Voters in the New Hampshire Democratic primary gave Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts a commanding victory on Tuesday. Kerry secured 38 percent of the vote to former Vermont Governor Howard Dean’s 26 percent, with former General Wesley Clark and Senator John Edwards coming in a distant third and fourth respectively at 12 percent, and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman in fifth with 9 percent of the vote. Kerry’s New Hampshire victory combined with his victory in the Iowa caucuses has cemented his status as the front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, while Senator Lieberman’s poor showing likely means that his campaign will soon be ending.
Kerry’s victories in Iowa and New Hampshire highlight the fallacy that political pundits and polls taken well in advance of an election are accurate predictors of actual voter behavior. Many members of the national media had written off Kerry’s campaign in late December and portrayed Howard Dean’s nomination as all but inevitable based at least in part on early polls that showed Dean with large leads in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Now Dean’s campaign is struggling to explain why it did worse than “expected” in Iowa and New Hampshire, while the media (and Kerry himself) continue to talk about Kerry’s amazing “come from behind” victories. Yet, these expectations that the actual results are compared to by the national media, were shaped for the most part by the national media.
Why did the polls and the national media get it wrong? According to interviews with voters leaving the polls, more than half of the voters in the New Hampshire primary waited until the last week of the campaign to determine who to support, and more of these late deciders voted for Kerry than any other candidate. These exit polls also reveal that many of Dean’s voters reported deciding to support Dean well in advance of the primary. Polls taken in December and early January obviously would not have been able to pick up the late deciding Kerry supporters, and would have overestimated Dean’s support.
Electability has also proved to be a major issue favoring Senator Kerry. Some voters report having initially supported Dean’s candidacy only to later decide that Kerry had a better chance of winning in November. In New Hampshire, of the voters who cited “can defeat George W. Bush” as the main factor influencing their vote, Kerry outpolled Dean 62 percent to 10 percent. Anecdotally, the campaign button reading, “Flirted with Dean, married Kerry” appears to have become quite popular since the actual voting has started.
Now the campaign shifts to the South and West, with seven states, including Missouri, holding primaries or caucuses next Tuesday. This will force the remaining candidates to compete over a large geographic region simultaneously, and to rely more on advertising and brief campaign stops than on meeting voters one on one. A more national campaign favors the frontrunner Kerry, who is sure to benefit from the free national media attention he is receiving as a result of his Iowa and New Hampshire victories. If Kerry can score multiple victories on Feb. 3, he may prove to be unstoppable.
A Kerry stumble in the South, however, could open the door for other candidates. Senator John Edwards would likely be the primary beneficiary of a Kerry stumble. His southern roots and Clintonesque charm will appeal to large blocs of voters. Wesley Clark shares Edwards’s southern roots and his military experience will surely resonate with southerners, but to date, Clark, has struggled to connect with voters. Howard Dean has raised the most funds of any Democratic candidate, but his failure to win in Iowa or New Hampshire despite large investments of campaign funds and time make it unlikely that Dean’s campaign will be able to present a strong challenge to Kerry. Dean’s campaign will be fighting an uphill battle to find a state, any state, in which he can secure a victory.
If Kerry’s good fortunes continue, the most interesting part of the campaign will be his choice of a running mate. However, as the results in Iowa and New Hampshire have shown us, electoral politics is often difficult to predict.