Bernie Sanders won 15 of the 24 pledged delegates from New Hampshire last night with a 22.4% margin. This was the best case scenario for him. He needed to get over 56.3% statewide and in each of the two congressional districts to get a 5-3 split of delegates in each.
Most results will be within the ranges of 4-4 or 5-3 (Sanders Advantage). There are only a handful of combinations of these in the three delegate allocation elements.
1. CD1 5-3, CD 2 5-3, State 5-3 total 15-9 Sanders advantage.
2. CD1 5-3, CD2 4-4, State 5-3 total 14-10 Sanders advantage
3. CD1 5-3, CD2 4-4, State 4-4 total 13-11 Sanders advantage
4. CD1 4-4, CD2 4-4, State 4-4 total 12-12 Sanders advantage.
(Pre-emptive answer to what is likely to be asked: I have not included CD1 5-3, CD2 5-3, Statewide 4-4 split, because if you get enough votes for 5-3 in CD1 and CD2, then you automatically have enough for 5-3 in Statewide. Also CD2, CD1 numbers switching also results in same scenario as number 2 above)
Goal for Sanders will be to achieve an across the board 5-3 splits in each CD and also statewide. Goal for Clinton will be to drag as many as possible into 4-4 range.
Daily Kos — Torilahure
Sanders managed to do just that, giving him 15 and Clinton 9 from New Hampshire. When these are added to Iowa’s counts (21-23)…
Pledged delegates:
Sanders — 36
Clinton — 32
Note that this is only a small percentage (1.7%) of the total number of pledged delegates (4,051).
I would like to note that Sanders has over 150,000 votes in New Hampshire. While the total turnout was down a little bit in New Hampshire since 2008, the previous winner in 2008 had just over 112,000 votes. Also, the 150,000+ vote total that Sanders won is more than 50% of the total votes cast in the 2008 primary. This indicates that Sanders is bringing out large numbers of people.
The large 22.4% margin beats the polling average at Real Clear Politics by 9.1%. This is beginning to be a bit of a pattern for Sanders, who also beat the average in Iowa by 3.8% (although that was a caucus, so it is unclear if he beat it by more or less than that). This is probably one of the biggest indications that he is bringing in new or disaffected voters as the polls are having a hard time predicting that his supporters will actually show up to vote. We will see if the trend continues after this. All these polls showing him down in many states may be significantly underestimating his support, but only if the trend continues.