I don’t see happening with this year’s primary.

Turnout is always reliably unpredictable, you never know what the day’s conditions (weather, last minute robocalls, dirty tricks from other campaigns) will forebode for you. In the closing days of the New Hampshire primary, Mitt Romney’s going to get what he wants (a win) and not what he needs (a huge win to begin to shorten the primary).