New Hampshire politics is well covered by Prof. Dante Scala, who teaches at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Here he analyzes how Obama could hope to win the state. He writes:
The Second District, most of which lies far beyond the state's media-heavy southern tier, is crucial to an insurgent candidate's potential to upset a frontrunner in the Granite State.
When everything was crashing down around Howard Dean in January 2004, the western counties of the Second District (Cheshire, which includes the city of Keene; Sullivan; and Grafton, home of Dartmouth College) held firm for him.
One might argue that Dean enjoyed the "boy next door" advantage, given that he governed the neighboring state of Vermont. But former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley nearly pulled off an upset of Al Gore in 2000, thanks to his big victories in areas such as Hanover and the prosperous towns of Cheshire and western Hillsborough counties.
Indeed, one can go back 35 years to find that exactly the same areas gave George McGovern a big push against Ed Muskie in 1972. In that primary, McGovern carried Hanover and adjacent towns with 77 percent of the vote.
In short, lots and lots of Democrats in NH 02 dig the Change Candidate. If Obama has made his case that he is It, then he'll carry the areas mentioned above by decisive margins. And if Hillary Clinton has neutralized Obama's claim, then she will hold her own on the Vermont border (and very likely carry the whole state).
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