{"id":40802236047,"date":"2012-01-11T17:32:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T22:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2012\/01\/11\/new-hampshire-vote-reveals-romney-challenges\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:05","slug":"new-hampshire-vote-reveals-romney-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2012\/01\/11\/new-hampshire-vote-reveals-romney-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"New Hampshire Vote Reveals Romney Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Acknowledgements:\u00a0 The data for this analysis was made available by NBC News, where I was an exit poll analyst on primary night.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Mitt Romney pulled off something no non-incumbent presidential candidate has done before:\u00a0 won both Iowa and New Hampshire.\u00a0 Victories in South Carolina and, more importantly, Florida could pretty much set the seal on this year\u2019s GOP contest.<\/p>\n

However, the New Hampshire exit poll indicates some potential challenges that lie ahead if Romney does indeed emerge as President Barack Obama\u2019s opponent.<\/p>\n

The first challenge is rallying the base behind him.\u00a0 The good news:\u00a0 two-thirds (66%) of New Hampshire GOP voters said they were satisfied with their choice of candidates.\u00a0 Back in 1996, when Republicans were preparing to take on President Bill Clinton, fewer \u2013 54% \u2013 said they were satisfied with the field.<\/p>\n

The bad news:\u00a0 6-in-10 Republican primary participants voted for someone other than Romney.\u00a0 And as reported on MSNBC last night, 55% of those voters said they would be dissatisfied if Romney ended up the nominee.\u00a0 [As a side note, many more Romney supporters would be upset if their guy lost the nomination to Rick Santorum (60%), Newt Gingrich (64%), or Ron Paul (72%).]<\/p>\n

This is not particularly unusual since the competition is still active.\u00a0 Partisans tend to get behind their nominee after the dust settles.\u00a0 The real issue is whether less resolute Republicans \u2013 i.e. libertarian-minded voters \u2013 will do the same.\u00a0 According to the exit poll, the problem may not be winning over supporters of Gingrich, Santorum & co \u2013 these voters are about evenly divided on whether they would be happy with a Romney nomination.\u00a0 The bigger challenge would be convincing Paul voters, 68% of whom who would be dissatisfied if Romney was the Republican standard bearer.\u00a0 The threat of a libertarian third party candidate poses real trouble.<\/p>\n

One positive sign for Romney is that he did well among independent voters in New Hampshire.\u00a0 This group was larger than in past contests.\u00a0 A whopping 44% of voters on Tuesday said they were registered independent \u2013 or undeclared as it is called in New Hampshire.\u00a0 In 2008, this group\u2019s share of the Republican primary vote was lower at 34%.\u00a0 And before anyone claims that this is because many independents voted in the Democratic primary last time around, note that undeclared voters made up just 27% of the New Hampshire GOP primary electorate in 1996 when the Democratic primary was uncontested.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to remember that independents who vote in a Republican primary \u2013 no matter how large a group they may be \u2013 are not representative of independent voters in a general election.\u00a0 It is still good news for Romney, though, that he did well among these non-partisans \u2013 getting 32% of their vote to 30% for Paul.\u00a0 In Iowa, Paul won the self-identified independent vote outright at 43%.<\/p>\n

There are some other intriguing tea leaves in the New Hampshire exit poll results.\u00a0 Republican primary voters said they want the next president to focus more on cutting the federal deficit even if it hampers job growth (60%) than work to create jobs if it widens the budget gap (40%).\u00a0 That priority is not too surprising.\u00a0 The Granite State has a 5.2% unemployment rate, the fourth lowest in the nation.<\/p>\n

Independent voters elsewhere, especially in a general election, will be more concerned about jobs.\u00a0 And Mitt Romney did well among New Hampshire voters who prioritized jobs over the deficit, winning 44% of this group.<\/p>\n

One dark cloud, though, is that Romney is about to get hit hard on job creation.\u00a0 A Super PAC supporting Gingrich has released a documentary about Romney\u2019s career at Bain Capital \u2013 focusing on the jobs lost when Bain acquired and disposed of a number of other companies. They plan to use this in attack ads in South Carolina, which is up next on the primary schedule.<\/p>\n

As NBC\u2019s Chuck Todd observed, if you had asked six months ago whether Romney\u2019s GOP opponents would be attacking the Massachusetts health care plan or his time as a corporate investor\u2026\u00a0 Well, you get the picture.<\/p>\n

That means that Romney\u2019s biggest problem now could be that his fellow Republicans are doing the Obama campaign\u2019s work for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Acknowledgements:\u00a0 The data for this analysis was made available by NBC News, where I was an exit poll analyst on primary night.] Mitt Romney pulled off something no non-incumbent presidential candidate has done before:\u00a0 won both Iowa and New Hampshire.\u00a0 Victories in South Carolina and, more importantly, Florida could pretty much set the seal on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802236047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802236047"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802244233,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236047\/revisions\/40802244233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802236047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802236047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802236047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}