New Hampshire Post-Mortem

posted at 9:28 am on January 11, 2012 by Karl

Overall, a very good night for Mitt Romney, albeit one with lingering questions. As I write this, with over 90% reporting, Romney beat his 2008 vote total. Indeed, he beat John McCain’s 2008 vote total, although he likely will not beat McCain’s 2000 vote total.

Moreover, Romney has drawn Ron Paul as his biggest rival. (You know who that benefits?) The exit polling suggests that while Ron Paul won among those looking for a “true conservative,” the Paul 2012 demographic looks much like the Barack Obama 2008 demographic. For example, Paul won the 18-29 demo, the unmarried demo, the under $30,000 income demo, and the liberal demo. Although John Huntsman won among the 4% of the pool who were Democrats (Paul came in second with them), Paul won the Independent demo.

The immediate good news for Romney on that score is that Indies played a bigger role in NH than they did in 2008 (although the reportedly record overall turnout should be viewed in this context and be mildly worrying). That may be because the Democrat primary was a draw in ’08, more Paulians turned out or — given the demographic similarities — both. This will be less of a factor in closed primaries and in states generally more conservative than New Hampshire.

The longer-term good news on that front is that while Paul won 32% of the Indies, Romney won 29%. That’s important for someone whose main selling point is electability. On that score, 61% of GOP primary voters said they would be satisfied with Romney as the nominee, while none of his closest rivals musters a majority. 55% would not be satisfied if Ron Paul won, which is marginally better than Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum, most likely due to the overall tilt of New Hampshire and the relative lack of national scrutiny given to Paul.

Some television pundits pointed to exit polling showing that Romney won among late deciders as a sign the attacks by his rivals against his tenure at Bain Capital did not work. However, the 32% of the truly late deciders he won represents a drop from the 39% he won among those who decided earlier in January and a huge drop from the early deciders. The next ten days before the South Carolina primary will give a better indication whether the attacks on Bain are eating into Romney’s support.

I am already on record that most (although not all) of the attacks on Bain are misguided and diminish the Republicans making them. However, the left was going to launch these attacks early and often if Romney wins the nomination. The marginal loss is that Team Obama (media included) will package the more egregious comments from Gingrich and Perry into attack ads to legitimize the attacks with the casual voter. The marginal gain is that we will get to see Romney respond and at least some idea of how damaging such attacks are with Indies inclined to vote GOP.

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