Whose God gave these guys the right
to vote first every damn year?
Here's one thing for sure about today's New Hampshire primary: If Mitt Romney were to win by just eight votes, it would be read as a devastating defeat. Hell, if he wins by just eight percentage points, it'll be seen as a crushing blow.
Remember how New Hampshire made Bill Clinton the comeback kid in 1992? Well, it's easy to forget that he didn't win. Paul Tsongas—who, like Mitt Romney, had home field advantage because he had served as a statewide elected official in Massachusetts—was the winner. Tsongas took 33.2 percent of the vote compared with Clinton's 24.8 percent.
But Clinton did better than expected, and Tsongas won by less than people anticipated, and the rest is now history. Of course, even if the same thing happens, none of the Republicans running for president have Clinton's raw political talent. (Even combined, they don't come close to measuring up.)
Conventional wisdom is that Romney will score a big win tonight—double-digits, perhaps with more than 40 percent of the vote. Nate Silver's final analysis projects him at 38.5 percent compared to Ron Paul at 18.6 percent and Jon Huntsman at 17. But as with Iowa, there's one candidate who is surging, and momentum means a lot in primaries. So Huntsman might do even better than Nate's model suggests. Still, it'd be a one in one hundred shot for someone other than Romney to win tonight.
But even though Romney is virtually guaranteed to win, there will be a number of interesting things to watch in tonight's primary:
- Will Mitt Romney win by as much as expected? If he scores anything less than a double-digit win, it could be a sign that his grip on the nomination is weaker than previously thought. Conversely he wins by significantly more than twenty points, it'll suggest the nomination battle is just about over.
- Who will be the runner-up? It's almost certainly going to be Jon Huntsman or Ron Paul, but if Huntsman doesn't finish in second, it's hard to see how he continues his campaign. (Ron Paul will continue no matter what.)
- Who will finish fourth, Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum? Neither candidate is in good shape to continue their campaigns, but it's hard to see how whoever finishes fifth could continue past South Carolina.
- The last thing that'll be fun to watch—purely for "oops" value—is whether Buddy Roemer outpolls Rick Perry, and if so, what the explanation will be for having included Perry in the debates but not Roemer.
Of course, just because those are the four things I'll be watching for doesn't mean that any of them will end up mattering. Odds are, something else interesting will develop—and we'll know what it is soon enough. Polls will close at 7 PM ET in most of the state, at which point we should start seeing returns. The networks will then start making calls at 8 PM ET when all the polls have closed.
Markos will be liveblogging the results tonight along with David Nir. Until then, I'll leave you with my predictions (which will assuredly be totally wrong):
Romney: 36
Huntsman: 21
Paul: 18
Santorum: 12
Gingrich: 11
Roemer / Perry / etc: 2
What about yours?
