Sabato’s Crystal Ball

After looking ahead to the New Hampshire primary for months on end, it can be easy to just quickly move on after it happens. But it may be that the New Hampshire primary ends up being the most competitive presidential nominating contest on either side this year, and we thought it merited taking a closer look at what happened after the dust settled. What follows is an analysis of Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden’s performances in New Hampshire, a look at the turnout, and some thoughts on the ongoing dispute between New Hampshire and national Democrats over the presidential nominating calendar

On its face, Donald Trump’s performance in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night was solid. In a state where the Republican primary electorate has more moderates and independents and is less religious than Iowa—demographic features that made the state much more gettable on paper for Trump’s remaining major rival, Nikki Haley—Trump ended up winning by what is at the moment an 11-point margin. This sets him up well for upcoming contests in states where the electorate should be more favorable to him—most notably, South Carolina, which is Haley’s home state.

The winnowing of the GOP presidential field both before (Chris Christie) and after (Vivek Ramaswamy) Donald Trump’s big victory in Iowa reduces the field of notable Republican presidential contenders to just three: Trump, along with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. Unlike Iowa, New Hampshire may produce a close finish. This would not be unusual for the Granite State: 3 of the last 6 competitive presidential primaries have been decided by fewer than 10 percentage points (Bernie Sanders edged out Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 Democratic primary, while both Hillary Clinton and John McCain won close victories in 2008). In the event that exit poll analysts declare the Granite State “too close to call,” what information should the savvy election observer seek as returns come in?

There were no real surprises in Iowa on Monday night, as the kickoff contest of the Republican presidential nominating season unfolded in almost exactly the way that polls suggested. Former President Donald Trump got about half the vote, with the race for a very distant second place coming down to a close contest between Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC). According to results as of early Tuesday morning, Trump was at 51%, with DeSantis nabbing second place at 21% and Haley finishing close behind at 19%. The fourth-place finisher, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, got a little under 8% and immediately dropped out. Nobody else got even 1%.

There is an old saying that there are “three tickets out of Iowa,” meaning that the traditional kickoff caucus doesn’t necessarily anoint the presidential nominees, but it does serve a purpose in winnowing often-bloated presidential primary fields. As we will discuss below, Iowa does indeed have a spotty record of supporting the eventual nominee, particularly on the Republican side.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Despite bad polling and clear weaknesses for President Biden, we are sticking with our initial Electoral College ratings from the summer, which show him doing better than what polls today would indicate, even as there are enough Toss-up electoral votes to make the election anyone’s game. — We still anticipate a close and competitive election between Biden and former President Trump, whose dominance in the GOP primary race has endured as the Iowa caucus looms. Assessing the 2024 race Welcome to 2024, the year of a presidential election that feels both sleepy and explosive at the same time. The former feeling stems from a primary season that does not seem all that competitive. Less than two weeks away from the kickoff Republican caucus in Iowa, former President Donald Trump’s position continues to look strong, while President Joe Biden is doing what recent incumbent presidents have done, deterring truly notable opposition as he seeks renomination. The latter feeling comes from the unprecedented specifics of the potential Biden versus Trump rematch, namely Trump’s litany of legal problems—including efforts to keep him off the ballot in certain states based on his role in the events of Jan.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican primary race. — Despite some recent movement toward Nikki Haley, Trump’s rivals are not doing even close to well enough with college-educated Republicans—a group that is not as pro-Trump as Republicans who do not hold a four-year degree. — Non-degree holders appear likely to make up a larger share of the early state electorate than degree holders, further complicating the math for Trump’s rivals. A beer track vs. wine track check-in As we look ahead to—even perhaps as GOP primary voters look past—tonight’s fourth Republican presidential primary debate, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has become a focus in the race. She arguably has surpassed Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) as former President Donald Trump’s leading rival, and she recently won the support of Americans for Prosperity, the well-funded conservative outside group founded by the Koch brothers. DeSantis still generally leads Haley nationally—he’s at 13% while Haley is at about 10.5%, per the FiveThirtyEight average. DeSantis also has a small lead on Haley in Iowa, the first contest of the nomination season. But Haley leads DeSantis in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the latter of which

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Recent 2024 presidential polling has shown President Biden performing poorly with young voters. — The 18-29 voting bloc has been reliably Democratic leaning for at least the last several presidential elections. — Biden’s weakness with young voters is not new, despite doing well among the group in the 2020 general election. A brief history of young voters in presidential elections Polling this far out from a presidential general election is often not predictive, and it is a good thing for President Joe Biden that this is the case, because his polling right now against his most likely general election opponent, former President Donald Trump, is poor. Trump has led Biden in most recent national surveys included in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, with Trump leading by about 2 points in the average. One of the features of many (though not all) of these polls is striking weakness for Biden among what has become a very Democratic-leaning group of voters: 18-29 year olds. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump among the 18-29 group by roughly 25 points, according to the 2020 exit poll conducted by Edison Research for a variety of news organizations, a different

Dear Readers: Today we are featuring an excerpt from Patrick Ruffini’s new book, Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP. Ruffini, a Republican pollster and cofounder of the firm Echelon Insights, meticulously tracks the political changes in the wake of Donald Trump’s ascension to the top of the Republican Party. In the excerpt below, Ruffini documents the improvements Trump made in 2020 among nonwhite voters even as he lost his reelection bid. We also spoke with Ruffini about his book as well as recent polling trends on our “Politics is Everything” podcast. — The Editors From PARTY OF THE PEOPLE: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP by Patrick Ruffini. Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Ruffini. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, LLC. The story in the 2020 presidential election was largely that of an electorate that had made up its mind on Donald Trump four years earlier, with just the right number of votes in just the right states turning a narrow victory into a narrow defeat—but with one crucial exception. In most of America’s nonwhite communities—especially those filled with first- and second-generation immigrants—Trump did better than he had in 2016. In