Yup, Romney won "big" in New Hampshire yesterday, despite the fact that almost 60% of registered Republicans didn't vote for him. In fact, almost 87% of all registered voters in New Hampshire didn't vote for Romney, and about 92% of them didn't vote for Ron Paul. I won't get into Rick Perry's numbers…
In fact, Romney received about 96,000 votes, and Paul got roughly 55,000.
I am very definitely NOT saying the New Hampshire primary results are somehow invalid or without meaning simply because of the small numbers…. New Hampshire is a small state, not densely populated, there are more people living in Philadelphia than in New Hampshire…
The Star Tribune gives some Granite State political stats
I am VERY definitely saying that only FOUR HUNDREDTHS OF ONE PERCENT of the voting age population of the United States cast their ballots for Mitt Romney yesterday. The New Hampshire primary results are a very small slice of the action, based on the politics and beliefs and desires and energy of the kind of folks who live in New Hampshire, and those folks are very definitely not a typical slice of America.
The cable news talking heads very definitely should be reporting the results of the primary in the Granite State… but projecting those results for national handicapping of the candidates or to rank/categorize the candidates—as in "Romney is the front runner"—is unverifiable, foolish and deceptive.
The Iowa caucuses were a very small, unrepresentative sample of the voting intentions of Americans. The New Hampshire primary was a very small, unrepresentative sample of the voting intentions of Americans. The results are real information. But they are not useful as predictions of the ultimate GOP nominee. Let's just let the primary sequence play out and see who we end up with. We don't have to know the ultimate winner right now.
A couple of my previous posts on:
Iowa caucuses: a very few have spoken
Ames Straw Poll: this ain't democracy
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