So the votes are all in, and as we (and everyone else) confidently predicted, Mitt Romney comfortably won.
As I also said, in pure numbers terms it matters very little: Romney needs 1,144 delegates at this summer’s Republican nomination conference, of which he now has 20 (or only 14 if CNN is right on its Iowa interpretation): so he is 1.75% (or 1.22%) of the way there. Much more important is the narrative and in particular what momentum this gives him going into the far more crucial South Carolina primary a week Saturday.
Here are the results from New Hampshire:
As you can see, they are fairly close to the polling of recent days, with Romney, Paul and Huntsman all doing a bit better than the 8 January figures I covered, and Gingrich and Santorum doing a little worse.
As predicted, Rick Perry ended up with less than 1% (0.7% in the end), but did stay above Buddy Roemer, who got just over half as many votes as Perry.
Unlike Iowa, where the delegates get carved up between the two leading candidates on the basis of the congressional districts they won, New Hampshire shares them out on a statewide basis roughly proportionately for any candidate that gets more than 10% of the vote, althoguh the winner gets a bit of a bonus. As a result, the delegate totals from the state are:
- Mitt Romney: 7
- Ron Paul: 3
- Huntsman: 2
This was a make-or-break election for Huntsman. I expect him to withdraw soon and endorse Romney. Ron Paul may take a bit of a bounce from this, whilst Gingrich and Santorum are already making sure that the attack in South Carolina is focused on Romney.
So, is it all over? As I said, I think South Carolina is key. Romney leads in the polls there at the moment and his New Hampshire victory won’t do that any harm. If he does win there, it probably is game over.
But it is conceivable that it won’t, and that is because South Carolina is so different to New Hampshire in many ways.
South Carolina is frequently where the primaries get dirty: remember Dubya’s robo-calls that suggested that McCain had fathered an illegitimate mixed race child in 2000 (in fact, he had adopted a Bangladeshi girl) or Bill Clinton in 2008 suggesting that a black man couldn’t win the presidency? And this year will be another humdinger.
Romney is so well suited to New Hampshire that it is surprising that he could not win there in 2008: the more populated south east of the state is commuter-turf for Boston and Romney’s homestate of Massachusetts. As a New England state, it is more liberal than most of the rest of the country, helping a more moderate candidate like Romney. Finally, it is an affluent area with people used to the finance industry, and so voters there are less likely to be picky about how Romney made his cash.
None of these are true for South Carolina, and the latter point is the focus of the do-or-die burnt earth campaigning that Gingrich in particular utilising there, where he has pointed out Romney’s history with Gordon Grecko-style asset-strippers Bain Capital. South Carolinans are fairly relaxed about people being rich, providing that they made the money ‘honestly’, particularly in the western uplands.
This is Romney’s Achilles’ Heel: he was after all the man who said that “corporations are people” and has a business record more focused on sacking people than creating jobs. He is a man who it is hard to love, particularly in the poorer states. For all their faults, Southerners are less likely to turn the same blind eye to this as the Granite State.
Even if Romney does win in South Carolina, the flak may be enough to cripple his chances against Obama in November.
HERO
PRAT
VILLAIN
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