What do Pat Buchanan, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders have in common?
On the surface, not much, but they are all past winners of the New Hampshire presidential primary for their respective parties in years they did not win their party’s nomination.
The first-in-the-nation New Hampshire presidential primary is set for Tuesday, and while former President Donald Trump remains the front-runner in the race after a strong performance at the Iowa caucuses, the Granite State likely will be far more competitive.
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who earned a disappointing third-place finish in Iowa behind Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), is polling well in New Hampshire. Trump leads her 43.5% to 30.6% in the FiveThirtyEight Granite State polling average, with DeSantis far behind at 5.4%. The polls fail to account for Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson, and Vivek Ramaswamy dropping out, which, on the net, should benefit Haley because Christie, a staunchly anti-Trump candidate, outpolled the pro-Trump Ramaswamy in New Hampshire.
Regardless of who wins New Hampshire, it will not guarantee the victor the GOP nomination.
Although New Hampshire matters in the presidential primary, its voter base does not reflect the American populace. It is whiter and more socially liberal than much of the country, plus a disproportionate number of its residents are college students. New Hampshire has a Republican trifecta at the state level but an exclusively Democratic congressional delegation. It also has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 2000. That is not a typical state or voter base.
New Hampshire is a place where candidates campaign much harder than in the rest of the country because they often start doing events one year before the primary. Meanwhile, candidates lack the time and resources to do the same for every state with a primary or caucus in the run-up to the Super Tuesday elections.
For example, candidates rarely do more than an event or two in Massachusetts, the largest state in New England, before Super Tuesday, despite their immense focus on towns neighboring the state. So candidates may stop at the Red Arrow Diner in Nashua, New Hampshire, but you will never see them do an event in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, just a few minutes away.
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New Hampshire is also one of the smallest states and offers just 22 delegates. Even though it holds the first-in-the-nation primary, it has fewer than 1% of the primary delegates — hardly a must-win state.
Regardless of who wins New Hampshire, there still will be 48 more states to go in the presidential primary. Candidates can avenge a loss there if they can win elsewhere.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.