New Hampshire: hundreds of thousands of Democrats to vote in key primary

Hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters are expected to cast their ballots in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday for the presidential candidate they would like to see take on Donald Trump in November’s election.

The primary comes just over a week after the Iowa Democratic caucuses, which ended in chaos over the reporting of the results, and where no clear single victor has been officially declared.

After more than a year of campaigning, hundreds of events and millions of dollars spent, recent polling has shown the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders with a high single-digit lead over the rest of the field, with the former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg only a few points behind.

Meanwhile, after her strong performance at a televised debate on Friday, two polls have found the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar surging to third place. Klobuchar’s ascent in recent Emerson and Suffolk polls shows that the primary contest is still taking shape.

More than a dozen candidates are competing in the Democratic contest, and turnout is expected to be slightly higher than in 2016. The New Hampshire secretary of state, Bill Gardner, predicted about 292,000 Democrats would come out to vote, compared with about 287,000 Democrats four years ago.

Gardner also predicted about 128,000 Republicans would participate in their party’s primary on Tuesday, down from 2016, when there was a heated presidential primary contest. Trump does not face any serious opposition in New Hampshire’s Republican primary.

Most polls close at 7pm ET, though some will stay open as late as 8pm, and results are expected soon after that.

For days Democratic strategists have viewed Sanders as the heavy favorite to win New Hampshire. He won the state in 2016, beating Hillary Clinton.

But it is unclear how the rest of the field will do. Recent polling has shown the former vice-president Joe Biden, who has long been seen as the frontrunner in the race, falling behind the other top tier presidential candidates. While campaigning around the state, he has said he is unlikely to win the primary.

Eric Goldman, a veteran Democratic strategist, said the real test in the 2020 Democratic primary contest would come in a few weeks, with the Nevada caucuses on 22 February and the South Carolina primary on the 29th.

Biden is betting that South Carolina’s largely African American electorate will help him win the state. The former vice-president polls ahead of Sanders and Buttigieg among minority voters.

“The big question mark that is outstanding and will be outstanding for the next couple of weeks is how any of these candidates do when black people show up to vote,” Goldman said. “The last two nominees on the Democratic side were determined in great part by how African Americans voted and I think that that is still the remaining question here.”

The New Hampshire Democratic primary is also a make-or-break moment for Senator Elizabeth Warren, said Scott Ferson, a Massachusetts-based Democratic strategist. Recent polling has shown Warren lagging behind Buttigieg, Sanders, and Klobuchar in the final days before Democrats vote here.

“If Biden comes in fourth or fifth, he goes into Nevada and South Carolina hobbled. He could recover; he’s a national candidate. But somebody like Elizabeth Warren could not,” Ferson said. “She’s already pulled her ads out of Nevada and South Carolina [to conserve funds]. That’s a real problem for her.”

On Monday all of the candidates stressed the importance of doing well in Tuesday’s primary to supporters. The entrepreneur Andrew Yang said New Hampshire was his “best state” to have a come-from-behind victory. Buttigieg has argued throughout his campaign stops that a strong showing in the state would cement his frontrunner status in the primary field.

Klobuchar, on Monday, pointed to how her campaign has been exceeding expectations.

“A lot of people did not think that I was going to make it through the summer or make to the debate stage,” Klobuchar said during an appearance in Nashua. “But I more than made it to the debate stage. Since that debate, our campaign has been surging.”

There are also some lesser-known names on the ballot who have spent months campaigning, including the Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and Colorado senator Michael Bennett.