‘Tactical Voters’ Went to Romney in New Hampshire

[Geee]

National Review:


Michael Barone
To win just under 40 percent of the vote in a primary with five active candidates is pretty impressive, even for a candidate like Mitt Romney, who started off with significant advantages in New Hampshire.

Yes, he is well known there because he was governor of next-door Massachusetts, had run before, and owns a house on Lake Winnipesaukee. But the exit poll indicates Romney held his own among independents, tea-party supporters, and late deciders.

He didn’t lose ground in the heat of the campaign, despite his ragged performance in Sunday’s debate (he was obviously not candid about why he didn’t run for reelection as governor) and his Monday statement, instantly regretted, if I read the videotape right, that “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”
Romney easily exceeded the 25 percent ceiling that many critics perceived, and he’s running at least a bit above that in the few post–New Year polls in the next primary states, South Carolina and Florida.

Reporters covering New Hampshire had a hard time getting a feel for why people supported Romney. Polling indicated that Romney voters were more firm in their support than backers of other candidates. But while Romney had no trouble filling the venues of his relatively few late campaign events (held at times and in places inconvenient for hostile media and hecklers), you didn’t encounter many Romney fans in the crowds at other candidates’ events.

What you did encounter were many voters who said that they were undecided and, in the last week, many who said they had narrowed their choice down to Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum — two candidates with significant differences on foreign policy and a different emphasis on cultural issues.

My sense is that these were tactical voters, waiting to see which candidate had momentum and gauging their mettle at campaign appearances. In relatively secular New Hampshire, they clearly broke more for Huntsman, who lived in the state and held more campaign events than anyone else, than for Santorum, who delighted in taking hostile questions on issues like same-sex marriage, or Newt Gingrich, who alternated between events on issues like brain science and attacks on Romney’s business career.

The exit poll makes it clear that Romney has connected with many self-described conservative and tea-party Republicans. His standard speech includes encomiums to the Founding Fathers and quotations from the Declaration of Independence.