February 11, 2020 at 11:19 PM EST
Shortly after the polls closed, entrepreneur Andrew Yang dropped out of presidential race, as did Sen. Michael F. Bennet of Colorado.
Also competing in New Hampshire are investor Tom Steyer, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.
- Klobuchar thanks supporters after strong New Hampshire finish: ‘My heart is full tonight’
- ‘We’re just getting started,’ Biden says in South Carolina
- Buttigieg camp confident, but some worry about ‘Klobucharge’
- Warren vows ‘long-haul’ fight after disappointing New Hampshire results
- New Hampshire voters waited until last minute to choose a Democratic candidate, preliminary exit poll results show
February 11, 2020 at 11:16 PM EST
Sanders wins New Hampshire primary
Sanders is the winner of the New Hampshire primary, with Buttigieg coming in second and Klobuchar in third.
With more than 85 percent of precincts reporting, Sanders had 26 percent of the vote, Buttigieg had 24.4 percent and Klobuchar had 19.8 percent. Warren and Biden had 9.4 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively.
It’s a repeat victory for Sanders, who beat Hillary Clinton by 20 in the state’s Democratic primary in 2016.
By Terri Rupar
February 11, 2020 at 11:14 PM EST
Sanders, holding onto narrow lead in New Hampshire, claims victory
Sanders, holding onto a narrow lead in the New Hampshire primary as results continued to roll in, spoke to his supporters just after 11 p.m. Tuesday, claiming a win in the Granite State.
“Thank you, New Hampshire!” he said multiple times, as the crowd struggled . “Let me thank the people of New Hampshire for a great victory tonight.”
Sanders also re-emphasized he had won Iowa the week before, though both he and Buttigieg have requested partial recanvasses of the results from the Feb. 3 caucuses. Results the Iowa Democratic Party reported so far show Buttigieg with a narrow lead in state delegate equivalents, the traditional metric by which the winner has been determined, while Sanders led Buttigieg in the popular vote.
“The reason that we won tonight in New Hampshire, we won last week in Iowa, is because of the hard work of so many volunteers," Sanders said Tuesday night. "And let me say tonight that this victory here is the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.”
Sanders expressed gratitude for his opponents, listing them by name, and struck a harmonious note after being criticized for not doing enough to unite the party in the weeks leading up to the primary.
“What I can tell you with absolute certainty ... is that no matter who wins, and we certainly hope it’s going to be us, we’re going to unite together ... and defeat the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country,” Sanders said.
By Amy Wang
February 11, 2020 at 11:04 PM EST
Buttigieg says his campaign is ‘here to stay’
Addressing supporters in Nashua shortly before 11 p.m., Buttigieg congratulated Sanders on his “strong showing.” He also praised the other top contenders — Warren, Klobuchar and Biden — by name. And he thanked his supporters, including, he said, “some newly former Republicans ready to vote for something new.”
“Here in a state that goes by the motto, ‘Live Free or Die,’ you made up your own minds,” Buttigieg said to applause. “You asserted that famous independent streak. And thanks to you, a campaign that some said shouldn’t be here at all has shown that we are here to stay.”
The 38-year-old former South Bend, Ind., mayor also pointed to his relative youth compared with the other Democratic contenders, thanking supporters for voting to meet “this new era of challenge with a new generation of leadership.”
At one point during his remarks, the crowd broke out into cheers of “President Pete! President Pete!”
While Buttigieg congratulated Sanders, he also took a veiled swipe at the Vermont senator.
“A politics of my way or the highway is the road to reelecting Donald Trump," he said.
Earlier, when his New Hampshire campaign co-chairs took the stage, Buttigieg’s campaign shut off CNN on the big screen so there were no more results being displayed in the room besides what people had on their phones.
At the time they shut the screens off, the results showed Buttigieg closing on Sanders, and the room was far more excited than at any time all night.
By Felicia Sonmez and Chelsea Janes
February 11, 2020 at 10:42 PM EST
S.C. grass-roots leader says Biden’s support among black voters is solid
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Former Richland County Council chair Bernice Scott, the founder of the “Reckoning Crew,” a powerful South Carolina grass-roots organization, attended Biden’s event Tuesday night.
The Reckoning Crew supported Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) before she left the race; the group has since endorsed Biden. Scott told The Washington Post that Biden’s South Carolina support hasn’t waned because of the results in Iowa and New Hampshire. African Americans make up nearly two-thirds of the Democratic electorate in South Carolina.
She said that as her group walks door to door canvassing for Biden, “I’ve met one person that was going to vote for somebody else — somebody that sent them a lot of literature. Everyone else I’ve met is going for [Biden].”
Scott also played down the notion that Biden’s black supporters would be easily swayed by other candidates.
“Black people, we are smarter than listening to everything that everyone is saying — ‘Oh, we want to do this for you, and we want to do that for you,’” she said. “We know you can’t do all those things. [Biden] has a proven record. And the things that he’s saying are all things that he can do, and that’s why we’ve told him we’ve got his back.”
By Cleve Wootson
February 11, 2020 at 10:40 PM EST
Trump wins New Hampshire GOP primary
President Trump cruised to an easy win in New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary Tuesday, with results as of 10:30 p.m. showing the president poised to take roughly 86 percent of the vote and all of the state’s 19 delegates.
Former Massachusetts governor William Weld came in a distant second, with about 9 percent of the vote.
More than a dozen other candidates took about 3 percent of the vote, while write-ins took roughly 2 percent.
By Felicia Sonmez
February 11, 2020 at 10:37 PM EST
Warren and Klobuchar praise each other in New Hampshire speeches, warn not to count women out
Both Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, the only two women who have so far net delegates in the Democratic primary, praised each other in their speeches Tuesday night.
Following what was projected to be a disappointing fourth-place finish in New Hampshire, Warren acknowledged Klobuchar’s stronger-than-expected performance in the Granite State.
“I also want to congratulate my friend Amy Klobuchar for showing just how wrong the pundits can be when they count a woman out,” Warren said.
And Klobuchar shouted out Warren in her own speech Tuesday night, a victory lap of sorts after the senator from Minnesota catapulted to what looked to be a third-place finish in New Hampshire, according to early returns.
“As my friend Elizabeth noted earlier tonight, people told me, just like they told her, that a woman could not be elected," Klobuchar said.
Both candidates have addressed the issue of a woman’s “electability” head on in recent weeks, often bringing each other into the conversation when it comes up.
“Look at the men on this stage," Warren said at the January Democratic debate. “Collectively, they have lost 10 elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women, Amy and me.”
By Amy Wang
February 11, 2020 at 10:36 PM EST
Why Bloomberg isn’t on the ballot in New Hampshire
Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg isn’t on the New Hampshire primary ballot — but that didn’t stop Trump from trying to needle him as Tuesday’s results came in.
In a tweet, Trump declared that Bloomberg was having “a very bad night.”
Bloomberg, a late entrant, is skipping the early states in the hope that the Democratic race will remain in flux by the time March 3 — Super Tuesday — rolls around.
On that date, voters in 14 states, plus American Samoa and Democrats abroad, will go to the polls and a total of 1,357 pledged delegates will be awarded — far more than the 24 and 41 delegates awarded in New Hampshire and Iowa, respectively.
Bloomberg’s gamble is a long shot, but not an impossible one — though it would not be possible without his vast fortune. Since entering the race in November, he has spent more than $300 million on advertising, according to the ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics.
By Felicia Sonmez
February 11, 2020 at 9:47 PM EST
Klobuchar thanks supporters after strong New Hampshire finish: ‘My heart is full tonight’
Addressing her supporters in New Hampshire, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) appeared upbeat after a stronger than expected performance in the state’s primary.
“Hello, America. I’m Amy Klobuchar and I will beat Donald Trump,” she said. “My heart is full tonight. While there are still ballots left to count, we have beaten the odds every step of the way.”
Klobuchar vowed to take her campaign to Nevada and South Carolina and said she could inspire Democrats, independents and Republicans.
“We are taking this message of unity to the rest of the country,” she said.
Her speech was interrupted with chants of “Vote Amy! Beat Trump!”
The Minnesota senator had seen a brief surge in some polls following a strong performance at the Feb. 7 Democratic debate in Manchester. That momentum — or “Klomentum,” as her supporters have taken to calling it — appears to have catapulted her into a top-three finish in the New Hampshire primary, according to early results.
The finish earned her praise from opponent Elizabeth Warren, who was running behind Klobuchar, according to early returns.
“I also want to congratulate my friend and colleague Amy Klobuchar for showing just how wrong the pundits can be when they count a woman out,” Warren said earlier Tuesday night.
Klobuchar had finished fifth in the Iowa caucuses last week.
By Amy Wang
February 11, 2020 at 9:39 PM EST
‘We’re just getting started,’ Biden says in South Carolina
COLUMBIA, S.C. — As early results began rolling into New Hampshire, nearly 200 people showed up to an almost-impromptu Biden event in Columbia, S.C.
The crowd included state legislators, the chair of state Democratic Party and more than a dozen people in T-shirts that said “South Carolina For Biden.”
Biden announced Tuesday afternoon that he was forgoing his Tuesday night party at the Radisson in Nashua, N.H., and instead heading to a campaign launch event in South Carolina, where he has maintained a polling lead for months.
Biden has tried to lower expectations in New Hampshire while asserting that the first early-voting states — including racially diverse South Carolina and Nevada — better reflect the feelings of the American electorate.
In remarks to supporters Tuesday night, he declared, “It ain’t over, man. We’re just getting started.”
He emphasized that the majority of African Americans and Latinos haven’t yet been able to vote and that “up to now, we haven’t heard from the most committed segment of the Democratic Party — the African American community.”
“We just heard from the first two of 50 states,” Biden said. “Not half the nation. Not a quarter of the nation. Not 10 percent. Two. Where I come from, that’s the opening bell.”
Earlier, in remarks introducing her husband, Jill Biden referenced her family’s history with South Carolina Democratic voters.
“When we lost our son Beau, we came to South Carolina to the Low Country, to find a sense of peace,” Jill Biden said. “This state opened its arms and embraced our family. You helped us heal."
“Iowa and New Hampshire have had their say, but now it’s your turn,” she added.
By Cleve Wootson and Felicia Sonmez
February 11, 2020 at 9:20 PM EST
Buttigieg’s New Hampshire performance hinges on Goldilocks appeal, exit poll finds
Buttigieg proved to be a powerhouse of the middle lane with a Goldilocks hold on being seen as “about right” between more liberal and conservative wings of the party.
Preliminary exit poll results show Sanders dominated among voters in his core groups of very liberal, less wealthy and very young voters, but faded at the other end of the spectrum. Similarly, Klobuchar was strong with older and more religious voters and more moderate and conservative voters, but dropped off outside those groups.
By contrast, Buttigieg ran a steady line, never too popular, never far behind. Voters were asked whether four major candidates’ positions on the issues were too liberal, not liberal enough or about right. About 7 in 10 voters called Buttigieg “about right,” more than 20 percentage points higher in that middle ground than anyone else. About half of voters called Sanders too liberal, and roughly 4 in 10 said Warren was too liberal. Four in 10 said Biden was not liberal enough. The exit poll did not ask this question about Klobuchar, who finished stronger than in final pre-primary polls.
Buttigieg showed the same steady pattern with voters who were more religious or less religious. Klobuchar narrowly won voters who attend worship services at least occasionally, and Sanders won those who never attend services. But Buttigieg got about 2 in 10 of those who do attend services and those who don’t.
While Sanders was much more popular among men than women and Klobuchar was considerably stronger among women than men, Buttigieg was about the same with both men and women.
Buttigieg got 2 in 10 of voters 45 and older as well as among voters younger than that. Sanders won 4 in 10 of the younger but 1 in 6 of the older, and Klobuchar reversed that with 3 in 10 of the older voters but 1 in 10 of the younger. Buttigieg was about equally popular among voters with or without college degrees, while Sanders and Klobuchar once again swung up and down, with Sanders taking voters without college degrees and Klobuchar leading narrowly among college graduates.
Sanders clobbered Klobuchar and other candidates among “very liberal” voters, getting nearly twice as many as her, while Klobuchar got almost twice as many moderate or conservative voters as Sanders. Buttigieg sat right in the middle, getting over 2 in 10 of both groups.
These are preliminary results from a survey of voters as they exited randomly selected voting sites in New Hampshire on Feb. 11. The poll was conducted by Edison Media Research for the National Election Pool, The Washington Post and other media organizations.
By Dan Keating
February 11, 2020 at 9:12 PM EST
Buttigieg camp confident, but some worry about ‘Klobucharge’
NASHUA, N.H. — Buttigieg supporters filed into a gym at Nashua Community College around the time results began rolling in. The room was full, if not stuffed to capacity, by the time polls closed at 8 p.m., and the crowd roared every time a new precinct’s results showed Buttigieg in the lead.
For much of this week, Buttigieg’s team had exuded confidence. His attention had turned from attacking Biden to hitting Sanders more regularly, a sign that the campaign believed Sanders — leading polls here — was the one to beat.
But in the later hours Tuesday, and particularly as polls began to close, some Buttigieg allies started to wonder about the extent to which Klobuchar might over-perform her recent poll positions. Questions about a “Klobucharge” began to circulate, though early results showed Buttigieg with a narrow lead.
Buttigieg and his surrogates had staged a relentless national and local media push over the last few days, with Buttigieg, Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.) and even actor Kevin Costner singing his praises around the state. Costner and other surrogates were scheduled to be on hand in Nashua on Tuesday night.
At about 8 p.m., the crowd counted down the seconds until the polls closed, at which point results on CNN reported Buttigieg in second place, just ahead of Klobuchar.
Buttigieg’s regular playlist — an eclectic combination of such varied artists as Carly Rae Jepsen, Creedence Clearwater Revival and others — blared as results continued to roll in. The crowd clapped politely when news broke that Yang was likely to suspend his campaign. The room exploded as CNN showed an exit poll that showed that voters considered Buttigieg the most likely to beat Trump.
By Chelsea Janes
February 11, 2020 at 9:05 PM EST
Warren vows ‘long-haul’ fight after disappointing New Hampshire results
Addressing supporters in New Hampshire after a potentially disappointing finish in the state’s primary, Elizabeth Warren vowed to push on, saying her campaign was built for the “long haul” and they were just getting started.
Warren congratulated Sanders and Buttigieg for their “strong nights.” Both are predicted to finish among the top three in New Hampshire. Both, she said, are “great people” who would make a better president than Trump.
She also acknowledged Klobuchar’s stronger-than-expected performance in New Hampshire. “I also want to congratulate my friend Amy Klobuchar for showing just how wrong the pundits can be when they count a woman out,” Warren said.
Without naming names, Warren criticized other campaigns whose supporters went negative and who had rolled out ads “mocking other candidates.”
“The fight between factions in our party has taken a sharp turn in recent weeks,” Warren said. “These harsh tactics might work if you are willing to burn down the rest of the party in order to be the last man standing.”
To beat Trump, however, she cautioned: “We cannot afford to fall into factions. We cannot afford to squander our collective power. We win when we come together.”
Edison Media Research projected neither Warren nor Joe Biden would reach the 15 percent threshold necessary to receive any delegates in the New Hampshire primary, based on analysis of voting returns. Still, Warren reiterated that she believes her campaign is best positioned to beat Trump in November because it can unite Democrats.
“I got in this fight, I ran for office, because I saw that families were being squeezed harder than ever ... I’m here to get big things done,” Warren said. “Tonight, I have a message for our party and for this nation: Our best chance of beating Donald Trump is with a candidate who can do the work, and I mean the hard, disciplined work.”
Warren ended by thanking her husband, Bruce Mann, and their dog, Bailey.
“The fight we’re in, the fight to save our democracy, is an uphill battle,” she said. “But our campaign is built for the long haul. And we are just getting started.”
Scott Clement contributed to this report.
By Amy Wang and Felicia Sonmez
February 11, 2020 at 8:38 PM EST
Michael Bennet drops out of presidential race
Michael Bennet, the Colorado senator and former public school superintendent, is ending his campaign for the presidency, he said.
Bennet’s exit comes on the night of the New Hampshire primary, after he said he needed to finish in the top three or four to continue.
Bennet walked into his party shortly before 8:30, thanking his supporters, then thanking key surrogates like Gary Hart and James Carville. “It’s fitting for us to end the campaign tonight,” he said. “I love you, New Hampshire. Whether you knew it or not, we were having a great time together.”
Bennet did not announce support for any other candidate, and hinted that the state would “see me again” in the future. But he reiterated that his party would be best served by a nominee with broad appeal and a popular agenda, focusing on expanding access to education and fighting climate change.
“I want you to be optimistic tonight,” Bennet said. “As James Baldwin wrote at the height of the civil rights movement: This is in our hands, we have no right to assume otherwise.”
Read more here.
By Amy Wang
February 11, 2020 at 8:02 PM EST
Andrew Yang drops out of presidential race
Andrew Yang, a businessman and political newcomer, is ending his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, he said Tuesday.
Yang’s exit came on the night of the New Hampshire primary, where he predicted a disappointing finish. When asked when he didn’t remain in the race through the more diverse states coming up — Nevada and South Carolina are next — Yang said he didn’t see a path forward.
“I am a numbers guy,” Yang said in an interview before addressing supporters here. “In most of these states, I’m not going to be at a threshold where I get delegates, which makes sticking around not necessarily helpful or productive in terms of furthering the goals of this campaign.”
An entrepreneur who has never held elected office, Yang launched his campaign in November 2017 and was soon dubbed a “longer-than-long-shot” by the New York Times. Yang would often invoke that same phrase with glee on the campaign trail, and on his merchandise, as he polled higher and raised more money than many better-known candidates.
Read more here.
By David Weigel and Amy Wang
February 11, 2020 at 7:54 PM EST
The fight for independents in New Hampshire
KEENE, N.H. — At the start of her town halls, Gabbard asks for a show of hands. Who’s a member of the Democratic Party? Who’s a Republican? Who’s an independent? Last week at an event at Keene State College, nearly 100 voters showed up, and Democrats were in the minority.
“What we're seeing here tonight is a reflection of where the country is,” Gabbard said. “It's not about sectioning off with our own party or our own tribe.”
Gabbard and Yang count on support from the anti-establishment, throw-'em-all-out voters who backed Sanders four years ago. Their candidacies are part of the reason Sanders has never reached the levels of support he had four years ago, when he won 60 percent of the vote in this state’s primary.
“I think a lot of us thought four years ago that Bernie represented the outsider, and, in a binary choice, he obviously did,” said Steve Marchand, a former mayor of Portsmouth, N.H., who is advising Yang. “He was pushing that Overton window on issues in ways that a lot of us respected. But I think the ‘freedom dividend’ is a much better way to fight inequality than, like, guaranteed jobs or figuring out Medicare-for-all. The way we beat Donald Trump is an outsider who has his act together.”
Most New Hampshire voters are independents, and in 2016, most of them backed Sanders, the longest-serving independent in Congress. Sanders only narrowly defeated Clinton among registered Democrats, winning them by four points, but 40 percent of primary voters were independents, and they backed Sanders by a 3-to-1 margin.
New Hampshire voters have more choices now, and some have migrated. Susan Wilkinson, 62, said at an earlier Gabbard town hall that she was volunteering 20 hours a week for the Hawaii congresswoman and had ruled out a vote for Sanders, for whom she had spent 40 hours per week volunteering in 2016.
“When I first met her, I had the same feeling I had when I first met Jimmy Carter, because she's honest,” Wilkinson said of Gabbard. “I respect Bernie, but I never met him once. Tulsi knows who her volunteers are. She pays attention. She's real.”
By David Weigel
February 11, 2020 at 7:31 PM EST
1984: Mondale lost New Hampshire, then won the nomination
In 1984, for the first time, New Hampshire voters threw off a front-runner the old-fashioned way: They gave somebody else more votes.
The primary that year resembled the state of things 12 years earlier, with a front-runner who had been on the party’s last losing ticket starting out as the heavy favorite: Sen. Edmund S. Muskie of Maine before, former vice president Walter F. Mondale this time. Muskie had nonetheless been able to win his neighboring state, while Mondale had no geographic advantage, but plenty of support from labor unions.
Rival candidates correctly saw Mondale’s lead as flimsy. On Feb. 5, three weeks before the primary, the Boston Globe’s poll found Mondale ahead with 37 percent, Sen. John Glenn of Ohio behind with 18 percent, a surging Jesse Jackson at 16 percent, and Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado in the back of the first tier, with 12 percent. But the pattern was unmistakable: Mondale, who’d led all year, had slipped from 46 percent to a place where someone might be able to overtake him.
As in Iowa, the smart money was initially on Glenn. As in Iowa, Hart outworked him and built broader appeal — a candidate of generational change against a more conservative Democrat who did not offer many clear distinctions with Mondale. The former vice president leaned on his experience, while Glenn leaned on his compelling biography.
“One of the joys of running for office, not having been there, is that problems always seem more simple on the outside than on the inside,” Mondale, a Minnesotan, said in the final pre-primary debate.
Mondale’s strength set up the primary as a semifinal, a race to determine Mondale’s strongest challenger. Hart made that explicit, asking New Hampshire voters not to “ratify” the Mondale lead and end the primary before the party had a real debate about its future. “This party will not gain responsibility as long as leaders of the past debate whose policies of the past are worst,” Hart said in the New Hampshire debate.
The Democrats had just eight days between Iowa and New Hampshire to sort this out. Hart, the second-place finisher in Iowa, gained every single day and wound up beating Mondale by nine points. The Mondale-Hart contest would dominate the next few months, with Glenn imploding and Jackson hanging around to win delegates, but Hart’s limitations were clear even as he triumphed. In the exit poll, even as he lost, Mondale tied Hart with voters who worried that their economic situation was growing worse.
“Mr. Mondale’s best voter groups were under-represented in New Hampshire,” Hedrick Smith wrote in the New York Times. “In the nationwide survey, blacks constituted 21 percent of the likely Democratic primary electorate and Mr. Mondale outpolled Senator Hart in that group by 67 percent to 0. But blacks make up only about 2 percent of the New Hampshire Democratic electorate.”
Mondale’s campaign argued that he would recover and win the nomination once the race moved to more diverse states. Within a month, that was exactly what happened.
By David Weigel
February 11, 2020 at 6:28 PM EST
Warren’s campaign lays out the path forward for her candidacy
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Warren’s campaign put out a detailed strategy memo outlining a path forward for her candidacy ahead of polls closing here in New Hampshire, where she’s in a tight contest for third place and facing a possibility of not winning any of the first four states.
In the memo, campaign manager Roger Lau argues that no candidate has become a persuasive front-runner, so the Democratic race remains “fractured” and Warren is well-positioned to emerge from the turmoil.
That assertion rests on several untested assumptions: that Buttigieg will lose altitude, that Klobuchar will not build on her momentum, that Sanders won’t expand his base and that Biden will fade. It also assumes Bloomberg will not catch on.
In the memo, Lau tried to frame the contest as a national fight over delegates, downplaying the need to win outright in any state as long as Warren is able to add to her delegate count. That too is an untested idea: It’s difficult to keep grass-roots fundraising flowing without momentum-building victories. In December, Lau issued a similar note downplaying Warren’s chances in the early voting states.
This time, Lau offered a more detailed look at Warren campaign internal projections, a rare move for a campaign that touts not relying on polling or even having a pollster on staff. The campaign didn’t immediately reply to a question about how they determined these projections. “The road to the Democratic nomination is not paved with statewide winner-take-all victories,” Lau wrote. “This is a district-by-district contest for pledged delegates awarded proportionally.”
Still, Lau acknowledges that Warren’s path to the nomination is “not a straightforward narrative captured by glancing at a map.” He added: “the process won’t be decided by the simple horse race numbers in clickbait headlines.”
Lau both downplays the ability of “pundits” to predict the outcome of the race, but also makes a series of predictions of his own, including the campaign’s long-held belief that the race will come down to Sanders and Biden. “In that three-way race, Elizabeth Warren is the candidate with the highest potential ceiling of support and the one best positioned to unite the party and lead the Democratic ticket to defeat Donald Trump,” Lau states. The analysis assumes that Buttigieg, who came out of Iowa with the same number of delegates as Sanders, will fade.
The campaign is focused intently on the March 3 “Super Tuesday” contests in which 14 states vote, which Lau frames as when “more than 150 districts” are at stake. He said that based on the campaign’s “internal projections,” Warren will have enough support to collect delegates in 108 of them. “Warren is poised to finish in the top two in over half of Super Tuesday states (eight of 14), in the top three in all of them, and is on pace to pick up at-large statewide delegates in all but one,” Lau wrote. The same projections show Sanders able to win delegates in 161 districts, Biden able to do so in 159 districts and Bloomberg viable in 25 districts. Buttigieg is in play for delegates in 10 districts, Lau predicted.
By Annie Linskey
February 11, 2020 at 6:18 PM EST
Most New Hampshire GOP primary voters say Trump kept his campaign promises, preliminary exit polls show
Roughly 6 in 10 New Hampshire Republican primary voters said in early exit polling that Trump’s impeachment helped his chances of being reelected while about 3 in 10 said it didn’t make a difference. The remaining share said Trump’s impeachment hurt his chances of being reelected.
By contrast, roughly 6 in 10 Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire said impeachment would not make a difference in Trump’s reelection chances, while fewer than 2 in 10 said it would help him.
A little more than half of New Hampshire Republican primary voters said that they feel more allegiance to Trump than to the Republican Party in early exit polls. Fewer, about 4 in 10, said they feel more allegiance to the Republican Party than to Trump.
Just under 9 in 10 New Hampshire Republican primary voters said Trump kept his campaign promises.
By Emily Guskin, Dan Keating and Scott Clement
February 11, 2020 at 6:13 PM EST
New Hampshire voters waited until last minute to choose a Democratic candidate, preliminary exit poll results show
An extraordinary share of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters say they made a last-minute decision on which candidate to support, according to preliminary exit polling results Tuesday. Nearly half said they made their decision in the past few days: That’s higher than the 36 percent of Iowa Democrats who made their decisions in the last few days before last week’s caucuses. It’s also roughly double the percentage of 2016 New Hampshire primary voters who made their decision in the last few days, 25 percent, in a contest that was effectively narrowed to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
New Hampshire Democratic voters were looking for a uniter or leader, not a fighter, according to preliminary exit polls. About 1 in 3 said they wanted someone to “bring needed change” or “unite the country,” but less than 1 in 10 said they wanted “a fighter.” Roughly 2 in 10 said they wanted someone who “cares about people like me.”
About two-thirds of Democratic voters in early exit polling from New Hampshire said they support making tuition free at public colleges and universities, while roughly 3 in 10 opposed this policy. Sanders has endorsed making tuition free at public colleges and universities, and his supporters appear to have gotten the message — nearly 9 in 10 Democratic voters who supported him also favor free public colleges.
About 6 in 10 New Hampshire Democratic primary voters in preliminary exit polls said they support replacing all private health insurance with a single government plan for everyone. Support for single-payer health care was very similar last week in Iowa, when 57 percent of Democratic caucus-goers said they supported replacing private health insurance with a single government plan.
By Emily Guskin, Dan Keating and Scott Clement
February 11, 2020 at 5:43 PM EST
Beating Trump important for New Hampshire voters, preliminary Democratic exit poll results show
Beating President Trump in a general election was more important to New Hampshire Democratic primary voters than finding someone who agrees with them on the issues, preliminary exit poll results in the Granite State showed Tuesday.
Roughly 6 in 10 Democratic voters in preliminary exit polls in New Hampshire said they prefer a candidate who can beat Trump rather than one who agrees with them on the issues, preliminary exit poll results showed. In Iowa entrance polls, 61 percent of caucus-goers said they would rather see the Democratic Party nominate a candidate who can beat Trump.
About 8 in 10 New Hampshire Democratic voters in the preliminary exit poll said they will vote for the Democratic nominee in November, regardless of who it is, while just over 1 in 10 said they might not support the Democrat. Nearly 9 in 10 voters who supported Pete Buttigieg said they would support the Democratic nominee for president, compared with about three-quarters of Bernie Sanders supporters.
Buttigieg was far more likely to be deemed “about right” on the scale of too liberal, about right or not liberal enough, in his positions on the issues, according to preliminary exit poll results among Democratic New Hampshire primary voters. Roughly two-thirds of voters said Buttigieg was about right while the other major candidates were much less likely to fit into that sweet spot. About half of voters said Sanders was too liberal — the most for any candidate in preliminary results — while about 4 in 10 said Sanders’s positions are about right. Joe Biden was the most likely to be called “not liberal enough,” with about 4 in 10 voters calling him that. A slightly higher share of voters said he was “about right.”
Roughly 2 in 10 New Hampshire Democratic voters in preliminary exit polls said they consider themselves to be “very liberal,” while about 4 in 10 said they are “somewhat liberal” and another 4 in 10 said they are moderate or conservative. If it holds in final results, the share of moderate-to-conservative voters could mark an increase from 2016, when 32 percent of Democratic primary voters described themselves that way.
Nearly 4 in 10 New Hampshire Democratic primary voters called health care the issue that mattered most in their vote today, according to preliminary network exit poll results, more than the roughly 3 in 10 who said climate change was the biggest factor and 2 in 10 who said income inequality and about 1 in 10 who said foreign policy.
That’s similar to Iowa’s caucuses last week, in which 42 percent of caucus-goers said health care was the top issue in their vote, followed by 21 percent who chose climate change, 18 percent who said income inequality and 13 percent who said foreign policy.
By Emily Guskin, Dan Keating and Scott Clement
February 11, 2020 at 5:20 PM EST
Warren holds last-minute tele-town hall with New Hampshire voters
A few hours before the polls closed in New Hampshire, Elizabeth Warren held a last-minute tele-town hall to field questions from Granite State voters.
The queries were ones that had come up frequently on the campaign trail: What did she think of Mike Bloomberg’s rise in the polls? (Billionaires who self-fund their campaigns “instead of building a grass-roots movement” have a “huge” advantage in the country’s democracy, Warren said.) How would Warren’s experience as a public school teacher influence her K-12 education plan? (“My education secretary will have been a public school teacher. Betsy DeVos need not apply.”)
And, a familiar one: How would she defeat Trump and heal the division in this country?
“Over and over and over, his politics are the politics of division,” Warren said. “We recognize that if we stay fractured, we’re not going to have power.”
Her solution, she said, was for everyone to pick up each others’ fights.
“Ultimately, we’re trying to build an America that works for everyone,” Warren said, seguing to describing building support from various groups to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010. “So it really comes to you, New Hampshire voters, to decide … when our democracy hangs in the balance, are we going to back up? Are we going to nibble around the edges of this problem? Or are we actually going to get in there and fight back? Me? I’m fighting back. I believe fighting back is an act of patriotism.”
Warren, who typically ends her in-person town halls with a crescendo to her rallying cry — “Dream big, fight hard and win!” — struck an uncharacteristically somber note instead as she wrapped up Tuesday’s call.
“It’s a great honor to be in this fight right here in New Hampshire and a great honor to be on the phone with all of you,” Warren said. “Our country hangs in the balance. It’s up to you, New Hampshire. I hope we can do this together.”
By Amy Wang
February 11, 2020 at 5:17 PM EST
Trump says he’d rather run against Bloomberg than Sanders
In an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump said he’d rather run against former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg than Sanders, accusing Bloomberg of buying his way to the Democratic nomination.
“He’ll spend his $3-, $4-, $500 million,” Trump said of Bloomberg. He added: “Frankly, I’d rather run against Bloomberg than Bernie Sanders, because Sanders has real followers. … Bloomberg’s just buying his way in.”
By Felicia Sonmez
February 11, 2020 at 4:37 PM EST
1976′s New Hampshire primary: A mess of candidates
The 1972 Democratic primary had played out like the race of four years earlier: An insurgent, antiwar senator did the work and came close enough to push out the old front-runner. The 1976 primary was the first with no obvious favorite and no binary choice.
Seventeen Democrats ran for the nomination that year, an unprecedented number of active candidates, all encouraged by the Watergate-driven implosion of the Republican Party. The party’s best-known candidates, Hubert Humphrey and Ted Kennedy, did not jump in, though there was a draft effort for both. That led to a dogpile of respected but lesser-known members of Congress, with former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter running as the Washington outsider.
In Iowa, that led to a breakout for Carter, but New Hampshire was supposed to be different. And it was: More candidates actively organized around the state, with Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana, Sen. Fred Harris of Oklahoma and Rep. Mo Udall of Arizona joined by 1972 vice presidential nominee Sargent Shriver.
Carter was not initially seen as a threat. In a pre-primary poll, Udall and Bayh had the highest favorable ratings among likely voters, and local Democrats saw them running the strongest New Hampshire campaigns. “Mr. Udall has the most technically proficient organization,” wrote R.W. Apple Jr. in the New York Times. “Mr. Harris has the greatest intensity of commitment among his followers and Mr. Bayh has the broadest spectrum of middle-level political activists.”
The problem was that those three candidates carved up the liberal electorate, leaving the moderate lane wide open for Carter. On primary day, Carter triumphed with 28 percent of the vote, still the lowest victory total for any Democrat in a New Hampshire primary. The liberals got a combined 57 percent: 23 percent for Udall, 15 percent for Bayh, 11 percent for Harris, 8 percent for Shriver. They would stay divided for weeks, even after the warning New Hampshire had given their wing of the party.
By David Weigel
February 11, 2020 at 3:42 PM EST
Sanders says he has ‘a real problem with multibillionaires literally buying elections’
In an interview with “NBC Nightly News,” Sanders took aim at former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, saying he has “a real problem with multibillionaires literally buying elections.”
“I don’t begrudge his wealth, but I do begrudge a billionaire thinking he can buy the election,” Sanders said, according to excerpts of the interview released by NBC News. “He has every right in the world to run for office. … But he doesn’t have the right to buy an election. This is exactly the problem with American politics.”
Sanders also said he’s “feeling good” about his chances in New Hampshire.
The interview comes as Bloomberg is rising in national polling.
Earlier Tuesday, Klobuchar also criticized Bloomberg, saying on CNN, “I do not believe people look at Donald Trump and ask, ‘Can we get someone richer?’”
By Felicia Sonmez
February 11, 2020 at 2:30 PM EST
Paul Ryan says Biden is most likely to beat Trump, but probably won’t be the nominee
Former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday that he sees only one Democrat capable of defeating President Trump in November — Joe Biden. But he doesn’t expect the former vice president to be the nominee.
“I’d say he’s probably the most likely one to have a chance at beating Donald Trump, but I don’t see Joe getting the nomination, I just don’t see him getting there,” Ryan told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at the annual Milken Institute summit in Abu Dhabi. “I think it’s going be one of these progressives, which I think will be much easier to beat.”
Ryan, a former GOP vice presidential nominee, said key states in the fall election will include Michigan, Pennsylvania and his home state of Wisconsin.
“I think Joe is probably the hardest to beat, because it’s going to come down to the suburban [voter], it’s going to be the suburbanite that’ll basically be the difference-maker,” Ryan said. “So they’ll be tempted to vote for what they think is a safe moderate — and I think Joe Biden, it’s all relative, will fall into that category, and is the likeliest to be able to win that voter.”
Ryan and Trump had a sometimes rocky relationship. Ryan frequently criticized Trump during the 2016 campaign and held off on endorsing him. But they worked closely together to pass the tax code overhaul in 2017.
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 2:24 PM EST
1952: The year the New Hampshire primary became a thing
The first time anyone paid close attention to the New Hampshire primary, in 1952, it pushed a Democratic president into retirement. In 1968, it happened again, and yet the usual analysts were taken by surprise.
Their conceptual problem was with the candidates. Throughout 1967, antiwar activists and disappointed liberals urged Robert F. Kennedy to challenge President Lyndon B. Johnson. In early November, he declined, as did lesser-known liberals such as George McGovern. The “dump Johnson” movement settled on Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, a former monk with a healthy ego, who entered the race on Nov. 30.
McCarthy picked up media attention, and the binary choice quickly rallied antiwar activists behind him: There was no other clear way to humble the president and prove that Democratic voters wanted him gone. He had other advantages, like Johnson's decision to stand as a write-in candidate and the president's growing unpopularity with independent voters who could cross over and oppose him. And McCarthy had expectations on his side. A January story about the race in the New York Times speculated about a five-to-one Johnson landslide in New Hampshire, reporting that “pro-Johnson Democrats, anti-Johnson Democrats and Republicans are in general agreement that the Minnesota senator will probably get 6,000 to 7,500 votes.”
The muscle for McCarthy's campaign came from young, left-wing activists. The votes came from everywhere. McCarthy was even helped by the fact that a more-famous senator from Minnesota with the same last name, Joseph McCarthy, had a resilient appeal to conservatives, and that's who some of them thought was on the ballot. (This also explained why Republican write-in votes went heavily for McCarthy.)
“He chased all those Communists out of the state department,” one pro-(Eugene) McCarthy voter told Jack Germond. “I think we can give him a chance.”
On March 12, Johnson beat McCarthy, but he did not beat expectations. He won by single digits and announced the end of his political career two weeks later. But McCarthy’s coalition was unwieldy. Exit polling found that most voters were unaware of McCarthy’s antiwar position, and as the historian Dominic Seabrook pointed out, three-fifths of McCarthy voters opposed Johnson on the war because they felt he was not doing enough to win it. Johnson was out, but Kennedy quickly joined the race, exposing how a protest candidate could not necessarily hold on to protest voters.
By David Weigel
February 11, 2020 at 1:49 PM EST
Just how carefully is New Hampshire guarding voting records? Ask the state police.
Officials in New Hampshire have stressed in recent days that their election Tuesday bears no resemblance to the process that melted down in Iowa last week.
And they’re right.
Two main factors distinguish voting in New Hampshire. The state holds a primary rather than caucuses, meaning a tally of ballots is the lone figure used to declare a winner. And the primary is run by the state rather than the state party, meaning its rules are codified in New Hampshire law.
But the differences go deeper. The state’s authority in running the process introduces a more direct role for law enforcement, which in light of mounting fears about election security may help give Granite Staters peace of mind.
State police will collect the official record of votes in towns across the state, delivering them to the secretary of state’s office early Wednesday morning, as David Scanlan, the deputy secretary of state explained.
Towns, meanwhile, will securely store the cast ballots for use in a possible recount.
“This is standard practice for state elections and nothing new,” he added.
The procedure may not be new, but it represents a stark contrast with how physical records were collected last week in Iowa, where the state party dispatched volunteers all over the state to gather boxes of math worksheets and what are known as “presidential preference cards” after a technological breakdown Monday night gave new salience to the physical paper trail.
By Isaac Stanley-Becker
February 11, 2020 at 1:38 PM EST
The two leading women in the Democratic field are battling for third place in New Hampshire
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Warren retooled her stump speech on the eve of the New Hampshire primary to make the case that she’s always been an underdog. She emphasized her hardscrabble upbringing in Oklahoma, her battle to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and her victory over incumbent Republican Scott Brown to win her Senate seat.
“You know what we need as president? Someone who has been winning unwinnable fights all her life,” Warren said.
The Massachusetts senator led in polls of this state last summer. Now trailing Sanders and Buttigieg, Warren is locked in a three-way battle in New Hampshire for third place against an ascendant Klobuchar and a fading Biden that will determine whether she stays viable.
Warren and Klobuchar are the last two women standing in the top tier of presidential contenders. Four years after many voters were disappointed that Hillary Clinton didn’t become the first female president, the two senators are still in the hunt. They’re fighting for a bronze ticket out of this pivotal early state and the chance to take on President Trump in November. But they’re taking divergent approaches that go beyond their ideological differences in an attempt to gain the upper hand.
For now, though, the odds still seem stacked against Warren or Klobuchar becoming their party’s standard-bearer. Indeed, no modern Democrat has won the nomination without finishing first or second in New Hampshire.
Read more here.
By James Hohmann
February 11, 2020 at 1:33 PM EST
Sanders says he has a chance to do ‘really, really well’
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Sanders made a brief appearance around noon outside a polling place here, where he told reporters he had a chance “to do really, really well” Tuesday night.
The people of the United States, finally, want a government that works for all of us, not just the one percent,” Sanders told a crush of reporters outside the McDonough Elementary School. “That is our message.”
He declined to predict what the final tally will show, saying only, “I hope very much that we’re going to win here.”
Speaking under a gray sky, Sanders sidestepped a question about the significance of Biden’s decision to leave the state for South Carolina later Tuesday.
“You’ll have to ask Joe,” he said, a slight smile forming on his face as he listened to the question. “I don’t know.”
But he was quick to draw a contrast with his plans. “All I can say is we will be here tonight,” he added.
Sanders said he felt he was “hit a little bit hard by the impeachment process, which kept me in Washington for a couple of weeks,” but was proud his campaign had contacted many people.
Asked to respond to concerns about his calls for a political revolution, Sanders said defeating President Trump will require record turnout, which will mean bringing in new people who have been disillusioned by politics. He acknowledged that while turnout was not as high in Iowa as he wanted, an increase among young people showing up was encouraging.
By Sean Sullivan
February 11, 2020 at 1:02 PM EST
GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn seeks probe on Iowa caucuses ‘debacle’
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) responded to Senate Democrats’ attempt to pass legislation to bolster election security, including protecting against foreign interference, ahead of the 2020 election by filing a bill seeking an investigation into what went wrong with the results of the Iowa caucuses.
Blackburn argued that the vulnerabilities exposed in Iowa weren’t from an attack but from mismanagement by the Iowa Democratic Party.
She also argued, in opposition to legislation that would require candidates and their campaigns to report to the FBI offers of election assistance from foreign governments, that Democrats were trying to federalize the election process that is run by state and local officials.
Senate Democrats tried several times last year to procure a vote on election security measures, but each time they were blocked by Republicans. The Democratic-led House has passed three bills related to safeguarding the elections, heeding warnings from the intelligence community that Russia will again in 2020 seek to undermine the presidential election.
“The truth is, the alarm bells are going off, and we’re running out of time to actually do something about it,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said on the Senate floor. “We cannot afford to have a system that allows any presidential candidate to welcome this kind of interference with open arms.”
By Colby Itkowitz
February 11, 2020 at 12:34 PM EST
Biden stresses importance of New Hampshire for general election
As he delivered coffee and doughnuts to supporters in Manchester on Friday, Biden stressed the importance of New Hampshire in the general election.
“I got a lot of friends here in New Hampshire,” he said. “We’ve got to win this state in the general election. And I think we’re going to be able to do that.”
Biden repeated his argument that candidates should be judged after the caucuses and primaries in the first four states — not the first two.
“I’m going down to my supporters to get them moving down in South Carolina, doing a little event there,” he said, referring to plans to hold an event in the Palmetto State on Tuesday night. “I’m going to be talking to all folks back here at the event, electronically. We’re going to fight to the end here, until the polls close. And then we’re going to move on.”
Asked about the need to get his campaign going, he said: “It’s not about rebuilding momentum. It’s about keeping it going.”
“Look, everybody talks about the past,” Biden added. “This is just the beginning. We have an entire nation to vote yet.”
Biden generally declined to engage reporters about former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg’s candidacy. When asked about the ads Bloomberg has been running featuring a partnership with Obama, Biden had a telling answer. “If I had that money, I guess I’d run ads, too.”
Asked at least twice about Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk policy as mayor, Biden demurred.
“Let’s get into debates. Okay? Let’s get into debates. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Biden, amid a shouted question from a TV reporter with a microphone, said: “I’m not giving up on New Hampshire! And don’t poke that in my face, okay, buddy?”
The microphone belonged to WMUR, the signature station in Manchester.
By Matt Viser
February 11, 2020 at 12:31 PM EST
Klobuchar says she needs to ‘exceed expectations’ in N.H. primary
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) declined to predict where she would finish in Tuesday night’s New Hampshire primary but said she feels she needs to “exceed expectations.”
“New Hampshire surprises people,” she told CNN. “We’ve got a great team planning a big party.”
Klobuchar also took a shot at former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg when asked about his rise in national polling.
“I do not believe people look at Donald Trump and ask, ‘Can we get someone richer?’ ” she said, adding that she looks forward to seeing Bloomberg on the debate stage.
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 12:20 PM EST
Bloomberg responds to Trump’s deleted tweet on stop-and-frisk policy
Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg on Tuesday accused President Trump of trying to divide Americans with a since-deleted tweet in which he called the Democratic presidential candidate a “TOTAL RACIST” and attached an audio clip from a 2015 speech in which Bloomberg defended New York City police’s stop-and-frisk policy, which disproportionately resulted in the arrest of minorities.
“President Trump’s deleted tweet is the latest example of his endless efforts to divide Americans,” Bloomberg, a Democratic presidential hopeful, said in a statement. “The President’s attack on me clearly reflects his fear over the growing strength of my campaign. Make no mistake Mr. President: I am not afraid of you and I will not let you bully me or anyone else in America. Between now and November, I will do everything I can to defeat you whether I am on the ballot or not.”
In the 2015 clip from a speech Bloomberg gave at the Aspen Institute, Bloomberg acknowledges the stop-and-frisk policy is controversial but defends the logic behind it, asserting that “95 percent of your murders, murderers and murder victims” are male minorities ages 15 to 25.
Bloomberg, who apologized for the policy as he prepared to enter the presidential race, said in Tuesday’s statement that he inherited the policy and cut it back by 95 percent by the time he left office.
“But I should’ve done it faster and sooner,” he said. “I regret that and I have apologized — and I have taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on Black and Latino communities. But this issue and my comments about it do not reflect my commitment to criminal justice reform and racial equity.”
It is unclear why Trump — who has repeatedly voiced support for stop-and-frisk policies in the past — deleted his tweet. Several Trump allies, including his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., have shared the Bloomberg audio clip on Twitter.
Trump also sent another tweet targeting Bloomberg later Tuesday morning. It included an image of someone else’s tweet with the hashtag “#BloombergIsRacist” and a photo of Trump and Bloomberg standing side by side in golf attire on a golf course.
“Mini Mike is a short ball (very) hitter,” Trump wrote. “Tiny club head speed. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!”
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 11:25 AM EST
Yang counts down to primary day
Today is the day! pic.twitter.com/9cF9UtnaHa
— Andrew Yang🧢 (@AndrewYang) February 11, 2020
Yang shared a tweet with his 1.2 million followers showing him enthusiastically ripping the final page off a countdown calendar to New Hampshire primary day.
“Today is the day!” he wrote.
Yang has a lot riding on the New Hampshire results.
“We need to have a great result tomorrow night, but I think we are in a position to do just that,” Yang told CNN on Monday night.
He added that he feels the state “has always been the most natural home for my campaign,” given its “independent-minded” electorate that may be more open than most to his nontraditional candidacy.
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 11:22 AM EST
Biden will travel to South Carolina tonight, blowing off his N.H. events
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Joe Biden is blowing off his election night party in Nashua, N.H., where supporters have been invited to join when doors open at 8 p.m., and instead plans to head to Columbia, S.C.
Biden is now scheduled to be in South Carolina when polls begin to close in New Hampshire, an indication of his struggles here and his need to shore up support elsewhere.
“We’re still mildly hopeful here in New Hampshire,” Biden told reporters as he stopped at a Dunkin Donuts here. “We’ll see what happens.”
Asked if South Carolina was no do-or-die for his campaign he said, “No I don’t think so.” He also cited a string of early losses that Bill Clinton had before winning the nomination, although in those cases Clinton was exceeding expectations, while Biden has been under-achieving.
“Look, the rest of the nation is out there,” he said. “There’s an awful lot of electoral votes to be had. We’ll see.”
Biden advisers denied to The Post on Monday night that he had any plans to leave for South Carolina before his election night party. But a flight plan – first spotted by Jake Sherman at Politico - was filed to leave from Manchester tonight at 6:10 p.m. and fly to Columbia, S.C., arriving just after polls close in New Hampshire.
The plane, which is one that Biden has flown on before, would then head to an airport near his home in Wilmington, Del. The “launch party” for tonight in Columbia, S.C., also features Biden campaign co-chairman Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.).
By Matt Viser
February 11, 2020 at 11:01 AM EST
Sanders at top of pack nationally, another poll finds
Sanders has replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic pack nationally, according to a poll released Tuesday by Monmouth University.
Sanders was the choice of 26 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters in the survey, followed by Biden with 16 percent. They were followed by Buttigieg and Warren, tied at 13 percent; former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg with 11 percent; Klobuchar with 6 percent; Yang with 4 percent; and Gabbard and Steyer with 1 percent.
Sanders’s support was up 3 percentage points since a Monmouth survey in January, while Biden’s support slipped by 14 percentage points following his fourth-place finish in Iowa. Buttigieg, meanwhile, appeared to benefit from his strong showing in Iowa, more than doubling his support nationally from the January poll.
A Quinnipiac University poll released on Monday found a similar swap in front-runners between Biden and Sanders.
The Monmouth poll also found that about two-thirds of registered voters believe Trump will be reelected.
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 10:48 AM EST
An audio clip lays bare Bloomberg’s major stop-and-frisk problem
Mike Bloomberg is running an unorthodox and unprecedented campaign, in which he’s skipping the first four states but carpet-bombing the rest of the country with a quarter-billion dollars worth of spending. This has allowed him to run his campaign virtually unchallenged — and gain some real momentum.
The result: A poll Monday that showed him hitting 15 percent nationally. The result of that: No more free ride.
Bloomberg’s opponents began circulating audio Monday of a 2015 speech in which Bloomberg speaks in rather unvarnished terms about New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy targeting minorities. The basics of what Bloomberg said: Minorities are responsible for the vast majority of violent crime, and thus their communities were the logical targets for warrantless searches.
Now, not only are Bloomberg’s Democratic opponents circulating the clip; so is President Trump.
Read more here.
By Aaron Blake
February 11, 2020 at 10:40 AM EST
Warren says Bloomberg’s rise in polling shows ‘real risk that a billionaire could buy this election’
Warren said Tuesday that she is concerned about the rise in the polls of former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has been spending his own money to buy television advertising and build an expansive campaign staff.
“It tells me there’s a real risk that a billionaire could buy this election,” Warren told MSNBC as she visited a polling station in Durham, N.H.
Despite those misgivings, Warren said she would “of course” support Bloomberg if he becomes the nominee, arguing that any of the Democratic candidates are far preferable to Trump.
Warren also brushed off a question about whether her campaign would make it to Super Tuesday.
“We built a campaign to last,” she said, noting that she’s already done town halls in 29 states and Puerto Rico.
“To me, that’s how democracy should work,” Warren added.
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 9:36 AM EST
Nevada to use paper ballots for its caucuses
LAS VEGAS — After scrapping a pair of apps similar to the one that caused chaos in Iowa, the Nevada State Democratic Party said it would use paper ballots and an online check-in process in its presidential caucuses, a plan unlikely to end growing concerns about the upcoming vote.
In a memo distributed to representatives of the 2020 campaigns Monday night, party officials outlined several new procedures for early caucusing, set to begin Saturday.
Among them was the use of an online Google check-in form designed to help party officials “track participants and streamline data collection” and the assignment of a numeric “voter PIN” and separate identification number tied to state voter registration to help route a participant’s ballot to their home precinct.
The plan comes a week after Nevada Democrats were forced to rip up their caucus plans in the aftermath of Iowa’s disastrous caucuses result. The party had been set to use two specially designed apps developed by political technology firm Shadow, the same company that designed the vote-recording app blamed for reporting issues in Iowa.
Read more here.
By Holly Bailey
February 11, 2020 at 9:30 AM EST
Warren says she is more focused on getting things done than Sanders
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Warren offered a contrast between herself and Sanders after greeting voters this morning, saying that she is more focused on getting agenda items done.
“I’m not going to criticize Bernie, you know I haven’t,” Warren said, when asked by a CBS reporter for differences between the two. “But I’ve tried to make clear the approach I use. Overall, I believe that we ought to try to get as much good to as many people as quickly as we can.”
Warren pointed to her vote in support of the revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which unions supported but some environmentalists opposed.
“We voted, for example, in different ways on the trade deal. Bernie said not good enough, and I said, ‘I’ll take some help and fight for better.’ And I think that’s a difference.”
She pointed out that she created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, evidence that she has a track record of making ideas into reality.
“It really gave me that the deep-down sense of what we can do in government to help people,” Warren said. “That little agency has now forced the big banks to return more than $12 billion directly to people they cheated. So, getting something done really matters.”
Warren has recently made a point of avoiding talking about her competitors on the ballot in New Hampshire, but she has been squeezed between Sanders on the left and the more centrist candidates like Klobuchar and Buttigieg. Drawing the contrast frames Warren as a more pragmatic alternative to Sanders.
Warren handed out doughnuts from Dunkin to supporters before talking with reporters. Her husband, Bruce Mann; her son, Alex; and their dog Bailey came with her.
By Annie Linskey
February 11, 2020 at 9:20 AM EST
Buttigieg appears in Nashua with its mayor
NASHUA, N.H. — Buttigieg’s final stop of the morning was at a Nashua polling station, where he was greeted by a handful of supporters and Mayor Jim Donchess, who has endorsed him.
Donchess will be one of several surrogates joining Buttigieg at his watch party Tuesday night, also in Nashua.
Before Buttigieg arrived, fellow candidate Patrick arrived and addressed reporters briefly. Asked how he needs to finish here, Patrick said, “First is what we’re aiming for.”
“We’ve made contact with hundreds of thousands of voters in New Hampshire. Very direct. Very personal,” he said.
One of those voters was a man wearing a “Canada is already great” hat, who shook Patrick’s hand as the candidate walked by.
Buttigieg was less gregarious at his stop. When asked what will come next for him after New Hampshire, he said simply, “Nevada.”
By Chelsea Janes
February 11, 2020 at 9:07 AM EST
Trump touts his Monday night rally
With voting underway in New Hampshire, President Trump sought to refocus attention on his Monday night rally in Manchester.
“Great being in New Hampshire last night,” he tweeted. “I would say that was the biggest political Rally in New Hampshire history. Incredible evening!”
In a tweet ahead of the rally, Trump said he was on a mission to “shake up the Dems a little bit."
Speaking to the crowd, he said the race to decide his Democratic opponent has been “really boring,” and he pronounced that he would win the state “in a landslide.”
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 8:40 AM EST
Klobuchar touts showing in post-midnight voting
MANCHESTER, N.H. — As Klobuchar visited a voting location early Tuesday morning, she jokingly touted winning eight of 27 votes cast in three tiny towns in the northern part of the state that opened their polls at midnight and closed soon after.
“We felt good about those early results in those gigantic voting locations up there,” she said to reporters, as she shook hands with Biden supporters and other voters who said she got their votes, including a woman who identified herself as a Republican. “That was nice to wake up and find that out.”
A local reporter asked her what she thought of former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg getting two votes in Democratic primaries in those three places — Dixville Notch, Millsfield and Hart’s Location — even though he has not campaigned in the state.
Klobuchar noted that while Bloomberg might not have “boots on the ground” in New Hampshire, he has been spending heavily on advertising across the country.
“He needs to be on the debate stage, and then I can be on equal footing with him,” Klobuchar said. “I’m never going to beat him on the airwaves, but I can beat him on the debate stage.”
By Jenna Johnson
February 11, 2020 at 8:30 AM EST
Buttigieg says a Democrat can prevail in a good economy
Buttigieg argued during a television interview Tuesday that President Trump can be defeated in the fall despite a strong economy.
The former South Bend, Ind., mayor told MSNBC that “you can have a big change election during a good economy” and argued that Trump himself was an example of that, given the strength of the economy at the end of President Barack Obama’s term.
Buttigieg also chided Trump for taking credit for a recovery that began under Obama.
“He’s like the rooster who thinks he made the sun come up,” Buttigieg said of Trump.
Buttigieg also argued that it will be easier for a Democrat to make the case against Trump on the economy once there are fewer candidates competing for the nomination.
“There comes a point where we will have one nominee making one case against the president,” Buttigieg said, adding: “It’s not just about poking holes in Trump’s fairy tales. It’s about explaining where we’re going next.”
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 8:07 AM EST
Biden says Sanders’s identification as democratic socialist would hurt Senate candidates
Biden argued in an interview broadcast Tuesday that Sanders’s self-description as a democratic socialist would hurt the Democrats’ chances of taking control of the Senate in the fall if Sanders is the presidential nominee.
“Bernie’s a great guy, but it’s his self-definition,” Biden told CNN.
Biden said that during the 2018 elections, many Democratic Senate candidates in swing states asked him to come campaign with them.
“Did anybody ask Bernie to campaign with them?” Biden asked.
He asserted that Sanders’s identification could prove particularly difficult for Senate candidates from Southern states. It will be difficult for them to say, “By the way, my president describes himself as a democratic socialist,” Biden said.
Republicans hold 53 of the 100 Senate seats.
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 7:58 AM EST
Biden says he still feels good about ‘the long haul'
Biden conceded that he is an “underdog” in New Hampshire but insisted during a television interview Tuesday that he still feels good about “the long haul.”
“I think I’m an underdog here,” Biden said during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” broadcast from Manchester, N.H., in which he noted that Sanders, who has been leading in the polls, represents Vermont. “He’s got a next-door-neighbor advantage.”
Biden sought to make the case that he remains the Democratic candidate best positioned to win working-class voters and defeat President Trump in the fall.
“I think Donald Trump has demonstrated the last guy he wants to run against is me,” Biden said.
He downplayed the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire in a long nominating contest.
“We’re talking about two states that are great states but they’re small states” without diverse populations, Biden said.
Asked whether other Democrats could defeat Trump, Biden said he wouldn’t suggest otherwise.
“I believe we could run Mickey Mouse against this president and have a shot,” he said.
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 7:54 AM EST
Buttigieg rolls up to polling station as his day gets an early start
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Pete Buttigieg’s day began at 6 a.m., when his caravan of SUVs rolled up to the polling station at Webster School in Manchester.
Shortly before he arrived, a bus filled with supporters — many college-aged or younger— offloaded its cargo, outfitted them with “PETE” signs, and corralled them outside the school to greet the former South Bend, Ind., mayor when he arrived. Candidates are not allowed inside the polling stations, so Buttigieg shook some hands and posed for pictures for a few minutes before being hurried back to his car.
After a quick stop at Dunkin’, he was on to another polling site in Hopkinton, where he and key endorser Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) delivered doughnuts to supporters stationed outside. A dozen or so people with “PETE” signs greeted him, along with one dogged Warren supporter who infiltrated their ranks, and two men with Trump signs who stood by quietly.
Buttigieg largely dodged questions from reporters, though he suggested he felt good about the state of the race. Asked what a win in New Hampshire might look like, Buttigieg said he would leave that to reporters to decide.
Asked if he could win the state, Buttigieg said: “We think so. It feels fantastic. The volunteers are fired up and the energy on the ground is wonderful. We are encouraged."
The 38-year-old, who has been chasing down Sanders for the top spot in many recent New Hampshire polls, has not taken many questions from reporters following him for three days now.
Normally, he takes questions daily. That blackout, however, has coincided with a massive slew of television interviews as his team continues to get Buttigieg on as many national and local television stations as possible. Many of his competitors have yet to adopt a similar strategy.
Kuster, meanwhile, was happy to answer the question she got from a reporter, who asked who she will be voting for Tuesday. “Pete Buttigieg!” she said. Not long after, she pulled Buttigieg over to pose in a picture with supporters, and he and Kuster pushed their hands to the sky, in the “raising the roof” gesture.
By Chelsea Janes
February 11, 2020 at 7:34 AM EST
Buttigieg says his standing with black voters could improve after Iowa, New Hampshire showings
Buttigieg said in an interview broadcast Tuesday that he believes strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire should help his standing among African Americans, a segment of the electorate where his polling lags.
During an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, Buttigieg said minority voters are “laser-focused on defeating this president.”
He suggested that his performances in South Carolina and other early nominating states with large numbers of African American voters could be boosted by results in the first two contests.
“That I believe is now getting us the look that we need,” Buttigieg said.
Asked why Mike Bloomberg is polling better with black voters, Buttigieg pointed to the former New York mayor’s spending on television ads.
Buttigieg also questioned whether Sanders could prevail against Trump if he is the nominee.
“I think it would be very difficult. It’s not just because of the labels. It’s because of the approach. When you look at what he’s proposing in terms of the budget all the things he’s put forward and how to pay for them, there’s a $25 trillion dollar hole in how to pay for everything that he’s put forward.”
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 7:30 AM EST
Bloomberg prevails in Dixville Notch
Dixville Notch, N.H., a tiny community known for casting the first ballots in this first-in-the-nation primary state, gave most of its votes in the Democratic primary to a candidate not on the ballot: former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg.
Bloomberg took three write-in votes (including one in the Republican primary), while Buttigieg and Sanders each got one.
Two other communities also tallied ballots shortly after midnight.
Klobuchar was the winner in Hart’s Location, receiving six votes in the Democratic contest. Warren came in second with four votes, followed by Yang with three and Sanders with two. Biden, Gabbard and Steyer each got one.
In Millsfield, Klobuchar picked up two votes, while Biden, Buttigieg and Sanders each got one.
By John Wagner
February 11, 2020 at 7:28 AM EST
Candidates plan election night parties
Most of the candidates plan parties with their New Hampshire supporters on Tuesday night regardless of the results.
Sanders, Warren and Yang have events scheduled in Manchester. Buttigieg and Biden will be in Nashua. Klobuchar and Bennet host gatherings in Concord.
Steyer, meanwhile, is planning to get an early start in the state with the next nominating contest. He plans an evening town hall in Reno, Nev.
By John Wagner