NEW HAMPSHIRE — Monday was a rocky day in the Granite State.
With an increasingly tight race, candidates held a mind-boggling
number of events. The marathon began at sunrise and tore right
through until 11:40 p.m. when Wesley Clark wrapped up his day at
Dixville Notch, where the first primary votes are cast at
midnight.
This is a notoriously difficult state to get a handle on. Look
at the 2000 primary for example. Ten percent of those who
participated in that contest did not register until the day of the
primary, and, thus, were outside the purview of pollsters.
Independent voters, who make up 38 percent of the electorate, can
vote in either primary. In exit interviews, 47 percent of Democrats
and 36 percent of Republicans did not choose a candidate until the
week before the election. A full 15 percent of Democrats and 10
percent of Republicans said they did not decide who they would vote
for until election day.
The pollsters are not much help this year. John Kerry is thought
to have anywhere from a 3 to 21-point lead over Howard Dean.
Lieberman, Clark, and Edwards all place third in one poll or
another. Undecideds are making up right around 14 percent of likely
primary voters.
The verdict? Cue vicious laughter. But since the pollsters
cannot come to a consensus and people love columnists who are silly
enough to make predictions, there seems little harm in sharing some
anecdotal evidence about trends on the ground here at the nation’s
first primary.
First of all, watch out for John Edwards. I’ve been banging this
drum for a long time, but three weeks ago the North Carolina
senator couldn’t get more than 50 people out to his events.
Yesterday he had 600 to 700 showing up at appearances all over the
state. He even had to split one of his “town hall meetings” up into
two speeches in the same place with the huge crowd changing places
during intermission. With Kerry and Dean going negative on the last
day of campaigning, look for Edwards to close the deal with many
undecideds and independents. I believe he is a serious contender
for second place.
Much is being made of Howard Dean’s eleventh hour rebound. Local
Democrats who abandoned Dean after Iowa told me they were coming
back to him because of the undue attention the media put on his “I
have a scream” speech. “Everyone has a bad day,” one woman told me.
“People act like he shouldn’t be human.”
Such empathy is stemming the flow of Dean supporters to Kerry.
After all, what Democrat wants to seem like she’s conceding to
right-wing talk radio? Nevertheless, Dean’s reaction has been to go
on the attack, disparaging Kerry and the rest of his opponents.
Defying logic, Dean came out swinging again with a controversial
statement about ordinary people in Iraq being “worse off” than
under Saddam Hussein. Wrong move. No doubt he has a potent
organization here and is still has a shot at the top spot, but
whether New Hampshire voters will respond to the return of angry
Howie is an interesting question. My guess is they will not.
And we can’t forget the animosity between Dick Gephardt and
Dean. The three or four percent of voters who supported Gephardt
are not headed for Dean, but to Kerry and Edwards. I’ll be looking
for Dean in third place if independents go to Edwards as I believe
they will.
Joe Lieberman is proclaiming he now has “joementum” with
independent voters. He clearly hopes to mimic John McCain’s
surprise win here in 2000. But McCain pulled off that 18-point
victory by supplementing a strong Republican base with
independents. Lieberman does not have that base. Fourth place, in
my view, would be a major victory for him, for all the good it
would do him.
John Kerry is riding around in a helicopter today. Despite New
Hampshire’s love of tripping the frontrunner at the polls, Kerry
has not made any major missteps in the last week. He may not
trounce Dean and Edwards as he would like to going into South
Carolina and Missouri, but a loss at this point would be a big
upset and a major turnaround.
Wesley Clark has failed to understand his candidacy and is
losing steam. His “higher standard of leadership” slogan was
perfect and he surged on that while the other candidates were
focused in Iowa. But his subsequent flip flops and bizarre
statements — endorsing abortion until the very moment of birth,
claiming the internal combustion engine was “obsolete,” and hanging
out with Michael Moore — have taken their toll. These mistakes
will haunt him if and when he heads south.
Finally, I’ll go out on a limb and say that Dennis Kucinich and
Al Sharpton will fight it out for last place.
