The value of New Hampshire

With Rick Perry and Mitt Romney making no secret of neatly skipping down to South Carolina to campaign during the one week between the Iowa and NH caucuses, it's worth questioning the true value of the New Hampshire primary for the candidates still in the game.

Michele Bachmann is out of the race; a smart choice after a disappointing finish in Iowa. Rick Perry is polling at 1% in NH; so there is no value in campaigning in NH for Perry. Romney, meanwhile, is sporting a 20+ point lead in New Hampshire, and has been in South Carolina trying to lock up the nomination with three victories in a row.

So for whom does New Hampshire matter? Time to bring in our three "must watch" candidates from my analysis of the race over a month ago.

Ron Paul is almost certainly going to get second place in New Hampshire, behind Mitt Romney. His views are a natural fit for New Hampshire and he has been very slowly gaining traction. He sits at around 20% in the polls. The stakes are high for him for two reasons. 1) Paul is unlikely to do this well in any other state. The specifics of the Iowa and New Hampshire electorate have offered Paul his best opportunity to get better than 20% of the vote outside of the Mountain West. Paul got 21% of the vote in Iowa; he must perform even better than that in NH in order to elevate his profile and surprise the pundits. 2) The closer he can come to Romney, the more potential upside there is to NH; the further away he is, the more the pundits will be focusing on who they see as the real contenders (everyone else). If Romney retains his 20 point lead, the conventional thinking on Paul's national viability (specifically, his lack thereof) will not be questioned, but if Paul somehow manages to close the gap with Romney in a meaningful way, he could begin to change the debate. 

Unfortunately, Paul is making what seems to me to be a terrible mistake in his campaign strategy. Besides Romney, Paul is the only candidate with the national infrastructure and national funding to fight a prolonged battle for the nomination. As I have mentioned in previous posts, my opinion is that Paul's best chance at having influence (or even being nominated) at the convention is to enter a brokered convention with as many delegates as possible. To do that, he needs more than a 2-man race. Against Romney, Paul doesn't really have a chance with the GOP electorate at large; his views are just too out of step to ever manage a majority. His best bet is to try to allow as many non-Romney candidates to survive for as long as possible, since the other candidates are unlikely to cut into Paul's specific category of libertarian support. Therefore, his main opponent and focus of all attacks should be his most dangerous adversary: Romney.

But for some reason, Paul's strategy has been to break down every candidate except Romney. He's gone after Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich in TV ads, and spent yesterday night's debate squabbling with Rick Santorum over which one of them was the true conservative. Mitt Romney, sitting back and watching his weaker rivals fight with one another, merely sat back and put on his "oh, children, please do calm down" face. If Ron Paul was a more conventional candidate with a wider base of support like Newt Gingrich, this strategy would be very wise, but he's not. Perhaps his campaign truly believes that a Romney vs Paul debate would be great for the country and could rally the anti-Romney vote to Ron Paul. Or perhaps Paul is behaving passionately rather than tactically- that wouldn't be surprising for someone like Paul. Or perhaps again, I could be really underestimating Paul's GOP appeal. Either way, as I see it right now, Romney couldn't have asked for a better environment from his best funded and organized opponent.


For Rick Santorum, the stakes are obvious. He got a great boost coming out of an essential tie with Romney in Iowa; his numbers in NH immediately shot up to around 10%. He will be jockeying for third place with Huntsman and Gingrich. There's two major factors to watch with Santorum. 1) His overall position: ideally third place to acquire adequate momentum moving into SC. If he does manage third place, it will still give him a great media boost, since it will still represent a great showing relative to expectations. 2) His position relative to Gingrich. Gingrich and Santorum are fighting for viability in New Hampshire. If Gingrich does better than Santorum, something I had expected only a week ago but now is unclear, Gingrich can make the case that he's the best anti-Romney candidate. Santorum, therefore, must do as well as or better than Gingrich to prove that he can be a serious contender.

And finally, Jon Huntsman. Huntsman has staked his whole nomination battle on New Hampshire, and in my opinion he needs a third place finish there to have a chance at battling on the national stage. Even with a third place win, it'd take something big happening to offer Huntsman a chance at winning the nomination. For example, if Gingrich dropped out after NH and endorsed Huntsman, that might shake up the battle enough to give Huntsman a solid chance. The chances of a game changer for Huntsman are not good, but it's obviously enough to keep him in the race so far. Anyway, if I had to guess, I'd say that Huntsman has the best chance at a third place finish in NH (he has a great ideological structure for the NH independent electorate)- if he can mange to surprise with 15% of the vote or more, his position would look even better.

For my part, I'll be rooting for Huntsman. I think he has the best resume of all of the contenders and reasonable positions, but also hope to justify my mentionings of him on this blog.


A final note on Newt Gingrich. I think conservatives would be wise to put their support behind him rather than Santorum, since I believe that his national viability is still better than Santorum's is. I also think Gingrich can play better overall in S.C. and Florida than Santorum. Both of them have some mess in their records, and we have yet to see how the digging in Santorum's past will play out, so Santorum is also the more potentially risky candidate. But whoever anti-Romney voters choose, they'd better be careful: Romney is just a few weeks away from closing this thing down if conservatives can't make up their mind. Of course, that's exactly what Romney's hoping for. He's run an appropriately cautious, hard hitting, and smart campaign... and apparently to the victor goes the spoils.

But it's not quite time for that yet. New Hampshire still has great value in understanding where things will go next, so we'll just have to wait and see what the voters tell us on Tuesday. And if you live in New Hampshire and are registered for it, make sure to vote!