When there's a big election coming up, one of the things we like to do at Daily Kos Elections is set up some benchmarks so that viewers at home have some parameters for judging how things are going, as results trickle in. In most elections, though, the goal is a little clearer: what it would take, based on a previous election, for the Democratic candidate to get to 50%+1 in a binary choice. Here, with trying to pin down the Republican primary in New Hampshire, it's not as clear-cut because there are half a dozen credible candidates participating and the winner won't in all likelihood be hitting 50%... so what's the target?
In addition, nobody really seems to have any doubt that Mitt Romney will, technically, win. Instead, all the sport today seems to be about what percentage he'll get, and using that as the means of measuring whether he performed up to expectations. Of course, no one is in much agreement about what percentage Romney needs to meet to call it a "win:" some pundits are saying 32%, which is where Romney performed in 2008, as he certainly needs to not have eroded from his position in his previous effort; others are saying 35% or 36% as a break-even point. (There's also the question of margin... a Romney victory with 35% would probably seem much less convincing if Huntsman was within single-digits at 26% than if he were back at 16%. But accounting for that seems out of the scope of what 2008-based benchmarks can tell us; Romney, obviously, translates from 2008 to 2012, but there's no clear Huntsman-type figure in 2008. Maybe John McCain, though he came into New Hampshire in stronger shape.)
At any rate, I'm offering up two columns for your consideration. The left one is what Romney actually got in 2008 (32%); if he gets below that tonight, that's when the pundits probably start writing "what went wrong?" stories. The right column supposes a sort of best-case scenario for Romney, an unequivocal dominating win that feeds into the inevitability narrative, and I'm setting the bar for that pretty high, at 40%. The real numbers will probably range somewhere in between.
Town |
% of 2008
statewide vote |
Romney vote
share in 2008 |
For Romney
to hit 40%
in 2012 |
Statewide |
100.0 |
32 |
40 |
Manchester |
6.3 |
33 |
41 |
Nashua |
5.1 |
36 |
44 |
Concord |
2.7 |
24 |
32 |
Bedford |
2.5 |
41 |
49 |
Merrimack |
2.4 |
36 |
44 |
Derry |
2.2 |
39 |
47 |
Londonderry |
2.1 |
39 |
47 |
Salem |
2.1 |
45 |
53 |
Rochester |
1.8 |
26 |
34 |
Dover |
1.8 |
26 |
34 |
Hudson |
1.7 |
36 |
44 |
Goffstown |
1.5 |
35 |
43 |
Windham |
1.4 |
45 |
53 |
Amherst |
1.4 |
35 |
43 |
Hampton |
1.3 |
39 |
47 |
Laconia |
1.3 |
32 |
40 |
Hooksett |
1.2 |
35 |
43 |
Milford |
1.2 |
31 |
39 |
Exeter |
1.2 |
32 |
40 |
Keene |
1.2 |
26 |
34 |
Portsmouth |
1.2 |
26 |
34 |
One nice quirk about New England is that election results get reported by town rather than by county, so that gives us an extra level of precision. (Big h/t to Greg Giroux for compiling these numbers, which made my job easier.) If you're looking for a pattern in these numbers, the strongest Romney towns from 2008 (like Salem and Windham) tend to be in Rockingham County, which is the southeastern corner of the state and which has in recent years become something of an upper-middle-class exurb for Boston-area workers who are willing to trade a long drive in exchange for living in a setting of lower taxes and easier access to the licka store. These aren't necessarily the most conservative parts of the state, but the ones most patched into the Boston media market (where, of course, Romney used to be Governor). The weakest towns for Romney above are the ones that tend to be the most liberal in the general election, like the college towns of Dover and Keene, and blue-collar/regentrifying Portsmouth.
One other consideration is that Romney's positioning has changed a bit since 2008, when he was the conservative alternative to McCain; now he's the establishment quasi-moderate. So conceivably, we could see worse Romney performance in the more conservative, previously Romney-friendly exurbs, and better performance in the towns where there are more independent and Dem crossover participants. (We saw this in Iowa already, where a lot of Romney counties in 2008 were Santorum country this year.)
On that note, let's hear your predictions in comments! (No babka tonight... just glory in the eyes of your fellow DKElectioneers.) Does Romney dominate tonight, or are cracks in his armor going to show? And, maybe more interestingly, can Buddy Roemer actually get past Rick Perry for sixth place?
Polls in general close tonight at 7 PM ET (though cities have the option of keeping polls open until 8).