CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Aug. 4, 2008 – 11:17 p.m.
2008 Election Forecast: New Hampshire’s GOP Edge No Longer Written in Granite
By Rachel Kapochunas, CQ Staff
CQ Politics Presidential Race Rating: No Clear Favorite
Electoral Votes: 4
New Hampshire Republicans hope, fervently, that this year’s elections will be nothing like those in 2006, a historically bad year for their party. And they are counting on McCain — who scored wins in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary both during his unsuccessful try for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination and his successful bid this year — to turn the tide back in their favor.
Unlike the other five New England states, which regularly provide Democratic presidential candidates with comfortable margins, New Hampshire is one that even Obama advocates have to write into their column in pencil rather than indelible ink.
The state in the region least eager to abandon its Yankee Republican traditions, New Hampshire went for Bush over Gore in 2000 by 1.3 percentage points — and though it was the only state to flip its four electoral votes from Republican that year to Democratic in 2004, it went for Kerry over Bush by the exact same tight margin.
The national anti-Republican mood during the 2006 campaign brought New Hampshire past the tipping point, as Democrats unseated both of the state’s Republican U.S. House members, gained control of the state legislature and celebrated a second-term landslide for popular Gov. John Lynch .
The image of a political maverick that McCain has sought to cultivate over many years is the foundation of the support Republican activists hope he draws this November. “I don’t think people associate him, for example, with the Bush administration the way they might with a more conventional Republican,” state GOP Chairman Fergus Cullen said. He also described McCain as “the best possible candidate we could have as a nominee from a New Hampshire perspective, especially in this environment.”
Yet McCain’s win in the crucial Jan. 8 primary — though devastating to the hopes of top rival Mitt Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts — was much more narrowly accomplished than his 2000 victory. Whereas McCain trounced Bush that year by an 18 percentage-point margin, his edge over Romney this year was 5 points, 37 percent to 32 percent, with 11 percent supporting former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Some analysts say that McCain’s modest primary total should give Republicans pause.
“People tend to talk about McCain as if he has this magical lock on the state, but he didn’t do well among New Hampshire conservatives,” said Dante Scala, political scientist at the University of New Hampshire. Romney performed well in the primary among voters over age 65, according to exit polls, and those state voters tend to be more conservative than younger voters.
Though Obama narrowly lost to Clinton in the New Hampshire Democratic primary held the same day, Cullen conceded that the Democratic nominee enjoys wide appeal in the state.
Obama tried for an early knockout of Clinton after his campaign kickoff win in the Iowa caucuses but fell short, losing the New Hampshire primary by 39 percent to 36 percent.
According to Scala, the tide appears to still be running in the Democrats’ favor. “There doesn’t seem to be any let up of the move towards Democrats in terms of party registration, in terms of party ID. Democrats haven’t lost that momentum they had in ‘06,” he said.
2008 Election Forecast: New Hampshire’s GOP Edge No Longer Written in Granite
Although black voters, a powerful segment of Obama’s national base, make up a minuscule segment of New Hampshire’s population, there are other state demographics that are appealing for Obama. The type of Democrats who live in New Hampshire have characteristics similar to those white Democrats who gave Obama his strongest support throughout the primaries.
“Democrats in the state, by and large, are upper-income, high-education, liberal. What you’d think of as elite Democrats, not blue-collar folks,” said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center.
The presidential race, though, is not the only reason why the Democrats will be trying to drive up New Hampshire turnout this fall. They have made Republican incumbent John E. Sununu one of their top targets in their efforts to expand their Senate majority, while trying to fend off Republican efforts to reclaim one or both of the House seats that changed hands in 2006.
Sununu is being seriously challenged by popular former Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, in a rematch of their close 2002 race. Although the sharp Republican downturn in the state boosted Shaheen to big leads in polls into the summer, Democratic officials approach the race with only cautious optimism — in part because the senator’s name is big in state politics. His father, John H. Sununu, is a former governor who served as chief of staff to the first President Bush.
Democrats, who hardly need additional incentive to try to capture this Senate seat, have some in the form of a controversy that tarnished Sununu’s victory. Republican Party operatives conspired to jam the phones that state Democrats were using to try to get their voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, though no direct link to the Sununu campaign was found.
“This time around, the mood is much more anti-Republican in New Hampshire, so [Sununu’s] going to have an extremely difficult time,” said Smith.
CQ Politics rates the senate race Leans Democratic.
Republicans are planning targeted efforts to take back one or both of the state’s House seats that they lost two years ago, but first face competitive primary contests on Sept. 9. In the eastern 1st District, Republican Jeb Bradley is seeking a rematch in hopes of reclaiming the seat he held for two terms but lost to Democrat Carol Shea-Porter in a big 2006 upset. Best known that year for her strong opposition to the Iraq war, Shea-Porter — a former social worker and educator — rose quickly from political obscurity to claim victory by just less than 3 points.
To get to a second round with Shea-Porter, Bradley must outlast primary opponent John Stephen, a former state Health and Human Services commissioner who lost to Bradley in the 2002 open-seat primary. Stephen has moved to the right of Bradley and argues he better represents the views of residents of the 1st District, which narrowly favored Bush in 2004.
Smith said one of Shea-Porter’s biggest “problems” as she seeks a second term is essentially that “she’s just a Democrat in what’s still a largely Republican district.”
“She is not particularly appealing to blue-collar Democrats, “ Smith said.
But Ray Buckley, state Democratic Party chair, contends that Shea-Porter’s House votes have been in the “mainstream of New Hampshire values.”
CQ Politics rates the November race Leans Democratic.
2008 Election Forecast: New Hampshire’s GOP Edge No Longer Written in Granite
Hodes, the other freshman House Democrat, has a bit more of a comfort level in the state’s western district, if only because it has at least a slight lean towards his party. Kerry clinched his state victory in 2004 with a 5-point edge there, even as he lost the other district to Bush by 3 points.
The Republicans have a crowded primary for their nomination to take on Hodes. The field includes state Sen. Bob Clegg, radio host Jennifer Horn, lawyer and former Green Beret Jim Steiner, and Grant Bosse, former Sununu aide. But Smith said he expects Hodes — who won a 2006 rematch with six-term moderate Republican Rep. Charles Bass by 7 points after losing to him by 20 points two years earlier — to win re-election “without much difficulty.”
CQ Politics rates this 2nd District race Democrat Favored.
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