The New Hampshire primaries are on Tuesday, and a lot is going on between now and then. The candidates (except for maybe Rudy...he only seems to care about Florida) have hit the ground running, hoping to cover as much ground as possible in the short five days between the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries. Good thing it's such a tiny state. As far as who's going to do well in New Hampshire, it may be safe to say that McCain is in a rather secure spot there, with Romney trailing behind. New Hampshire is a moderate state with many independent voters, an advantage for McCain who has great cross-over appeal, given his record as a U.S. Senator. Romney will probably do well on account of not even really knowing where the guy stands throughout the years--his "I'm the most conserviest conservative" ploy in Iowa may not be his game in New Hampshire. The latest Rasmussen poll for GOP New Hampshire primary is here:
John McCain 31%
Mitt Romney 26%
Ron Paul 14%
Mike Huckabee 11%
Rudy Giuliani 8%
Fred Thompson 5%
Some other candidate 2%
A five-percent lead ain't bad, but McCain didn't do as well as I thought he would in Iowa. Real Clear Politics last had McCain at 11.8 before the caucuses, and he finished with 13%. We'll see how he stands up. Romney has been in attack-mode, which could either damage McCain's chances of a first place finish in New Hampshire, or it could damage his own, as we just saw in Iowa.
Something to note, however, about relying on recent New Hampshire polling: most pollsters will only have three full nights of polling between Iowa and New Hampshire--a very short amount of time. The thing is that a lot can change after Iowa--results in the Hawkeye State has been known to change some minds in subsequent states, including New Hampshire, so polling could be significantly affected, but there's not quite enough time to measure that change. There's a great article from Politico.Com's Peter A. Brown on this very subject.
As for the democrat side, Rasmussen is showing the following for New Hampshire:
New Hampshire Dem Primary
Barack Obama 37%
Hillary Clinton 27%
John Edwards 19%
Bill Richardson 8%
Dennis Kucinich 3%
Mike Gravel 1%
RCP, however, has Obama with only a 3% lead over Clinton. Either way, I think with the influence of Obama's Iowa sweep, I think New Hampshire will most definitely go to Obama, and it's possible that Edwards may pull a bit more than what he's polling at (RCP has him at 18%), once again, on account of Iowa.
We'll see how this all pans out...
-Cydney
Cross-posted on The Celebrity.