2020 New Hampshire Primary: Final Polling Update

[This poll was updated at 4:15 EST on February 11, 2020 to account for a Change Research poll (C) conducted February 8-9, 2020.]

At just after midnight EST on February 11, 2020, a total of 27 Democratic voters gathered in the small New Hampshire hamlets of Dixville Notch, Hart’s Location and Millsfield to cast the first votes in the 2020 New Hampshire Presidential Primary. Here are the tallies from those early votes (which, while fun to watch, have historically shown little relationship to the way the statewide electorate votes); I jotted them down as they were being broadcast live on MSNBC:

Table 1: 2020 New Hampshire Presidential Primary votes from three towns voting just after midnight

The perhaps-surprising winner in these early returns is United States Senator (“Senator”) from Minnesota Amy Klobuchar, who had a very well-received debate performance in Manchester, New Hampshire on February 7; as the data in Table 2 suggest, she may have some momentum from that performance. Also, the name of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg does not appear on the either the Democratic or Republican New Hampshire Primary ballot; these votes, as well as the only Republican vote cast in Dixville Notch, are write-in votes.[1]

To learn how I calculate candidate WAPA (weighted-adjusted polling average), please see here. I weight polls conducted partially (1.33 or 1.67) or wholly (2.00) after the Iowa Caucuses higher than prior polls.

Here is a photograph of a now-defunct ice cream parlor in scenic Portsmouth, New Hampshire in early September 2005; I was never the owner of this establishment:

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As of 2 a.m. EST on February 11, 2020, here is a breakdown of publicly-available New Hampshire Primary polls:

• 72 since January 1, 2019
• 58 since the 1^st Democratic debate on June 26, 2019
• 36 since the 5^th Democratic debate on November 19, 2019
• 28 since the 7^th Democratic debate on January 14, 2020
• 16 since the Iowa Caucuses on February 3, 2020
  • 15 starting February 4 or later
  • 1 (Monmouth University) on February 3

The final two tracking polls by Emerson College and the University of New Hampshire overlapped in time with each organization’s prior tracking polls, so I only used the most recent ones.

Table 2: Final New Hampshire WAPA for declared 2020 Democratic presidential nomination candidates

Besides Klouchar, the top two finishers in the Iowa Caucuses—Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg—also appear to have momentum going into New Hampshire. The likelihood is that Sanders will win the primary—though not by anywhere close to his 2016 winning margin of 60% to 38% over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—perhaps followed by Buttigieg.

By contrast, former Vice President Joe Biden and, to a lesser extent, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren appear to be fading somewhat. United States of House of Representatives member Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, entrepreneur Andrew Yang and businessman Tom Steyer remain clustered around 2.5-3.7 percentage points, while Colorado Senator Michael Bennet and former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick appear to be non-factors at this point.

We shall see.

Until next time…

[1] President Donald Trump received 15 votes in Hart’s Location and 16 votes in Millsfield, while former Massachusetts Governor William Weld received 4 votes and 1 vote, respectively. Mary Maxwell received 1 vote in Hart’s Location.