The New Hampshire Primary

The Republicans

New Hampshire voters in the Republican Primary identified themselves as moderate by a 3-to-1 margin. Moderates did favor Haley over Trump, but only about 55% of them favored Haley in a one on one contest with Trump.

Then again, who are we kidding?

Getting 43% of the vote is amazing for a woman, who isn't white, and has recent immigrant origins, in the political party known for is misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. Haley can also expect a decent showing in the upcoming South Carolina primary, her home state where she is the Governor.

Haley had a 3rd place finish in Iowa with just under 20% of the caucus support (a nose behind Florida Governor DeSantis who won just over 20% and then endorsed Trump).

Trump got a little over 50% of the caucus support in Iowa and didn't break 55% in New Hampshire. This isn't much of a bump from DeSantis dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump, even though New Hampshire is a more moderate electorate than Iowa, not least because the New Hampshire primary is open to unaffiliated voters. Almost half of Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary voters in the Republican contest were willing to break with clear front runner Donald Trump, which isn't nothing, and it wouldn't be stunning if Haley could secure a thin majority in her home state (she is probably staying in the race, unlike DeSantis, in part, for just that reason).

Keep in mind that there are lots of ways that Trump could implode before the Republican National Committee selected it's party's Presidential nominee this summer.

While it is more likely than not that the U.S. Supreme Court will hold that he can't be kept off the ballot as an insurrectionist under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as the Colorado Supreme Court held, the legal argument that SCOTUS should affirm the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling is strong on the merits, and there are institutional reasons that it would make sense for it to do so.

Trump is currently facing four criminal felony prosecutions on 92 very solid felony charges, each of which is currently scheduled to go to trial before the 2024 general election. Polling has indicated that his support from unaffiliated voters and GOP moderates will fall enough to cost him the election, in a race that is currently polling as close to a statistical tie, if he is convicted of a felony in any of them. And, there won't be time for him to get any felony conviction reversed on appeal before the election, even if a reversal on appeal is a possibility.

Finally, Trump is 77 years old, is morbidly obese (despite obvious lies about his weight which his physicians have colluded in), which makes the possibility of his death or a disability which prevents him from running or serving as President statistically pretty likely.

Furthermore, within the last month or so, Trump hit new lows of incoherence in some of his campaign speeches, confusing Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley for former Democratic Party Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, calling for former President Obama to resign from the Presidency, and so on. While Trump is known for his confused word salad speeches that are only dimly connected to reality, there is a real possibility that his cognitive health has taken another big slide sometime in the past few weeks, and that it could slide into the intolerable zone before the Republican National Convention this summer.

As the only serious challenger to Trump for the Republican Presidential nomination, if Trump does implode prior to the RNC, Nikki Haley is well positioned to reap the benefit of that and become her party's nominee. There is also a long tradition in both political parties of naming one of the strongest challengers to the nominee at the RNC as the winner's Vice Presidential candidate. And, this year's Republican VP candidate will be especially relevant. If Trump implodes after the RNC but before the election, the RNC chosen VP will be his natural replacement. And, as a 77 year old man with serious physical and cognitive health problems, the probability that Trump won't be able to finish his second term as President if he is elected is significant.

Unless and until Trump names another running mate in his 2024 Presidential campaign (and he certainly won't be naming Cheney again), Haley is the third most likely person in the world to be President at some point from early January of 2025 to early January of 2029. She's less likely to be President than either Biden or Trump, but more likely than Kamala Harris and more likely than anyone else Biden might name as his running mate this summer (although I'd be surprised if he chose a different VP candidate this time). And, of course, at 81 years of age, the probability that Biden will die before he starts his second term of office, or if he is re-elected, during his second term of office, is also not negligible, even though it seems to me that Biden is less likely to suffer a sudden collapse in his physical or cognitive health in that time frame than Trump, despite being four years older and showing signs of deterioration in his old age himself.

The Democrats

Biden's two-thirds of the primary vote (with almost all of the 19% of the vote not yet counted being write-in ballots for Biden, it will probably be Biden 72%, Phillips 15%, and Williamson 3%, by the time all of the votes are counted) wasn't so bad given that he wasn't on the ballot and was merely a write in candidate, unlike 21 other candidates with absolute no chance of winning the Democratic Party nomination.

You have to feel a little bad for the 17ish people in the Democratic Party primary who thought maybe they were serious candidates, and got less than the 0.6% of "Vermin Supreme" (who secured about 666 votes).

No delegates were awarded in New Hampshire's Democratic primary because they refused to accept the second in the nation timing that the DNC gave them behind South Carolina. Democrats in Iowa complied with the DNC mandate.

Dean Phillips, a Democratic Congressman from Minnesota, as the second place finisher in New Hampshire's no delegate Democratic primary (the first Democratic race held in the 2024 primary season, even if it is really only a straw poll), probably deserves a little mention. I actually have a cousin who lives in his western Twin Cities area district.

His background is as a businessman in his family's liquor business (of which he was made CEO upon earning his MBA in 2000 at the age of 31) and running a two location coffee shop chain he founded in 2016, and a gelato product line. He is one of the wealthiest members of Congress with a net worth of about $77 million. He is a 54 year old white man and a Brown University graduate with a University of Minnesota MBA, whose father died in Vietnam when he was six months old after which he was adopted by his wealthy stepfather. He has generally supported President Biden's party line, backs Medicare for All, and is a bit more liberal than the average Democrat in Congress.

First elected in 2018, Phillips defeated six-term Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen. By flipping the previously Republican district, he became the first Democrat to win the seat since 1958. He has since been reelected twice.

In Congress, he is on the Committee on Foreign Affairs (where he is the ranking member on the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia Subcommittee) and the Committee on Small Business. He is a member of the LGBT Equality Caucus, the New Democrat Coalition, and the Problem Solver's Caucus.

Honestly, but for the fact that the Democrats have an incumbent President running for re-election, he'd be fine Presidential nominee. Indeed, he'd probably be a significantly better President than a re-elected President Biden.

The same cannot be said of third-place Democratic New Hampshire primary finisher Marianne Williamson, a nice person and New Age-ish former Unity Church pastor raised Jewish, and non-profit director from Texas, who simply put, doesn't have the experience or competence to be President and didn't even run on the Democratic Party ticket in a failed 2014 Congressional candidacy in California.