Sanders emerges as the Democratic frontrunner — but don’t expect the race to end soon
Bernie Sanders won the night, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar cemented their place in the race’s top tier, and Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden were dealt painful defeats.
But regardless of the new pecking order of the Democratic presidential field following Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, one dynamic was abundantly clear: The race isn’t going to be over anytime soon.
“I want us to be honest with ourselves as Democrats. We might be headed for another one of those long primary fights that lasts for months,” Warren warned during her concession speech, after an apparent fourth-place finish. “We’re two states in with 55 states and territories to go.”
Even before the results were tallied, all of the top candidates unveiled plans to compete in upcoming contests in Nevada, South Carolina, and even delegate-rich Super Tuesday states like California, North Carolina and Virginia.
Two candidates did announce their departure from the race Tuesday: Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet and entrepreneur Andrew Yang. But for the race’s leading five contenders, the primary appears to be just getting started.
Here are five takeaways from the New Hampshire primary:
Bernie Sanders, Democratic Frontrunner
If it wasn’t clear after Iowa, it is now: Sanders is the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential primary.
But his New Hampshire victory comes with some important caveats.
The Vermont senator notched a narrow win in the second nominating contest, winning 26 percent of the vote, besting Pete Buttigieg, by less than two percentage points, or roughly 4,500 votes.
New Hampshire marks the second consecutive contest where Sanders has received the most votes, and he now leads some national polls of the primary.
“This victory here is the beginning of the end for Donald Trump,” Sanders told supporters in New Hampshire.
But his relatively small share of the overall vote — the smallest ever for a winner in the modern history of the New Hampshire primary — and Buttigieg’s strength will fuel critics who say Sanders should have performed better in a state where four years ago he won 60 percent of the vote. And it renews questions about Sanders’ ability to expand his coalition of support as he tries to win the Democratic nomination, a challenge that will gain new urgency as additional candidates drop out of the race.
Still, success in Iowa and New Hampshire has propelled previous nominees like Jimmy Carter in 1976 or John Kerry in 2004 to victory. And not only is Sanders expected to perform well in next week’s Nevada caucuses because of his strong support among young Latino and African-American voters, his unparalleled fundraising has allowed him to begin advertising in Super Tuesday states like California and Texas
The democratic socialist’s biggest advantage might be that for whatever anti-Sanders coalition exists among Democratic voters, it is still divided among Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Warren, Biden, and starting next month, Michael Bloomberg. All of those candidates have signaled they plan to stay in the race for the long haul.
Buttigieg and Klobuchar Battle for the Moderate Mantle
The center-left lane of the Democratic primary is getting crowded, thanks to Klobuchar’s late surge in New Hampshire.
The Minnesota senator’s widely praised debate performance last Friday in Manchester appears to have swung a significant number of late-deciding primary voters her way, enough to push her into a surprise third place — and perhaps block Buttigieg from victory. Klobuchar finished roughly four points behind Buttigieg and six points behind Sanders, setting up a contest with the South Bend, Ind., mayor for Democrats seeking Midwestern moderation.
Exit polls show Buttigieg narrowly leading Klobuchar among New Hampshire primary voters who self-identified as “moderate” or “conservative.” Buttigieg and Sanders were tied among “somewhat liberal” voters, with Klobuchar third. But Klobuchar beat out Butigieg and Sanders with a particularly fickle group, college-educated voters.
The question now for Buttigieg and Klobuchar is how quickly they can play catch-up. The two candidates have invested much of their time and resources in Iowa, and to a lesser extent New Hampshire, at the expense of states that vote later in the process. And they have struggled with nonwhite voters, who will play a major role in the next two contests in Nevada and South Carolina.
Biden, who is pushing on with his campaign after poor Iowa and New Hampshire showings, is appealing directly to voters of color in those states. And another moderate, Bloomberg, will begin appearing on the ballot on Super Tuesday.
Buttigieg and Klobuchar are already scrambling to pivot to the next round of elections. Klobuchar is set to launch two TV ads in Nevada Wednesday. Buttigieg is also looking west, with plans for a four-day swing in Nevada and California beginning Thursday.
Speaking in Concord, N.H., Klobuchar thanked the state’s voters for keeping her campaign alive.
“Because of you, we’re taking this campaign to Nevada. We are going to South Carolina and we are taking this message of unity to the country,” she said.
A Bad Night for Warren, A Worse Night for Biden
The writing on the wall for Biden and Warren came well before primary results even began rolling in.
On Tuesday, Warren’s campaign manager released a memo that outlined a long-shot path forward to the nomination that curiously didn’t require her winning states. And Biden decided to pull out of his election night party in Nashua, N.H., to fly to Columbia, S.C., to embark on a rescue mission in his firewall state.
Neither would exit New Hampshire with a single delegate.
It was an unceremonious trouncing for two candidates who had once been front-runners and suddenly find themselves on the ropes. It’s a particularly jarring defeat for Warren, given she’s a senator from a neighboring state who invested so heavily in organizing the first two contests.
Democratic political consultant Simon Rosenberg said it was “hard to see a path forward for her” with a fourth-place finish.
Yet both Warren and Biden are soldiering on, with slightly different roads ahead of them.
Biden is staking everything on South Carolina, where he maintains a double-digit polling advantage powered by his popularity with African-American voters. An immediate test will be whether he can keep that coalition together, after almost every other voting bloc has abandoned him for center-left alternatives. Biden will also campaign in Nevada, the next state to vote on Feb. 22, which could present another tripwire for him given the caucus system that is used.
“Up until now, we haven’t heard from the most committed constituency in the Democratic Party, the African-American community, and the fastest-growing segment of society, the Latino community,” Biden said Tuesday night in South Carolina.
Warren is looking ahead to March 3 Super Tuesday states. She’s scheduled a Thursday evening town hall in Arlington, Virginia. But it’ll be a long three weeks for her to even get there. She’s investing in Nevada to try to crawl into the top three finishers, and her standing in South Carolina looks just as dire as New Hampshire.
“Our campaign was built for the long haul and we are just getting started,” Warren told supporters.
But ultimately rhetoric won’t determine the length of Biden and Warren’s winless campaigns — resources will.
The Nationalization of the Primary
Klobuchar’s impressive come-from-behind third-place finish in New Hampshire is the latest example of the extent the Democratic primary has been nationalized.
Most polls taken just last week had the Minnesota senator dwelling in single digits. She didn’t prioritize New Hampshire, having devoted most of her time over the last month to Iowa. Her campaign organization in the state was considerably smaller than many of her rivals and she spent just $1.6 million on TV ads there.
And yet, everything changed in one fell swoop of a nationally televised debate.
Klobuchar’s punchy prime-time performance on Friday night turned into a true, if rare, game-changing moment. Fundraising soared, Google searches spiked, and volunteers flooded through the doors in the ensuing days.
“Man, we were at the debate in New Hampshire!” she beamed to supporters Tuesday night.
By the end of the night, she had netted around 20 percent of the primary vote. Exit polls showed nearly a quarter of voters who decided who to back in the last few days went for Klobuchar.
Her finish proved that the earliest organization with the most heralded staffers only gets a candidate so far when voters are unsettled, tuning in late and open to persuasion. It also proved that a debate mattered, providing a glimmer of hope to every candidate who qualifies for the next showdown in Las Vegas, just three days before Nevada’s caucuses.
Sigh of relief for Democrats
Democrats left Iowa fretting about unexpectedly low turnout. They leave New Hampshire breathing a sigh of relief.
Democratic turnout surged well past the roughly 250,000 voters who cast ballots in New Hampshire during the 2016 primary, a week after participation in the Iowa caucuses was flat from the previous contest. The absence of a turnout increase in Iowa prompted a round of hand-wringing from Democratic leaders, who are counting on a surge of voters this fall to help defeat President Donald Trump.
They’ll view Tuesday’s results much differently. Voter turnout experts even expect that when all the votes are tabulated, participation will exceed 2008’s record, though they caution that the uncontested GOP primary might have boosted the number of voters in the Democratic primary.
How many Democrats cast their ballots during the rest of the primary will continue to be closely watched. For now, however, the party can stop panicking.
This story was originally published February 11, 2020 at 11:46 PM.
