A woman with a child casts her ballot for the presidential primary at a school gym in Concord, New Hampshire.
A week ago, it looked like the stars were aligning for Marco Rubio. Now, as New Hampshire holds its pivotal primary, the Republican presidential contender has to hope the sky does not come crashing down on him.
After a surprisingly strong third-place showing in last week’s Iowa caucuses, Rubio came into New Hampshire hoping for a top-tier finish in the state to buttress his argument that he is the candidate around whom the party establishment should rally.
But a debate performance on Saturday night that was widely mocked by Republicans and Democrats, as well as legions on social media, might have changed the equation for the US senator from Florida, although he is still showing strength in polls.
A robust performance in New Hampshire may help defuse the notion that he sustained a critical blow at the debate.
Dante Scala, an analyst on local politics at the University of New Hampshire, said that if Rubio did not do well in the primary, “it isn’t fatal necessarily but it makes the road to the nomination longer and riskier”.
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump is widely expected to win Tuesday’s primary, which is part of the state-by-state process of picking party nominees for the November 8 general election to replace Democratic president Barack Obama.
Primary votes were already counted early yesterday in Dixville Notch, a town of about a dozen people that prides itself on being the first in the state to vote. US senator Bernie Sanders won all four Democratic votes there while in the Republican race Ohio Governor John Kasich beat Trump, 3-2.
Trump spent the final campaign hours insulting his rivals. In an interview with MSNBC, he called Rubio “confused”, Jeb Bush a “loser,” Hillary Clinton “evil” and Ted Cruz “nasty”. He gleefully repeated an audience member’s description of Cruz as a coward at a campaign event because the senator from Texas said he was more hesitant than Trump about supporting torturing the country’s captured enemies.
After Rubio finished far ahead of mainstream rivals Bush, Chris Christie and Kasich in Iowa, he appeared to be best positioned to place second in New Hampshire, perhaps knocking Christie or Kasich out of the race and emerging as the party’s best hope to derail Trump’s insurgent bid.
Rubio’s debate showing, in which he helped further the perception that he is an overly scripted, even robotic, candidate, has been cited by other contenders as proof he is not ready to lead.
“When the lights get that bright, you either shine or you melt,” Christie, the New Jersey governor, said at a campaign event in Hudson, New Hampshire, on Monday. “We can’t afford to have a president who melts.”
Rubio, in an interview with CNN on Monday, dismissed the torrent of criticism that has come his way since the debate and said his potential to be a strong candidate against the Democrats made him a target.
A WMUR-CNN poll released on Monday showed Trump leading in New Hampshire with the support of 31% of those planning to vote in the Republican primary. Rubio was second at 17, followed by Ted Cruz at 14, and Kasich at 10, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points.
Bush, a former Florida governor, and Christie trailed with other candidates in the single digits.
On the Democratic side, Sanders had a strong lead over Clinton, the former secretary of state who narrowly beat him in Iowa.
Clinton has sought to play down expectations about her showing in New Hampshire, suggesting Sanders could do well because he is from neighboring Vermont. But a big loss to Sanders, an underdog candidate who describes himself as a democratic socialist, would be embarrassing for Clinton.
President Barack Obama, who has not yet endorsed a Democratic candidate, expressed surprise at Trump’s and Sander’s leads in polls.
“Early on, often times, voters want to just vent and vote their passions,” he told CBS News in an interview that aired on Tuesday.
Kasich, who has been rising in the polls in New Hampshire, is another candidate seeking to profit from Rubio’s troubles. He has long staked the viability of his campaign on the outcome in New Hampshire.
In an interview with MSNBC yesterday morning, Kasich said his fate was now in the hands of voters. “So I’m really cool with whatever happens here,” he said.
New Hampshire, home to just 1.3 million people, sets the tone for the primaries — and could shake out a crowded Republican field as the arch-conservative Senator Ted Cruz and establishment candidates led by Marco Rubio battle for second place behind the frontrunner Trump.
In the picturesque town of Canterbury, population 2,000-3,000, bitterly cold weather and a thick coat of snow on the ground greeted early rising voters who stopped by the polling station at the town hall before heading off to work.
David Emerson, a wood worker set up outside with a Sanders poster, said he plans to stay all day.
“This is my main thing, to stand out here with the sign,” he said. “He’s the only one that’s worth supporting. Hillary makes it clear it’s the same old, same old. Bernie talks about all the things that need to be done. Hopefully he’s really creating a movement.”
A RealClearPolitics poll average shows Sanders — who has called for nothing short of a “political revolution” — leading 53.3% to 40.5% for Clinton in New Hampshire.
But a week after the Iowa caucuses kicked off the White House nomination race, everything remains in play in New Hampshire due to a high number of registered independents, who can choose to vote in either party, along with up to 30% of voters still undecided in recent days.
“Trump!” laughed Karen Carone, a care giver from the small town of Loudon, when asked who she voted for. “I believe he will make America great again.”
“He seems to be speaking for the silent majority,” agreed Chris Skora, an auto mechanic from Loudon, after casting his vote for the real estate magnate. “A lot of us feel that way and it seems like this day and age we can’t say these things with the PC police all around.”
The New York billionaire has energised broad swaths of blue-collar Americans, angry about economic difficulties and frustrated at what they see as their country losing its stature in the world.
But Trump needs to turn his soaring lead in the polls into a convincing win in New Hampshire if he is to recover from the embarrassment of finishing second behind Cruz in Iowa.
Trump told MSNBC as voting began he had been urging the supporters packing his rallies in the state to get out and cast ballots.
“Look, you know, I like to win,” Trump said. “I mean, that’s what I do, I win. I didn’t go in it to lose.”
“That’s why I told them last night, no matter how you’re feeling you have to go out and vote.”
The rest of the Republican pack has been fighting it out, aiming for a strong second or even solid third-place showing that could reinvigorate them for South Carolina and Nevada, the next stops on the long road to becoming the party’s nominee.
On the Democratic front, Clinton is looking to confound polls that predict a large victory for her insurgent challenger Sanders — a transplanted New Yorker who represents neighboring Vermont as a US senator and is big on erasing economic inequality and depicts himself as a democratic socialist.
Clinton and her daughter Chelsea greeted cheering, chanting and sign-waving campaign volunteers Tuesday morning at a school in Manchester.
Asked if she thought she would win, Clinton said: “You know, I just love the way New Hampshire does this. I like the way the people of New Hampshire take it so seriously. They focus in on the issues and they keep coming back.”
Clinton won Iowa by a hair, and remains the overall favorite to win the Democratic nomination, but Sanders is keen to show that his campaign can give the former secretary of state a run for her money deep into election season.
