Civil Society

The point raised in the following article is the major "take-home" from the New Hampshire primary. Missed by the pundits on TV, I believe.

January 9, 2008, 4:02 pm
A 60,000-Vote Differential
By Ron Klain

Some observers, including David Brooks , have looked at the New Hampshire primary results and concluded that “roughly equal” numbers of votes were recorded in the Republican and Democratic primaries. But I see a huge difference in the numbers — differences of historical significance, in fact.
The four Democratic candidates last night drew about 270,000 votes between them, while the larger G.O.P. field drew about 210,000, or about 60,000 more votes for the Democrats than the Republicans. Maybe this sounds like a small difference to some, but given that fewer than 700,000 New Hampshirites voted in the last general election for president, a 60,000-vote differential in that small state is quite significant.
And even this relative measure fails to capture what a historic night it was for Democrats in New Hampshire.
In the three decades since 1980, there have been four primary years when both the G.O.P. and the Democratic nominations were contested – 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008. In all three of the previous elections, there were more votes cast in the Republican primaries than in the Democratic primaries. The G.O.P. margin was almost 40,000 votes in 1988 and almost 80,000 votes in 2000. So to see more votes cast in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary last night than in the state’s Republican one — not to mention 60,000 more votes — is almost as historic as seeing a one-two finish by a woman and an African-American.
Why does it matter? Who cares about the relative strength of the two parties in one of our nation’s smallest states?
Though historically New Hampshire had been a very Republican state (George Bush beat Mike Dukakis there in 1988 by almost 30 percent), in recent years, it has become something of a battleground. It’s one of only four states in the country (New Mexico, Wisconsin and Iowa are the others) where an outcome was determined by less than 2 percent of the vote in both 2000 and 2004. John Kerry won the state by just 9,000 votes in 2004; and President Bush won it by only 7,000 votes in 2000.
Given these sorts of numbers, having 60,000 more voters participate in the Democratic primaries than in the G.O.P. primaries is a very strong sign for the Democrats.
And history matters here in one other respect. Thinking back to the 2000 election, most folks remember the deadlock in Florida and Al Gore’s failure to carry Tennessee, when recalling how President Bush won the presidency. But most of us who worked on Mr. Gore’s campaign have been equally haunted by the narrow, narrow loss of New Hampshire in the general election; in retrospect, we wish we had sent Vice President Gore to New Hampshire in the final week of the campaign, given that we lost it by so few votes. Tiny New Hampshire’s electoral votes could have given Al Gore the presidency in 2000 even without Florida.
Of course, the 60,000-vote spread last night is no guarantee that the Democrats will carry New Hampshire in the fall. Primary vote totals are a shaky indicator of fall vote totals. And, as I pointed out in a previous post, the two primaries — even held in the same state, on the same day — are largely separate elections, and reading them in parallel is a dangerous endeavor. Perhaps most important, we can’t know what will happen in November if one or both parties does not nominate a candidate that swing voters prefer.
Still, as signs go, it is an encouraging one for Democrats. And if there was a surprise in last night’s totals, it wasn’t that the Republican and Democratic participation levels were similar, but that – for the first time ever in a simultaneously contested New Hampshire primary – the Democrats had so many more voters.