Clinton aides see a path to a New Hampshire win
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Hillary Clinton knows exactly what she needs to do to pull off a surprise victory in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, her advisers say. But it is not clear she has enough time — or enough voters open to hearing her message — to make it happen.
With four days to go until the primary, Clinton advisers, guided by a mix of public and private polling in New Hampshire, think that she is running roughly 15 percentage points behind Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Many of these advisers think that the best outcome, realistically, would be holding Sanders to a single-digit win, which they could then try to attribute to his being from a neighboring state. Of course, that advantage has historically benefited Massachusetts candidates, not Vermonters. But a neighbor is a neighbor, her advisers plan to argue.
Still, Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, having pulled off her upset win in New Hampshire in 2008 and his comeback for a second-place finish in 1992, feel in their bones that anything is possible for the Clintons in this state so long as they work hard enough. Here are the six key factors that, in the Clintons’ view, will determine whether she will win here.
Women
Democratic women provided the margin of victory for Clinton in the 2008 primary here, and many of those voters made up their minds in the final week of campaigning. Some women said they were influenced by widely broadcast video of Clinton choking up on the eve of the primary; others said they were put off by what they saw as Barack Obama’s churlishness in describing Clinton as “likable enough’’ during their New Hampshire debate.
But recent surveys show Clinton and Sanders splitting the female vote — a worrisome sign for her if she hopes to counter Sanders’ strong support among young people and independent voters. On Friday, Clinton made an unabashed appeal to women at a rally here with four female U.S. senators, Gov. Maggie Hassan and Lilly Ledbetter, a leading advocate for equal pay. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan drew huge applause when she applied a slogan of Sanders’ to Clinton.
“When folks talk about a revolution, the revolution is electing the first woman president of the United States,’’ she said. “That’s the revolution.’’
Registered Democrats
If Clinton can win a majority of New Hampshire Democratic voters, history indicates she will win no matter how popular Sanders is with independents. No presidential candidate has ever won the primary without a plurality of his or her own party’s voters.
With that goal in mind, Clinton used the word “Democrat’’ seven times during Thursday’s debate and repeatedly aligned herself with Obama and his policies.
“She was trying to put Bernie on an island,’’ Dante J. Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire, said of attempts to portray him as “a holier-than-thou progressive who would be unable to work with members of the Democratic Party.’’
But polls this week were mixed about which candidate led with Democrats: They were tied in a Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll, while Sanders had an edge in a WBUR/MassInc. poll.
Suburban parents
To attract more of these voters, Clinton has been championing policies like employee profit-sharing and a college aid plan that would allow students to avoid debt. At a campaign rally here Friday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York asserted that Clinton “empathizes with the real struggles of every family in this community,’’ and Hassan repeatedly invoked Clinton’s support for “working families.’’
The polls suggest that Sanders has the edge with likely Democratic primary voters who graduated from college or earn higher incomes. But Clinton advisers believe that her policies — especially on paid family leave, equal pay, and student debt — will appeal to more voters than Sanders’ plans, as long as her campaign has time to present them.
“We’ve got to focus on middle-income, middle-aged, working parents, from about 35 and up,’’ Joel Benenson, Clinton’s chief strategist, said at a breakfast here Friday.
Two key counties
Clinton won Hillsborough and Rockingham counties in 2008 with about 42 percent of the vote. The counties are on the border with Massachusetts and tend to favor candidates from that state; some political experts think that any hometown advantage for Sanders is likely to surface in the western and northern counties that share newspaper and television markets with Vermont. According to one recent poll, Clinton is running roughly even with Sanders in Rockingham County, which includes Portsmouth and Exeter, but trailing him in Hillsborough County, which encompasses the vote-rich cities of Nashua and Manchester.
Message discipline
Clinton advisers think that Clinton has found her political groove by denouncing injustices like shooting massacres across the nation and the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan. She is visiting Flint on Sunday in a campaign trip that is likely to receive heavy media coverage back in New Hampshire. Her passion for the less fortunate is appealing to some in her New Hampshire target audiences, particularly women and parents, according to interviews. And her advisers say she will not be thrown off message by issues that are not her primary concern, such as whether she will release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street banks, corporations, and nonprofit groups.
“I don’t think voters are interested in the transcripts of her speeches — they’re interested in, will she take on the powerful forces of Wall Street?’’ Benenson said.
Time
In the final days before the 1992 New Hampshire primary, Bill Clinton made a strong comeback in the polls after weeks of reports about his extramarital behavior and his Vietnam War draft record. Some advisers believe that if he had had a few more days, he might have won the primary, instead of finishing 8 points behind former Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts. In 2008, Obama had a double-digit lead in New Hampshire after his win in the Iowa caucuses; five days later, Hillary Clinton came back and beat Obama here by almost points. Like her husband’s former aides, some advisers to Clinton believe that if she had more time to make her case in New Hampshire, the better her odds of closing strong and perhaps winning would be.
William Shaheen, a longtime New Hampshire friend and supporter of the Clintons, said no one on the Clinton team was “leaving or giving up’’ the state to Sanders. But is it winnable for her?
“It could be,’’ he said, “but it’s a long, long shot. We know what we need to do, though.’’
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