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.

The State Of The Presidential Nomination Race In Iowa

A Trump v. Biden Presidential election in 2024 still seems to be the most likely outcome, but Trump's standing is growing less secure. No viable alternative to Biden has emerged, however.

A new Emerson College poll shows that Iowa Republican caucus voters have soured on Donald Trump, dropping their support by 13 points, from 62% in May to 49% last week. Their support for . . . Ron DeSantis, also dropped, from 20% to 14% in the same time period. . . .

[C]onservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Tom Scott (R-S.C.) appeared to be gaining some ground, both rising 5 points. Ramaswamy increased from 2 percent to 7 percent, and Scott from 3 percent to 8 percent.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum also saw slight raises of 2 points each. Haley went from 5 percent to 7 percent and Burgum from 1 percent to 3 percent support.

Six percent of Republican caucus voters were undecided, the poll found.

. . .

President Biden's numbers greatly dropped, from 69% to 50%, while Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fell from 11% to 9% and Marrianne Williamson tumbled from 10% to 7%.

Via Boing Boing. 

The percentage of undecided Democrats in Iowa has grown from 10% to 34%, leaving room for a new entrant to quickly gain support if a viable Democratic Presidential candidate other than Biden materialized.

Colorado Judicial Retention Redux

In this year's judicial retention elections two judges failed to get "retain" recommendations from the Colorado Judicial Evaluation office:

Denver County Judge Mary Celeste received a "no opinion" rating based upon her "overall demeanor" and was retained with 62% of the vote. To my knowledge, there was no significant campaign to fight in the public forum to retain her, although she pledged to try harder to do a good job.

District Judge Jill Mattoon in Pueblo received a "do not retain" recommendation for her "lack of basic legal knowledge" and her failure to recuse herself when appropriate. But, 57% of voters voted to retain her. She actively fought the "do not retain" recommendation, claiming that it was simply a matter of anti-prosecutor bias. (This would not have sufficed to retain her in Illinois, where 60% support is required for retention.)

Voters listened to the recommendation of the Judicial Evaluation Office and many voted to retain other judges, but not those who were singled out, but ultimately decided to keep these judges.

But, voters did not retain Larimer County District Judges Jolene Blair and Terry Gilmore who had received "retain" recommendations. An active campaign of which I was not a part worked to oust them. I joined the chorus arguing for their non-retention at this blog. Both were found by the judicial system to have engaged in unethical conduct in connection with the Tim Masters wrongful murder conviction when they were prosecutors, something not known when they were put on the bench. In this instance, the system worked as intended.

Probate Judge Stewart, in Denver, who was not targeted by any organized non-retention campaign, was retained with a high percentage of the vote, despite a newspaper article in the Denver Post during the election season which was harshly critical of the way she was managing her specialized court's employees. But, a "retain" recommendation based upon her specialized knowledge of her legal subject matter sufficed to keep her in office.

The judges on the Colorado Supreme Court targeted by "Clear The Bench," a conservative activist effort, were retained. This was appropriate. These judges did their jobs and did them well.

Three Iowa Supreme Court judges were not retained over the controversy related to their holding the gay marriage was a constitutional right. I certainly would have been among those voting to retain them. But, to be perfectly frank, I can't say that this is contrary to the intent of the retention election system either. Judging at the state supreme court level is not a matter of being an umpire. Judges at that level make policy choices and can legitimately rule more than one way on most cases that they choose to take. The public of Iowa strongly disagreed with the way that the Iowa Supreme Court exercised that discretion and removed the judges on that basis. The fact that this is the second time in the half century history of the judicial retention system of this kind in any state (a prior similar episode unfolded in one state in the wake of death penalty decisions), suggests that the public exercises its power to remove judges sparingly. Better to have a safety valve for democratic discontent, than to throw out a system that works better than any other judicial selection and removal system in the United States today.

A system that allows the public to vent strong disagreement with the actions of particular judges by removing them from office, and then replaces those judges with new judges chosen on a merit basis with limited political involvement, is far better than the traditional judicial election system which entangles sitting judges with special interests from the campaigns and often forces the public to put an unqualified judge on the bench in order to remove one whom they think should leave office.

All of the judicial retention elections had a large "undervote" (i.e. ballots cast with no vote for either side of an issue or race). Combined, the "do not retain" vote and the undervote was roughly equal to the affirmative "do retain" vote in many cases. Voters aren't in a great position to evaluate judges, particularly in large urban and many refrain from doing so for that reason.

The Judicial Evaluation Office does a good job as far as it goes, but also fails to give sufficient weight to specific instances of conduct or controversy that deserve airing. Judges are almost never "not retained" due to general mediocrity. They are removed from office by voters due to specific controversies which the public believes were not handled well.

Iowa Implications

Democrats (1650/1781 precincts reporting in Iowa)

Senator Barack Obama 37.21%
Senator John Edwards 29.97%
Senator Hillary Clinton 29.57%
Governor Bill Richardson 2.15%
Senator Joe Biden 0.94%
Senator Chris Dodd 0.03%

Democratic NH polling (average of recent results):

Obama 30.8%
Clinton 29.2%
Edwards 26.0%
Biden 5.4%
Richardson 5.2%

Democratic analysis: There is no second tier, everyone outside the three leaders are done. This is a three way race and the "anti-Clinton" is now Obama, not Edwards. Clinton has also lost her aura of inevitability. I suspect that Obama will do a little better (probably winning NH) and Clinton a little worse than the NH polls above indicate, perhaps even dropping into the third spot again. A double Iowa and NH win, however, because the lead is modest, probably isn't enough to make Obama a definitive front runner either, however. A brokered convention isn't out of the realm of possibility, since no one will have enough time to gain a lot of momentum by the time that most of the delegates are spoken for in February. Obama needs a blow out performance in NH to get that kind of momentum and cleanly avoid a brokered convention.

But, in a brokered convention, I think that Obama has the edge. If he is still the front runner by then, I think that Edwards supporters will have a hard time claiming the nomination, if for no other reason than that Democrats have already had more than one Southern white male for President. Identify politics will prevent Clinton supporters from rallying around Edwards to push him over the hump. But, many Edwards supporters are as much anti-Clinton as they are pro-Edwards and don't have nearly so definite opinions about Obama. As a result, an Obama-Edwards or Obama-Clinton ticket seems likely to emerge if there is a brokered convention.

For Edwards and Clinton this calculus is bad news, if I'm right. Obama needs a plurality to have a good chance of winning, and is viable as long as he is close to even with the other two candidates in a brokered convention. In contrast, Edwards and Clinton may each need a majority to pull off the nomination. Despite a tough start, Clinton probably has a better chance at doing that than Edwards.

Due to the Clinton-Not Clinton dynamics of this race, Edwards is at greater risk of bleeding support to Obama than Clinton if Obama develops momentum in Iowa and NH. Edwards in contrast will be hard pressed to generate that momentum. Edwards is polling in a distant third place in Nevada, while Clinton may regain momentum there. Even more importantly, Edwards is also polling a distant third place in South Carolina which should be his home turf. Edwards is also in a distant third place in now irrelevant Michigan and Florida, in which Obama and Edwards will not be campaigning and which will not send delegates to the Democratic national convention.

Republicans (72% reporting in Iowa):

Huckabee 34%
Romney 25%
Thompson 14%
McCain 13%
Paul 10%
Giuliani 4%
Hunter 0%

Republican NH polling (average of recent results):

McCain 31.3%
Romney 28.8%
Giuliani 10.0%
Huckabee 9.5%
Paul 7.0%
Thompson 2.3%

Republican analysis: The Iowa results will probably drop McCain to at least second place in NH, and will probably drop Giuliani to at least fourth place in NH. Huckabee will probably rise to at least third place in NH.

A sixth place showing in Iowa for Giuliani and what is likely to be no better than a fourth place showing in NH for Giuliani is probably enough to doom his candidacy.

Thompson's third place performance in Iowa will not be enough to drag him out of sixth place in NH. Thompson is done.

Paul's fifth place performance in Iowa just conceivably could bring him up as high as fourth place in NH, if Giuliani falls far enough over the next half a week, but a fifth place in Iowa followed by a fourth or fifth place in NH is not good enough to get him the nomination, he is not a viable candidate now if he ever was for the GOP race although he might still come to Denver this August to claim the Libertarian Party crown at its national convention. A Ron Paul third party run might create a spoiler for the Republican nominee, particularly if that nominee is Huckabee, who alienates based on his economic and foreign policy stances, or Romney, who alienates due to animus against Mormons.

I don't think Huckabee will beat Romney in NH, which is Romney's home turf, and a place where Republicans are more economic than religiously oriented than almost anywhere else in the country. Romney will leave NH as a viable candidate, as will Huckabee for whom expectations are low and likely to be exceeded.

The wild card in NH is McCain. His poor Iowa showing hurts him, but he is also a natural place for discouraged Giuliani supporters to flee. He has a realistic shot at a second place finish in NH and an outside shot at a first place finish there. If he can't beat Huckabee in NH, I think that McCain is probably doomed. Fourth place in Iowa, far behind the two front runners, and third place in NH, with the same two people in the top two spots in both states, would probably take McCain out of the running, and certainly would put great pressure for McCain to deliver in South Carolina (where McCain is in fourth place and Huckabee leads) and Nevada (where he is currently in fifth place behind a third place Huckabee who is still surging). On the other hand, second place in NH and fourth place in Iowa still keeps pressure on McCain, but doesn't take him out of the running. McCain also has little to hope for in Michigan and Florida which are also not irrelevant to the Republican race (the national party has simply given those states fewer than their fare share of delegates), and McCain is currently in third place behind Romney and Huckabee in Michigan and in fourth place behind Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee in Florida.

Bottom line for the GOP: While the signals are a bit muddy still, I think that this is now a three way race with Huckabee, Romney and McCain as the only candidates left with a real shot at the nomination, and their strongest general election candidate, McCain, will be hard pressed to gain the momentum he needs to get in January, to cinch the nomination in the remaining contests.

General election impact

The fact that Iowa has almost identical numbers of registered Democrats and Republicans, but had twice as much turnout at their caucuses, is a bad omen for Republicans in the general election, particularly because the Republican race was more interesting this year in Iowa.

Giuliani's wash out is good for Democrats because he could easily be seen as a moderate in the general election.

McCain's poor showing in Iowa is good news for Democrats for the same reason, although McCain's strong polling in NH means that he isn't out of contention yet. If polling means anything this early on, McCain is the biggest threat to Democrats in a general election, although not as strong a threat as he was four years ago. Even worse for Democrats, Edwards does best vis-a-vis McCain in a head to head race, and Edwards seems least likely to win the Democratic party nomination at this point.

Romney is probably less of a threat to Democrats than Huckabee, because many people simply do not trust him and never will despite the fact that they actually agree with him on the issues. Not only is he a Mormon, but he is also a man from the Northeast a region that people in many Republican strongholds distrust.

Huckabee is hard to figure in a general election. He could cement conservative working class support in a way that other Republican candidates can't do nearly so well. But, the guys is dumber than a fifth grader when it comes to foreign policy, is religious and Southern white enough to make liberals fear him and organize against him, and offers little to the economically oriented win of the Republican party to cause them to support him over Clinton or Obama. On the other hands, when did American voters ever want their Presidents to be smart? A dual populist Edwards v. Huckabee race is also hard to gauge. I don't trust head to head polling on Huckabee because most people who aren't political junkies don't know him very well yet.

As a Democrat, I hope that the Republicans pick Romney because I think he's their weakest candidate with a shot at the nomination. He lacks charisma, has established himself as a flip flopper, and brings few exciting issues to the table.