How did Donald Trump do it, and where are some of the areas that he ought to be concerned with moving forward?
He did it by winning Republican voters. That’s the short answer. He Won Republican voters by 55 points over Nikki Haley.
What went wrong for Haley in terms of not getting this within single digits or position to have a shot to win twoiz things?
First of all in the population centers of the state, we saw this in Iowa, the voters she tends to appeal to, voters with high incomes and higher concentration of college degrees, moderate voters.
In Nashua, across the border is a perfect example, this was supposed to be Haley’s country, it has the voters I’m talking about and she didn’t win. Nash Shah was, she needed to win by 10 points.
We saw this in Iowa when you get away from population centers and to areas that are small, individually but big collectively, and it is becoming the backbone of the Republican party, especially since Donald Trump came on the scene nearly a decade ago now.
We’re talking about small towns and rural areas, we’re talking about places with lower median North Texas and places with lower college attainment. Nikki Haley did nothing in Iowa with places like that.
There were a quarter of the counties in the state where she got single digits and that trend absolutely continued in New Hampshire and showed no signs of changing. A good example, we’ll go to the Massachusetts border, a town, Fitchburg mass, south of here.
51-point win for Trump over Haley here. Again, this is like in Iowa, like a performance for her in a county that is similar to what she struggled in Iowa. It adds up to Trump winning by double digits.
If we go to the exit poll it puts it in stark relief. You are not going to find another state like this. District of Columbia is the only thing I can think of where the electorate is going to resemble something like this. 50-50 essentially. Republican and nonrepublican.
look among Republicans, 25% for Nikki Haley. you’re not winning primaries if you’re getting 25% of the Republican vote and not going to come close to the republican nomination if you’re getting 25% of the vote.
Haley was able to do better and keep this thing to the low double-digits independent voters. Made up more than 40% of the electorate. She did win them by 22 points.
That’s a good margin for her. That is not by far the best Maher margin we’ve seen in independents in the New Hampshire primary. The biggest margin was 42, John Mccain in 2000.
John Mccain went to South Carolina, as this race will go to South Carolina and in South Carolina, George W. Bush was able to say, John Mccain is winning this thing or is competitive on the backs of nonrepublicans, and he was able to turn that republican electorate in south Carolina heavily toward him, towards a bush.
Trump certainly, you saw him last night, among the things he said, he seemed to be setting up a similar dynamic and he’s got a stronger argument to the core republican base than Bush or really any other Republican
I think we have had because this is a 73-point more than a 70-point swing from Trump winning by 49 among Republicans to Nikki Haley winning by 22 among independents.
That’s a 71-point swing. That is by far the biggest swing between winners of those two groups that we’ve ever seen in a New Hampshire Republican primary.
Simply, if you look ahead at what’s coming on this calendar,
I can pull it on the screen right here, you know, you have Nevada, the rules are Haley is in a primary with no delegates, trump in the caucus that has the delegates.
Trump will get the delegates out of Nevada. go to South Carolina, just mentioned all the issues, it’s her home state, but the issues on those demographics that Haley is going to have in South Carolina are profound.
The key is once we’re out of these initial states rules change and in many of these states the rules have been changed at the behest of the trump campaign which has a strong influence over the state Republican parties.
They’ve always been this way. You win a congressional district by a single vote and get every delegate in the district. Win a statewide vote by one point you win the state’s delegate pool.
So Trump got about a third of the vote in South Carolina in 2016. He swept all 50 delegates. He could do the same based on what we’re seeing right now. you go to Michigan, it’s split into two parts right here. There’s two days, 16 and 39 delegates.
These will be given out proportionally. Haley could get a chunk of these 16.
The 39 are essentially winner-take-all. It’s a two-person race. In most states that vote Super Tuesday, the rule is basically if you get 50% plus one, you get all the congressional district delegates.
If you get 50% plus one you get the statewide delegates. The a two-person race that means win.
Trump getting 51 and Haley 49 he will take all statewide. You look, Michigan, go down to March 5th. It’s a 50% rule in Alabama, in Arkansas. California statewide.
50% plus one, closed primary, you win. Trump’s at 66% in the latest poll in California. Get all 169 there.
You know, North Carolina’s proportional. Haley could have an opportunity there. Texas 50%. win the district all the votes. 50% win the statewide all the votes.
Haley could do well in Vermont. I could see, but this is a recipe looming on the 5th of March for what the republican process is designed to do to get a nomin.