Am I expected to believe that Vermin Supreme and Vivek Ramaswamy are different people?
Dan, that’s the leather sub-primary: the leather in Ramaswamy’s bomber jacket against the leather in the shoe on Vermin Supreme’s head.
One thing that must be emphasized while we wait for final margins in the NH primary (which may not end up at the ~60% Trump blowout I privately predicted) again echoes a point Noah made about how it is the residual echo of former Republicans who are now disaffected.
Make no mistake, the Trump narrative will be a simple mantra: these are interlopers, infiltrators, Democrats playing “Operation Chaos,” etc. They’re not. Out in the real world, as opposed to the hothouse of “extremely online and political 24/7” people, you don’t pull a ballot to vote in a primary unless you actually care about the outcome in the sense of wanting an option to potentially vote for. These are persuadable voters who are emphatically unpersuaded by Trump, and they’re a better representation of what the general electorate will look like in countless states than the MAGA-drunk GOP primary electorate.
The fact that these sorts of voters, in a state where primary rules allow them, are showing up like embittered ex-Republican Captain Ahabs to spit their last vote from hell’s heart at anyone who opposes Moby Trump, should therefore be understood by all save those who are professionally forbidden from admitting it as the canary in the GOP coalmine.
Trump has locked up the Republican nomination tonight, absent an actuarial event; he has revealed the crippling weakness underlying his entire campaign at the same time.
Trump is on track to win the New Hampshire primary. But given his expectations and Haley’s performance, no honest broker could call this anything other than an unexpectedly underwhelming showing from the former president.
Donald Trump went into the New Hampshire primary with an 19.3-point lead over Nikki Haley in the average of polls of New Hampshire’s potential GOP primary voters. Indeed, Trump surged in tracking polling in the week since the Iowa caucuses. But with just under one-fifth of the vote in, Trump leads Haley by roughly 9 points. A healthy lead, but not a blowout.
As of current data from the AP, 34 votes for Vermin Supreme, 14 for Vivek Ramaswamy.
It is 8:01 p.m., and CNN is declaring the race “too close to call.” A mere 88 percent of the vote is still outstanding.
However, CNN is projecting that President Undeclared Write-In,, a.k.a. Joe Biden, will win the Democratic Primary.
AP Race Call: Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire.
Tonight, pretend the name of the current president is “Unprocessed write in.” At this early hour, President Unprocessed Write-In is ahead of Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips, 73.8 percent to 21.2 percent. In what can only be characterized as a victory for “dark psychic forces,” Marianne Williamson is at 4.6 percent.
The last polls in New Hampshire close at 8 p.m. Eastern. Every millisecond after exactly 8:00 p.m. that the Associated Press does not call the race for Trump represents a small victory for Nikki Haley.
To the extent that Haley is performing well at all tonight, that performance is attributable to people who do not associate themselves with the GOP. They are geographically centered in urban and suburban areas with a disproportionate number of white-collar workers and degree-holders. That’s similar to what we saw in Iowa, where turnout in suburban and urban areas of the state was just down relative to past cycles. A sizable number of Haley’s voters just don’t consider themselves Republicans anymore. It’s an open question whether those voters manage to reconcile their alienation from the GOP before November.