Today, Explained - Old Hampshire vs. New Hampshire

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

House parties are key to picking a president in New Hampshire, but they’re quickly being replaced by impersonal rallies. New Hampshire Public Radio reporter Lauren Chooljian attends both to determine what’s being lost. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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2020 Explained. It's Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 And you know what that means, right? It's primary time It's New Hampshire time And when New Hampshire's trying to figure out who should be president New Hampshire throws house parties And because no one likes to go to a house party alone I'm going with Lauren Chulgin

From New Hampshire Public Radio Get pumped. If you wanted to get in the middle of the mythology of this New Hampshire First in the Nation primary, a house party is the best place to start. Cool. Basically, a house party is just a person having some people over to their house, and one of them just so happens to be a presidential candidate. But this is the thing that makes New Hampshire so special, or at least the people who defend it and why we should be first say it's so special, because this is an opportunity where voters in New Hampshire can get

that one-on-one experience with a presidential candidate. And some would argue that these house parties are not just good for the voters because they get a real sense of this candidate, but it's also good for the candidates because the candidates end up shaping their policy positions based on the conversations that they have with these voters. So they're like high stakes, small gatherings with lots of wine and tea and snacks. No beer. Well, I mean, I guess there would be beer. I just know, you know, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg like an IPA here and there. Hold on a sec. I'm going to get me a beer. So why is this House Party tradition so important? Well, it's important because it signals this classic quintessential style of New Hampshire primary politics. politics but we're in this weird moment in in national politics where the primary calendar the

way we elect presidents may be coming a little bit more nationalized and whether that's because of the internet social media the way we consume news or because the way the dnc is running these debates by setting these high thresholds for people to get on the stage that has people in new hampshire kind of in a tense moment where some of them feel like they've got to defend these old-fashioned styles and, you know, try and ward off the power of a more nationalized primary system. Okay, and you got invited to one of these parties? Oh, you better believe I did. And not only did we get invited, but we got invited through an amazing voicemail.

Good morning. This is Representative Marjorie Smith calling. Where a longtime state rep from New Hampshire, Marjorie Smith, told us. I thought you might be interested in an invitation to what might very well be one of the last old-fashioned New Hampshire primary chats and to see how at least it used to be done and what the value is in it. And she wanted to commiserate with us about what she sees as the death of the New Hampshire primary.

So obviously I had to go to that, Sean. All right, well, take us there. What was it like? How was the wine? Well, I didn't get to drink the wine. I was working. Consummate professional. Hi, Lauren.

I'm Margie Smith. Great to meet you. Jason, good to see you again. Hi, working. Consummate professional. Hi, Lauren. I'm Margie Smith. Great to meet you. Jason, good to see you again. Hi, Jason. Come on in. Thanks for having us. My pleasure. Very excited about the invite.

Basically, it's about 40 people showing up to meet Senator Michael Bennett from Colorado. This is a guy who is all in on New Hampshire, who is trying to use this old-fashioned style of campaigning to boost his low name ID. Extremely grateful to have the chance, Marjorie, to be here with all of you and in this beautiful place. What an incredible house and what an amazing setting. It was very interesting. It was exactly what was promised. You know, Senator Bennett stood in this huge room in Marjorie's house with a piano and all this art, and everyone sat on her couches and chairs,

asked him questions, and he answered every single one of them. So in a sense, this was what was promised. People in New Hampshire have a big responsibility. And people in New Hampshire are confused about what to do with that responsibility. So how are you going to win New Hampshire? By unconfusing you. I'm going to spend a lot of time here. And the way I'm going to win it is by being in living room

after living room after living room after living room, answering every question that Margie will let me answer and cutting me off when I've gone on too long. And so people in New Hampshire are, you know, pretty clued in to this idea that they still occupy this special role as like first in the nation voters. And so even if it's just 40 people, those 40 people that showed up, they know that their role is important and they're taking it What you saw tonight was unstaged, unprogrammed, no planted questions. A group of thoughtful, concerned New Hampshire voters who asked questions and listened, and they gained energy, and so did he. But the thing is, is that the House Party is running up against not just the debates, but also rallies. Candidates like Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016,

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary, and they were mostly able to do so because they held these big rallies. That's not the style of politics that usually happens around here. And the thing is, those rallies are also effective. And the people who love them would argue to you that they can be just as intimate and just as filled with community as a House party can. And have you been to a rally for some comparison? I actually went to a rally right up the street from Representative Marjorie Smith's house. How was it? It was like 700 people.

This is kind of, Senator Warren, she does a lot of these. Hi. Hi. Um, why did you decide to... Oh, oh, wait, tell me your name. Oh, I'm Natalie. Hi, Natalie. Hi.

Natalie, would you be insulted if I asked how old you are? No, I'm 10. Whoa! All right, Natalie, 10 and ready to do a little democracy. Okay, my kind of gal. Okay, Natalie. Why did you decide to run for, to become a president? I was brought around by two other state lawmakers,

State Representative Gabby Grossman and State Representative Deborah Altshiller. And basically, they wanted to prove to me that the New Hampshire style is alive and well, that you can still see that intimacy, that community that can be built in a house party in a rally situation. Between the two of us, we would know like two-thirds of the people that are in line because this is our home. I'm going to run into half of these people at Market Basket after this, actually, you know, and then we're going to pick up our dry cleaning next to each other and be like, oh, I just saw you at the thing. This is their community. It's still very New Hampshire. It's just in a bigger room.

Thank you, everyone, for coming. And the photo line for your selfies will start right over here. And folks with kids, you know, picking up this issue on the campaign trail? Or will you consider changing your position on this? And for them, that shows that the intimacy of the New Hampshire primary is still very possible. I mean, it's electric. It's electric. We are that concentrated, boiled down cider that's about to turn into syrup, you know, like an apple cider syrup to put on ice cream. Like that's what is happening in this room right here. So you think this restitution of the House party and getting that FaceTime with a candidate

and maybe changing his or her mind on something isn't being lost in this new media-driven, rally, selfie-centric tradition? I think that the primary is in a really interesting moment right now. I talked to a guy who was like, well, you know what they say, Iowa picks corn, New Hampshire picks present. It's like, that's the joke over here. Obviously, everyone was looking at us anyway. But now it feels like the pressure is on for us to perform because we might be the first place that delivers official results. And that could make us more powerful, provide more momentum to candidates and be even more interesting or impactful than we could have been otherwise. So, I mean, it really puts the heat on us for sure.

Lauren Chulgin is a reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. She's also one of the hosts of its Stranglehold podcast. That might sound like a true crime show to you, but it's all about New Hampshire's first in the nation presidential primary. Maybe you can binge the whole thing today while you wait for results. After the break,

I'll talk to Vox's Ellen Nilsson about the foot race in New Hampshire. I'm Sean Ramos for them. It the break, I'll talk to Vox's Ellen Nilsson about the foot race in New Hampshire. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained. 2020, 2020. Senator Sanders, I still can't believe all this mess happened in Iowa because of an app. Hey, I have an idea for an app. It's called No Apps. No apps, no computers, no gadgets, no gizmos.

You show up to your polling place, take a number like you do with the butcher, you walk up to the counter and say to the guy, give me a pound of whatever's about to go bad. Ellen Olson, Politics Vox. You've been hanging out in New Hampshire since the clock struck 2020. The first thing everyone wants to know is, will New Hampshire go better than Iowa? I think it's going to go way better than Iowa. It's a completely different system than Iowa. Iowa has caucuses. New Hampshire has a primary. And the difference between that is, you know, Iowa has literal in-person voting where you

have to go to a school gym or, you know, a church basement or a union hall to literally sort yourself into a group depending on which candidate you support. And then you're counted that way. There's realignment. There was this very confusing process this year where Iowa, in addition to doing state delegate equivalents, was also doing raw vote totals. So there were like literally three different sets of numbers

that people could spin to their advantage in determining who won and who lost. So in New Hampshire, there is none of that. In New Hampshire, voters are going to go into the polls with their ballot. They're going to have pencils to fill out their preference on that ballot. That paper ballot will then be dropped into either a box in some of the smaller towns and literally be counted out by election officials there, or it will be scanned via an electronic machine. You know, elections officials that I've talked to here, I think estimate after

polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, we should start knowing results probably around 8.30 or 9 results will start coming in. It's tough to say how long that will take, but I think that it's going to be a lot different than Iowa. For all those who stopped paying attention to Iowa, like, you know, days after the actual caucuses, what was the official result there? Do we have official results? Yeah, the official results came in on Sunday night as everybody was watching the Oscars. So, you know. Perfect timing. A couple of years ago, there was a big everybody was watching the Oscars. So, you know, perfect timing. A couple of years ago, there was a big disaster here at the Oscars where they accidentally read out the wrong name and it was nobody's fault, but they have guaranteed that this will not happen

this year because the Academy has switched to the new Iowa caucus app. A week after the actual contest took place, the Iowa Democratic Party determined that Pete Buttigieg had sort of eked out this win as far as delegates were concerned from Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders also declared victory based on the raw vote counts because he did win the popular vote, both on the first and second realignments. So, I mean, Buttigieg and Sanders both came out, I think, the strongest from Iowa into New Hampshire. But also it had this weird effect where it let people who very clearly did not do well in Iowa skate into New Hampshire as well and start gaining some momentum. Who's gaining momentum in New Hampshire?

I think that Amy Klobuchar is the biggest benefactor here. I mean, she had put everything on Iowa. I mean, she had gone to like all 99 counties or something. And, you know, she was banking on doing very well there. Experts in New Hampshire told me that she needed to do very well there. And, you know, she was banking on doing very well there. Experts in New Hampshire told me that she needed to do very well there. And she came in fifth place. So she did not really overperform. But because we didn't know the results until a full week later, she was kind of just able to go to New Hampshire and start campaigning as if nothing had really happened

there. And it's been really interesting. I mean, she has been generating some of her largest crowds this weekend, and her campaign has been posting some of its strongest fundraising days to date. So she's doing pretty well here. Hmm. Tell me more about there. I mean, we spent the first half of the show talking about this shift from house parties to rallies in New Hampshire, but what do people need to know about the state to better understand tonight's results? So New Hampshire is a small New England state.

It's home to about 1.3 million people, the vast majority of which are white, although there is, interestingly enough, a growing refugee population here as well. So, I mean, New Hampshire has had this distinction of being first since the 1950s. But the general ethos and storyline around New Hampshire and why it goes first is that New Hampshire voters are very discerning. They certainly are very politically engaged. I mean, we have like a bonkers large state legislature here with like over 400 people in it.

So it's basically like a citizen legislature if you look at the size of our population. There's town meeting every year that a lot of people go to and, you know, in every town across the state. So basically the thought is that presidential candidates come here in addition to coming to Iowa for a year out before the primary. So we get all this time with them that other states, larger, more populous and more diverse states typically don't get. And so the idea is like this makes better presidential candidates. And also when it comes time for Election Day, New Hampshire kind of serves to winnow the field down to the most serious candidates. And do you get the sense that there's lots of undecided voters at this point, or does everyone kind of got their favorite picked out? Oh, yeah, there's still a lot of undecided voters.

People have told me that they are probably going to make their decision up in the voting booth the day of. Nice. I talked to somebody Sunday at a Pete Buttigieg rally who was still torn between Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg. And I would have to say that that is like a very common duo that people are considering. Like more moderate voters, I would say, are really stuck between those two. And the other thing that is kind of interesting is because Iowa was such a mess, I think a lot of voters here are feeling like,

oh my God, this responsibility is like really falling on us. People know that this will have bearing on the rest of the race, and they are already thinking ahead to that general election matchup with Trump and sort of trying to game out like who is going to be the best person to go up against him and defeat him. And despite people being caught between Pete and Amy, the man to beat is Bernie, right? He handily won the primary against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Yeah, I mean, the latest polling that we have, he's like about six points ahead of the nearest candidate behind him, which is Buttigieg. Everybody knows

that Bernie's base is like 20 to 25 percent, maybe 30 percent of the electorate here in New Hampshire. If you kind of look at like who voted for him last time and how much of that support he can hold on to, because I think right now there is a real battle for like who the moderate candidate will be in a way that he has just kind of like swept the progressive lane and is now the front runner in that lane. And are people in New Hampshire worried at all that if they pick Bernie, they're picking a candidate that may not be able to beat Donald Trump because his views are too far to the left of the American mainstream? That was something that certainly came up at the last debate on Friday night. Is anyone else on the stage concerned

about having a Democratic Socialist at the top of the Democratic ticket? I'm not. Senator Klobuchar? Bernie and I work together all the time, but I think we are not going to be able to out-divide the divider-in-chief. And I think we need someone to head up this ticket

that actually brings people with her instead of shutting them out. Yeah, I think that's something that some people are worried about. And I mean, if you look beyond New Hampshire, like as far as arguments about electability goes, I mean, besides Joe Biden, who is still leading among African-American voters in South Carolina, like Bernie Sanders is closing that gap among black voters and he has strong support among Latino voters. So like, sure, you know, maybe among white moderate voters, he is, you could make that argument that he's not as electable. But if you kind of look at the country as a whole and look at the demographics of people that are supporting him, it could be a little tougher to make that case. So yeah, if Bernie does well in New Hampshire,

I think that it's kind of going to be maybe this like awakening moment for some people that didn't think he could get this far to say like, oh no, there's actually something going on here with him. Well, will you be available to talk to us tomorrow about it when we get the results? How late are you guys going to be up? As late as we need to be, Ella. Will you be available to talk to us tomorrow about it when we get the results? How late?

Are you guys going to be up? As late as we need to be, Ella. Will you be up too? I will definitely be up, yes. Well, let's chit-chat, make a podcast. What do you say? That sounds good to me. Thank you.