WhatFinger

What to look for tomorrow...

On eve of the NH primary, Trump and Sanders are way out in front - both 16 points ahead



One day before the nation's first primary, the polls indicate that there are two runaway candidates. Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are enjoying massive 16 point leads over their respective fields. Here are the breakdowns: According to the University of Massachusetts Lowell/7News poll, Sanders is crushing Clinton 56 to 40.
On eve of NH primary, Trump and Sanders way out in front - both 16 points ahead In fact, Sanders' lead is so overwhelming that Hillary's people have started to downplay New Hampshire's importance. As the Boston Globe reports, Hillary is all but conceding defeat in the state that once saved her husband's career.
Team Clinton once saw the Granite State as friendly territory — after all, voters here rescued her husband’s 1992 presidential campaign and injected energy into her 2008 contest. The relationship with the state’s voters seems to have frayed quite a bit since then, with even some top supporters acknowledging that a win Tuesday looks nearly impossible.
Over on the GOP side of things, the CNN "poll of polls" shows that Trump has an identical lead over his nearest competitor.

Trump tops the GOP field with 31%, well ahead of Marco Rubio's 15%. Rubio has picked up four points since the previous New Hampshire Poll of Polls, the biggest change in the averages in the last week. Ted Cruz follows with 13%, John Kasich at 11% and Jeb Bush at 10%. This pack of four -- Rubio, Cruz, Kasich and Bush -- has been jockeying for second place in the state for some time. The fifth candidate often included in the group, Chris Christie, has generally seen his support dwindle, and now stands well behind, dropping two points in this week's Poll of Polls to an average of 5%. Carly Fiorina ties Christie at 5% and Ben Carson rounds out the group with 3%.
There are four main things to keep an eye on tomorrow. First, everyone wonders if Trump's New Hampshire ground game will outperform his effort in Iowa - which he's admitted was substandard. He should be a lock in the granite state, so he has to perform there. A loss, or a nail-biter of a victory, would be an undeniable embarrassment. Second, political watchers are paying close attention to New Hampshire's second and third place finishers. Rubio's Saturday night debate performance was widely considered disastrous and there's some (very shaky) Kasich-sponsored polling out there that shows it may have hurt him. According to FiveThirtyEight, Rubio now has a 58% chance of finishing third or worse. If that happens, it could give the momentum starved Bush and Kasich campaigns a desperately needed shot in the arm. That's bad news for Rubio, who hopes to be the establishment-friendly alternative to Trump and Cruz. Third, the spread will tell us whose campaign lives and dies. If we see a repeat of Iowa - where Trump, Cruz, and Rubio dominated while everyone else was slumming it in the single digits - you can expect a swath of candidates to call it a day. If, on the other hand, everyone ends up bunched together in the middle, NH could end up saving a few people. Finally, will Bernie's supporters turn out in the expected numbers? One of the big mysteries about Bernie is how much of his fanbase will actually show up at the polls. Is he another Ron Paul, with a loud base but few actual voters, or is he the real deal? If his voters fail to turn up, even if he still wins, it would be an indicator that he's in real trouble in less friendly states. On the other hand, if he meets or exceeds expectations, it would put Clinton behind the 8-ball and rattle Dem donors. Obviously no one knows what will happen until the voting starts but most assume Sanders and Trump are cruising toward their predicted wins. If that's the case, the question becomes how big those wins will be and who will be left standing on Wednesday.

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Robert Laurie——

Robert Laurie’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain.com

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