Quote:
Originally posted by Timber Loftis:
NH may not "elect" anybody, but it has an uncanny history of being accurate on the primary. If NH selects you as the primary winner, you can pretty well bank on it. 
|
Why do people seem to think that NH has some sort of magical ability to figure out who the canidate for a party is going to be.
If you look at the last 3 elections, this has been less then true. McCain (R 2000), Buchanan (R 1996) and Tsongas (D 1992) all failed.
There is also the case of Estes Kefauver in 1952 who with 55.0% of the NH primary vote managed to lose the party nomination to Adlai Ewing Stevenson who had 40 votes (out of almost 36 thousand), and in 1956 with 86.4% lost to Stevenson again (who had about 1/7th the votes that Kefauver had).
Infact if you look at all the primaries after 1950 where no single canidate got 60% of the vote (meaning there were atleast two real choices):
52 D - Estes Kefauver 55.0% [Lost to Adlai Ewing Stevenson]
52 R - Dwight D. Eisenhower 50.4%
64 R - Henry Cabot Lodge 35.5% [Lost to Barry M. Goldwater]
68 D - Lyndon Baines Johnson 49.6% [Lost to Hubert H. Humphrey]
72 D - Edmund S. Muskie 46.4% [Lost to George McGovern]
76 D - Jimmy Carter 28.4%
76 R - Gerald R. Ford 49.4%
80 D - Jimmy Carter 47.1%
80 R - Ronald Reagan 49.6%
84 D - Gary Hart 37.3% [Lost to Walter F. Mondale]
88 D - Michael Dukakis 36.4%
88 R - George Bush 37.8%
92 D - Paul E. Tsongas 33.2% [Lost to William J. Clinton]
92 R - George Bush 52.2%
96 R - Patrick J. Buchanan (with 56K votes vs Doles 54K) [Lost to Bob Dole]
00 D - Gore (76K vs Bradley 70K)
00 R - McCain (115K vs Bush 72.3K) [Lost to George W Bush]
You see that in 17 close elections NH got 9 right, just over a 50% success rate. Not exactly what I would call "uncanny".
If anyone is interested
These were the elections that I ignored with my 60% cutoff:
56 D - Estes Kefauver 86.4% [Lost to Adlai Ewing Stevenson]
56 R - Dwight D. Eisenhower 99%
60 D - John F. Kennedy 85%
60 R - Richard M. Nixon 89%
64 D - Lyndon Baines Johnson 95%
68 R - Richard M. Nixon 77.6%
72 R - Richard M. Nixon 67.6%
84 R - Ronald Reagan 86.1%
96 D - "Bill" Clinton [large majority]
Which gives 17/26 ~65%, still less then two-thirds of the time. However, with the exception of Kefauver, these were cases where you didn't need the primary to see who would win.
[ 12-14-2003, 10:52 AM: Message edited by: Seraph ]