The View From New Hampshire 43:12

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So can I just tell you, Galen, when they emailed and they're like, this is what our podcast is. And I was like, Galen Druk is like just under Taylor Swift for me. Oh, my God. I love your show. Whoa. Whoa. I'm like going to fall backwards out of my chair.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. And today I'm coming to you from Manchester, New Hampshire, where in just a matter of days, voters will head to the polls to cast their ballots in the first primary contest in the nation. New Hampshire, of course, gets that distinction because Iowa uses a caucus system.

According to our polling average, Donald Trump currently leads in the state with 46% support. Nikki Haley follows with 33%, and Ron DeSantis trails significantly with 5%.

That 13-point gap between Trump and Haley makes the contest here the most competitive in the country. This is, of course, all relative. It's still a double-digit lead. But support in primaries can be volatile, and polling error is historically larger than in general elections. So we're going to talk about it all. There's also a little drama on the Democratic side of things. The Democratic National Committee changed its primary calendar order this year to put South Carolina first.

New Hampshire was not on board. It even has written into its state constitution that it must hold the first primary in the nation. As a result, Biden is not on the ballot here and no delegates will be awarded. Instead, Congressman Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson are running and Biden supporters have launched a write-in campaign.

Joining me today to talk about all of this and about some deeper political trends in the Granite State are two people who know the state best. Anne-Marie Timmons is a senior reporter at the New Hampshire Bulletin. Anne-Marie, welcome to the podcast. Thanks. Thank you. Also here with us is Neil Levick.

Executive Director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College. Welcome, Neil. Well, thanks for having me on. I should also say, Neil, today we were actually planning on doing something quite different than joining a podcast. ABC, which of course owns FiveThirtyEight, was going to be hosting...

a debate at St. Anselm College. So instead, we're doing this. This beats the debate right now. It definitely does. The set is a little bit pricier at the debate, but I think that this is pretty good. Of course, Nikki Haley said that she would only join the debate if Donald Trump was there. Donald Trump was not going to join. So we ended up calling off the debate. But

But let's start things off. I mentioned our polling averages, and St. Anselm College conducts some of the most regular polling of primary voters in New Hampshire. So you might see things shifting faster than the averages necessarily will calculate. Have you seen much change since the Iowa caucuses in New Hampshire? Yes, we've seen both Trump and Nikki Haley have both gone up seven points. So...

You mentioned a 13-point gap. We have a 14. And so although, let's say Nikki Haley rose, Trump rose also that seven points, he's now over 50 at 52 in our polling. She lags behind. This is, of course, right at the time that Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out. Some more detailed polling that we did on that was that if you liked Vivek Ramaswamy or DeSantis,

About three quarters of those voters are favorable to Trump. So what am I getting at? The polling, as you mentioned, goes quickly because you have candidates that drop out. You have pivot points like the Iowa caucuses where someone's getting earned media. And you've got to really react quickly and see, OK, if this person drops out, where are those votes going? And that's what we're trying to calculate right now.

And it looks like Vivek Ramaswamy's votes have largely gone to Trump. Perhaps Chris Christie's votes have largely gone to Nikki Haley. They both go up seven points, but that gap is still the same. Emery, you've been following the candidates around the state. In fact, I think you're going to a Dean Phillips rally or event later today, if I'm correct.

What are you seeing on the ground in terms of how candidates are making their pitches and how much have things changed since Iowa? It hasn't felt like it's changed here very much. I've been surprised to see how many voters are at these events and say they're still shopping for a candidate, even between Haley and DeSantis. And I think people would assume there's no overlap there, but they are talking about it that way.

I also have asked, does Iowa influence you? And they're almost offended. You know, like Iowa does not tell us what to do. And so I'll see that kind of comment, too. The pitches from the candidates haven't changed that much from what I've seen.

I think Haley is really emphasizing, I'm the calm person. I will not bring chaos. And DeSantis is focusing on how much Haley is bad. Birdbrain came up yesterday among his supporters. They're really, really not running for something in the way he talks about it. They're running against Haley. I'd say the only real effect of Iowa is the fact that

You do, if you win or you come in second, like DeSantis did, you're getting earned media. And so the headline the next day in New Hampshire is this person's doing well.

Trump, of course, said some sort of unifying remarks after Iowa, which I thought was different than his normal way of conducting himself. It would have caught the attention, I think, of some voters here, but they're definitely testing what's happening. This final week and final weekend is really where I think a lot of voters start to make up their minds.

You know, we were joking about the debate earlier, but we have one television station here in New Hampshire. And it's a very, if you do the testing of it through polls, it's a very credible television station. It's an ABC affiliate, WMUR-TV. Rock on, ABC. Right. And WMUR would have been a great place for Nikki Haley to be seen for 90 minutes because voters here in New Hampshire would have seen her. And when she opted out of debating...

She really opted out of getting on WMUR-TV in front of New Hampshire voters for 90 minutes. And so I think that that's a critical situation here where there aren't a lot of pivot points between now and next Tuesday.

Yeah, it was an interesting decision by Nikki Haley because by all accounts, she's done well in the debates so far. But perhaps she feels, I'm imagining, I don't have inside reporting from the Haley campaign, that DeSantis at this point probably knows he's not going to be the Republican nominee. And so how can he acquit himself well in the eyes of Republican voters who largely support Trump? It might be basically Trump.

ending his bid for the presidency by taking out Nikki Haley in a debate and almost not really approaching it as a, you know, hey, Iowans, vote for me to be the next president of the United States. But like, hey, New Hampshireites, I'm going to do what Chris Christie did to Marco Rubio back in 2016, take Nikki Haley out

And that will be the role that I've played in the Republican primary. I don't know if either of you see it that way. Galen, I think that's a great theory. But I think when you're behind and it's the fourth quarter and you can throw a pass into the end zone.

You've got to do it. And I think that the debate also, when you say, well, I'm not going to debate DeSantis, DeSantis since then has sort of said, well, now I'm going to spend more time in South Carolina. There's been some rumors that he might pick up and kind of go there. If that's the case, where does that DeSantis voter go?

Are they going to go to Trump? I think so. They're probably not going to go to Haley. So the whole calculation has created sort of a domino effect for not participating in this debate. I think it's a major decision that she made. I think so too, Neil. I wonder what you think about this. We were going to partner with a local NPR station to do candidate conversations, not a debate, but you sit down, we just have you alone, and let's talk. And I think that audience...

Haley, that would have been a good audience for Haley. And they all said no. And that's where the primary is going these days. But I thought that was a mistake on her part not to try to reach that audience. And she's having a sort of strange ground game here. Her first event out of Iowa was to go to the most northern part of the state in a huge blizzard.

and do a lot of stops on the way, but none of them with the media. She's not taking questions now from the media. She'll say, you know, Governor Suna will introduce them and say she'll answer any questions. But at that event, she took no questions. So it's just the conversation I think needs to happen, and it's not. I think, too, what we both see, a lot of regular voters go to these events, but also campaigns try to put a lot of their supporters in these events so that the questions they're getting are...

favorable questions. You know, how did you save the puppy yesterday? You know, that kind of thing. And, you know, so you do see some of that and it gets picked up by the media. Well, how did you save the puppy? And then sometimes what was the cause of the Civil War? Right. I want to put some data to all of this. We're talking about like who is a Nikki Haley supporter and you both have intimated that perhaps her supporters are more

trusting of institutions. Anne-Marie, you mentioned NPR. I think we all sort of have an image of what that type of voter might look like. Me, as somebody who previously worked for an NPR member station, I can imagine what it looks like. And Neil, you were talking about maybe your WMUR viewer. Who is a Nikki Haley voter? And I would say versus a DeSantis voter, but given that he has 5% support, maybe let's skip over that, versus a Trump supporter, according to the polling, Neil.

If we look at this, it's kind of surprising, you know, 54% of women, 54% versus 37 are for Trump versus a woman candidate at 37. So that's kind of an interesting situation. When we get to moderates, Trump gets 42 to her 43. So it's pretty tied right there with moderate voters, but very conservative voters, 77% are with Trump.

10% are with Haley. So you're a very conservative person. This is no surprise, right? Very conservative. You're kind of with Trump. But as we go down the line, she really doesn't necessarily dominate. Now, the most important thing here for viewers who are watching this and thinking about New Hampshire is, of course, our undeclared voters can vote next Tuesday.

Now, there's a big misnomer that all these Democrats and all these independent voters and things come into the polls and swell the polls. That's really not factual. If you're an undeclared voter, you have to go to the polls and declare that you're a Democrat or you're a Republican. So at the time that you cast the vote, you are technically one or the other. And amongst those undeclareds, Trump gets 37 percent and she gets 52. Now, there's a gap there, but it's not huge.

So if she's counting on this huge amount of undeclared voters going to the polls saying, I'm a Republican, and then voting for her, well, keep in mind, Trump gets a big share of that as well. I hear something so different when I talk to people at her stops, but those are people going to her stops. And the independents do outnumber Democrats and Republicans here, but they talk about her as an anti-Trump vote, of course.

I plan in the end to vote for Biden or whoever the Democratic nominee is. But I increasingly hear people talking about, I feel like it's my responsibility for this one time, as painful as it might be, to vote in the Republican primary when they're lifelong, really, Democrats. So I'm hearing something different on the ground, and it's picking up. It's really picking up. And that's starting to become an argument everywhere.

for the Trump campaign, which is, okay, maybe she's doing all right in Iowa and is more competitive in New Hampshire, but the people who are supporting her are really Democrats. You know, like, if you're a Republican, I'm your choice. Think back to 2016. New Hampshire was the first contest that Trump won because, of course, he lost the Iowa caucuses. What did his coalition look like then in New Hampshire versus what it looks like now? Well, very different election. I think that

The thing about the Trump 2016 election, particularly the general election, was that a lot of people who never they might have been registered to vote, but they weren't people that voted all the time.

They said, Donald Trump makes a connection with me. I believe in him. He's speaking for me. And I'm going to go vote even though I haven't voted for 10 years. And the reason why polling was off so greatly during that period of time was that those people are not picked up by pollsters. Pollsters don't go to people and say,

I know you didn't vote in the last 10 years. Who might you vote for? They look for people who regularly vote. And so that was missed during that period of time. And I also think that there was a great number of Republicans who thought that Trump was sort of just a movie star, television star, and he was likely to fade out.

Of course, we know the difference. And I think that there's a lot of Republicans now in New Hampshire, particularly say, you know, he delivered on things like judges and abortion for us. He delivered on other things, his policies. We liked we don't like the chaos, but we like the policies and we're going to go vote for him again. The data since the beginning of the year, Trump is like a goalpost. He doesn't move. You know, he doesn't. Despite all these things that have happened, he doesn't move. He doesn't go down. He doesn't go up.

He has a connection like I've never seen in politics to a set of voters, and they are determined to vote for him. And we're going to see that, I think, on Tuesday. When we've seen some Trump events here, he's been here more this week. It's like going to a rock concert. They have that personal connection with him. They can't talk about his policies really other than big picture, like you can say the word border or maybe abortion. But they love him.

personally. And they're not, they're starting, you know, the, he goes on so long, he takes the stage so late. They're not even staying for the whole speech. They just want to be in his presence. And it does feel very different than being at the other, the events. And it just keeps striking me like not quite Beatlemania, but a little bit like that. They are just fanatically devoted to him. And they'll, they'll, they'll describe themselves that way because they do see themselves as

And him, they'll say he's not a politician. That's what I hear again and again.

You know, you talk about Trump being a goalpost. And if you look at our polling averages, and I know if you look at the St. Anselm polling as well, it is exactly so, right? So back on April 1st, where our polling average begins, Trump has about 42% support. Today, he has about 45%. You know, it's fluctuated a little bit between the 40 and 50 mark today.

Back then, though, we saw DeSantis at about 25% support or higher. And that's basically reversed with Haley. Back then, Haley had about 3% support. Now Haley has, as I mentioned, 33% support and DeSantis has dropped to 5%.

And I think the story that we all sort of tell in the media is New Hampshire is sort of ripe for a Haley appeal. It's a very college educated state, 40 percent of New Hampshireites, although I was corrected earlier. I shouldn't say New Hampshireites. I should say granite staters. What's that? What is the controversy here? Why should I not be saying New Hampshireites? Well, I feel more strongly about this than you, Neil. I think people think they describe it as that sounds so like

Fancy pants. Like, we're solid. We're more solid than that. We're granite staters. Okay. All right. All right. All right. I'm talking to two lifelong New Hampshireites. Oh, I just... I did it again. I'm talking to two lifelong granite staters here, so I'll be careful. But the story that we tell is New Hampshire is primed for a Nikki Haley vote, right? It is...

highly college educated. It's in the top 10 states in the country for four-year college degree attainment levels. It's very secular. It's also one of the top 10 states in the country for voters not allowed

aligning themselves with a religion. As we've already mentioned, more than 40% of people who live in New Hampshire are independents. And it has this sort of just like independent libertarian moderate streak. It's a bit of a maverick, as John McCain might say.

But it looks more like Trump's support has remained steady, but DeSantis and Haley have switched places. So were all of these like moderate, maverick, college educated voters supporting DeSantis before and then just switched to Haley? What is going on there? Because DeSantis doesn't necessarily seem like the obvious choice for a state that liked Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Well, I think DeSantis was sort of like, you mentioned a rock star earlier. He was kind of the new flavor of the Republican Party. Florida, sunshine, everything's going right here. He's the champion of all this stuff. And there was a lot of hype around that. So if you didn't like Trump because of January 6th or the chaos or whatever it was, you said, well, we can put our marbles in this basket. Well, the truth is, is over time, of course, we've

the media has sort of taken some of that shine off. And I think his campaign has sort of taken some of that shine off. And so all those other voters really, according to the data, have gone other places. I also heard a lot of people talking about his COVID policies. They felt very shut down here, although...

I'm not sure that was quite as accurate as they remember, but very much like he said no to, you know, lockdowns and mask mandates. And they really talked about that more at the beginning. I think now I'm hearing a lot more that he's close to the border. He gets that. And even when I say we are so far from the southern border, what appeals to you about that? And they do talk

talk about it in personal terms, like they have someone who lives in Massachusetts and they feel the drugs are coming to Massachusetts directly from the border. So I think COVID was just such a motivator for those folks very early on. And they tied Trump with, you know, lockdowns at the beginning and having Fauci and, you know, keeping him on board. And I'm hearing a little less of that now.

Yeah, Emery, to that point, let's talk about the issues. I'm looking at some of the most recent San Anselm College polling. And according to that polling amongst Republican primary voters, we see that the economy and immigration are just about tied for first place, although economy and inflation are like 27%, immigration 24%, government spending and taxes 14%, then national security 10%.

Can you talk a little bit more about those issues, Neil? Has this been a constant for Granite Staters? Has this fluctuated over time? And can we say more about what's motivating this? I should also say abortion was at 7%, which when you look nationally at Gallup polling for the most important issue, it's closer to like 2%. So it's still not all that high, but higher than nationally. What can you tell us about the issues motivating this campaign?

This is rather interesting. OK, so we're in New Hampshire. Tom Brady could throw a football right now into into Canada. I mean, we're on the northern border, right? And we're very far away from anything happening around the southern border. Yet this is a top issue. People feel it very personally.

that their job is going to get taken away by someone who's coming here illegally, or they're going to get drugs or be harmed by these people. And it's a major factor right now. And so when you have a candidate who can boil the issue down as well as Trump can, we're going to build a wall and we're going to finish the wall and Biden's not doing anything. He's letting this happen.

it really solidifies a lot of his support. And I think it's a motivating factor for people. And I think a lot of people in New Hampshire are going to vote on the immigration issue next Tuesday. And if you ask them about the northern border, which the numbers coming across there are significantly, and we don't know if they're coming through New Hampshire, but generally up that way, they're sort of unaware of that, even though our governor has talked quite a bit about that. It's very much the southern border. And I

been hearing, you know, there's the Chinese are coming in and it's not only they're going to take our jobs or they're criminals, but they're spying on us. And DeSantis yesterday, you know, said a majority of these people coming in are, you know, military age. And so they're emphasizing this fear in their minds. The immigration issue is tied to that in a way. They're just afraid, really talking about being afraid.

On this point, you know, Biden has scored very poorly on immigration across the board. I mean, whether we're talking about New Hampshire specifically or the country more broadly, he's been underwater by 40 points plus on this issue for months, maybe even years. At this point, it's one of his worst issues.

I think there is a general sense, whether it's this sort of more extreme version that you're talking about, which I think is probably more concentrated amongst a Republican primary electorate, or this broader sense that things are out of control, the Biden administration isn't responding in a proportionate way to what's happening at the southern border. And I think at this point,

Blue state governors and blue city mayors are saying this themselves, and the Biden administration has acknowledged it now. And also, you know, congressional leaders on the left are saying, yeah, we're going to try to pass some legislation with Republicans that will change what's happening on the southern border. And when I say what's happening, I'm talking about record levels of crossings and crossings

an inability for the system to process people or ensure that there are clear standards for who can come into the country and seek asylum. The interesting thing, though, that I see is New Hampshire is a purple state. You know, Democrats have won by slim margins in presidential election after presidential election. But in 2016, the margin was half a percentage point. New Hampshire has voted for Republicans on the presidential level.

And yet we see that while Biden is doing quite poorly in battleground states around the country, you know, if an election were held today, likely losing to Trump in places like Georgia, Michigan, Arizona. In fact, Biden holds up quite well in head to head polling against Trump in New Hampshire. What would you chalk that up to?

I'm a little perplexed by that, actually. But you're right. Since the beginning of the year, he's had about a 10 to 12 point margin of victory, Biden over Trump, in a head-to-head matchup. And of course, we only have four electoral votes. If you're in California right now, you're thinking, what's four electoral votes really mean? Well, if Al Gore had won our four electoral votes, he would have become president of the United States.

So they matter. And it is usually a toss-up state. Keep that one in your back pocket, Neil. So it is usually a toss-up state. And those four electoral votes actually do matter. I don't know what the answer to that is, other than I think we do look at things differently in sort of this New England universe than other states. And as far as Biden's positions on immigration and how they relate to Trump, I think Biden...

Although the White House would like to tell you that he's a great communicator and he can communicate these things, that has not proven to be a fact. If you take things like the economy, which are solid, things are actually great right now in the economy. He cannot communicate that, and he is not getting credit for that at all. So I think the larger issue here is that the Democrats have a problem.

And the problem is, is that they have a candidate

who is not necessarily a good communicator and who in the polling in the six top states is showing five of them where he's losing to Donald Trump. And let's face it, we all know Democrats and most Democrats, if they're going to wake up at two in the morning with a nightmare, it's going to be Donald Trump up at the Capitol taking the oath of office again. So I think that it's a problem for Democrats and they're not solving that problem.

Biden is not campaigning here. But I think we've had eight or nine secretaries, like the transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg was here a couple weeks ago on the side of a highway trying to explain why the infrastructure bill was so important. And I don't think that's an effective strategy with voters. So I am also cannot figure out what's going on. And then

We have a new write-in campaign that was announced yesterday, which is to write ceasefire if you're voting undeclared. I was like, this is starting to feel like a bit of a mockery of the whole write-in process. So I don't feel the write-in Biden is picking up in the way of

that the right in Biden people do. - The whole Biden thing has been a fumble after a fumble after a fumble. He creates this DNC rule to get rid of New Hampshire, which they can't do. Then they send a letter saying he really wanted to participate, but he has to abide by the DNC rules that he created to not participate.

So then they have a write-in campaign. Then they send up seven, as Anne-Marie said, they send up seven cabinet members all in the past week to sunny New Hampshire. And they put a microphone in each person's face and they say, Pete Buttigieg, are you here because of the primary that's coming up? No, absolutely not. There's no coincidence to me being here.

I mean, do we have polling on this? Like on the Democratic side, how many people plan on writing in Joe Biden versus, I guess, voting for Dean Phillips or Marianne Williamson? We did do some polling on it. A lot of Democrats plan to vote in Biden, and it didn't bode well for Phillips, who's working very hard and spending a lot of money. I think that it is very hard to poll Biden.

Democrats who are demoralized by what has happened, number one. Number two, it's very hard to say, are you actually going to go to the polls and write somebody's name in? So it's a hard thing to really test. But I would say that Biden will win the write-in campaign despite the close contest here now with ceasefire.

You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com. I do want to mention something, and this is a bit of a fact check on you, Neil. You said the economy is great.

And obviously, polls suggest that Americans don't see it that way. And there's been a lot of consternation about why. And if you look at

the, you know, consumer price index data, and you also look at, you know, wage increases over Biden's presidency, what you see is for most of Biden's presidency, prices were rising faster than wages. And in fact, even by a significant clip, you know, when we maxed out inflation at about 9% in 2022, we saw that wages were rising, but they were only rising by 6%. And so

Quite literally, Americans were becoming poorer during most of Biden's presidency on average. And those two things only flipped within the past year. And so we're going to see how long it takes for that to register with Americans and if they will sort of give Biden credit in kind, having realized that those things happened.

have flipped. And that gets us actually into something important on the ground here in New Hampshire, which is that when it comes to the cost of living issues, New Hampshire has experienced this quite a bit. You've got a lot of in-migration since 2020, people who say, oh, I don't have to be in the office every day in Boston. I'm going to move to New Hampshire where there are no state income taxes and I can have a nice backyard and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who politically are

the folks who are migrating into New Hampshire. And what effect has all of this had on New Hampshire politics?

It was a UNH study that came out just this week, and it showed, I think, about a 22% change in the potential voter population. I think the word potential is important. So I think 6% of that are people who were not old enough to vote before, but they were granted staters, and they can vote now. And 16% are people coming from other parts of the country. And to live here, you need to have a—it's not cheap to live here or buy a house, and it's very hard to buy a house.

So I think it's a my sense is that it's a wealthier group of people moving in. But when they broke down how that group leans politically, it was very much, you know, even the younger people were leaning heavily toward, you know, the Bidens of the world. But these are potential voters and.

And I don't hear young people getting engaged in, you know, with this election. So I wonder what you would think, Neil. Are these people going to vote? This is not an exciting election for Democrats, for sure. And are young people even interested in it? Well, every election season, we always hear all kinds of people, particularly people at universities like I'm at,

where you're around young people and you think, this 18 to 29-year-old bloc, they're going to vote this time. This is it. This is the time. They're all going to come out. And of course, they don't. I mean, they do to some degree, but if you're a candidate, you want the over 50s for sure in your corner. As far as the people coming in, you know, it's the same thing we mentioned with immigration, right? Everybody's problems are because of someone else. And in New Hampshire, I've lived here my whole life.

And I've been in politics my whole life and I've heard my whole life about how people from Massachusetts, those people from Massachusetts are moving to New Hampshire and they're ruining our state. They're voting liberal, you know, not the live free or die way like most granite staters do.

And of course, a lot of this is not factual at all. People that are moving into the border towns with Massachusetts, those are the greatest conservative towns now in New Hampshire.

The theory goes that if you escape what we call tax-a-choos-its, the taxes of Massachusetts, and you move to New Hampshire, you move over the border, and now you're voting solid Republican. If it wasn't for those people, New Hampshire would be a solidly blue state. So there's a lot of sort of misnomers in politics, and I think that that's one of them. But there is huge turnover. Even you were talking earlier about the 2016 election. You know, there's probably at least...

maybe half the voters who'll be voting in this election weren't even around then. But is this the election where they decide to go register to vote?

It doesn't feel like it. If you're 20, you think 50 is old. Biden is ancient and they talk about it that way. And I just don't think this is the election to rile people up in the way Obama could. And there was hope there and excitement. And even to a degree last time, Biden with Kamala Harris, who have people talking about, I want to be part of history and help elect her. But

I just see no excitement at all. The other factor, and this is people always try to sort of equate yard signs with somehow support, but I'll just say this. I was driving around my small town on the seacoast this morning, and there was one political yard sign. So we're five days out, and there was one political yard sign and quite a lot of driving. So

I think that there is not a lot of motivation anywhere. So it could be on the writing campaign. It could be on the Democratic side. It could be even on the Republican side. I think, if anything, it probably feels like Trump is the eventual nominee and Biden is the eventual nominee and they're not happy about it.

Yeah, it's funny, Neil. Before the Iowa caucuses, I spoke with Ann Selzer, an Iowa pollster, and she said, you know, although I'm a pollster, she said the exact same thing. She's focused on the data, but by driving around the Des Moines area, she didn't see a lot of yard signs. And while we don't consider that to be true,

as representative as the polls, what it may have been indicative of is low turnout. And indeed, we saw really low turnout in Iowa. Now, the weather may have been a complicating factor in terms of drawing this kind of conclusion. But if indeed people do feel like it's two incumbents running and my vote ultimately in a primary doesn't matter that much because it's going to be Biden and Trump, I mean, that's a motivation in and of itself not to turn out.

quite a different situation. You were mentioning the enthusiasm amongst young people. I was here four years ago, like one of those probably national media people who parachute in every four years. I'm sure you don't love us, but I was at the University of New Hampshire following Bernie Sanders around at a Strokes concert. I mean, it was, he had the auditorium, maybe, were you there, Anne-Marie? Yes. Okay, yes. It was the Strokes. It was like, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was there. The whole place was packed.

In fact, I think it was such an effective display of support for Bernie Sanders who did end up going on to win that when I was walking away, my colleague Nate Silver was like, you know what? I think Bernie Sanders might win the presidency. And I said, Nate, that is exactly the kind of attitude we tell people not to take. You can't show up to one political event and it makes you like throw away all of the data you have.

But yes, we are not in that situation this time around. The other question I did have on that University of New Hampshire poll that you mentioned, Anne-Marie, was that, yes, it supports Neil's point that there are actually more Republicans moving into the state than Democrats.

Democrats. But the bigger trend even is that the people moving into the state are more polarized than people who already live in New Hampshire. So you see, it's a quite moderate electorate. I wish I could show people the chart right now. But in terms of people who lived in New Hampshire in the last election, moderates and I'm not talking about independents because independents are the largest segment of voters. Moderates are almost even with Democrats and Republicans.

But now the people moving into New Hampshire, they do skew slightly more Republican, but they skew far less moderate, which is to say maybe it's more of like a nationalized electorate that is moving into New Hampshire. I mean, do you see the state losing some of its sort of mavericky identity? I don't. I guess I'd go to, you know, think about our statehouse. We have 400 state reps there.

So it gives you a lot of the whole state. You kind of see who they're putting up there. And yes, no one else is running against them. But we do see this group of the Freedom Caucus coming in. And you also see...

sort of moderate Republicans standing up and saying no. So they're not falling in line. They have been unelected as a result. But I still feel there's not a Republican Party, single party in our statehouse. It feels like a spectrum. And so I still think there is a lot of disagreement and variety among Republicans. Yeah, I see that too. And, you know, I think

in general, people are becoming more polarized. There's no secret there. I think people get New Hampshire kind of wrong. They say it's a purple state because we have four members of the delegation, congressional delegation that are Democrats and one Republican governor. But what they miss are that they generally are fiscally conservative group, all five, and they're pro-choice. So we have a pro-choice Republican governor. Try to find that. That's like a

an endangered species in America. To close out here, there's been something of a wrench thrown into all of this at the last minute, which is that in your neighboring state, Maine, following Colorado, the Secretary of State ruled that Trump could not appear on the primary ballot. And of course, that's going to head to the Supreme Court where we're going to get some legal clarification about that.

But the University of New Hampshire conducted a poll after that was done of folks in New Hampshire and asked, do you agree with Maine's decision next door to remove Trump from the ballot? That poll, I mean, these things are quite evenly split, I would say. But in New Hampshire, at least 50 percent of voters

voters, this is across the parties, obviously, said that they agreed with the decision to remove him from the ballot. It was something more like 42% said they disagreed.

Do you see that shaping how people are reacting to Trump at all? Because I'll say in Iowa, I heard folks who didn't even necessarily plan on caucusing and weren't all that political have some backlash to that decision and say, you know, that's not right. Like, I don't even like Trump that much, but I think he should be on the ballot. It doesn't seem necessarily like that's the reaction New Hampshire is having, at least according to the data. I think it adds to the narrative that a lot of voters that support Trump

would agree with, which is, you know, they are trying to go after him in the courts. They're trying to stop him here. They're trying to stop him taking him off the ballot so we can't even vote for him. I saw a bumper sticker recently that said Jesus and Trump, and then it kind of crossed it out and flipped the order. You know, he is God here in people's mind. And I do think that pulling him off the ballot...

would, if not bring more people over, bring more people out to vote. I think that could be a motivator here. And more than anything else, we did have that same challenge here, legal challenge, and it came and went, and there was very little attention put on it. But if it was to come to that, I think that could bring people who may not think, oh, he's winning. Do I need to vote? But as a statement, like, you know, that's it's just that's gone too far because they love him so much. Yeah.

All right, folks. So Tuesday, New Hampshire votes. What's the likelihood of Nikki Haley upset? Where would you rate it right now? I think it's unlikely. I think that Trump has a solid fix. It's not as great as it is in other states, but New Hampshire is going to probably echo that.

Well, we will see which wins out with that. Thank you, Anne-Marie and Neil. Thank you. It was great. Thank you very much for having us on. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chertavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon. ♪

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