Jim C. gave me the go-ahead for predicting New Hampshire and hence this post...
New Hampshire lacks the byzantine nature of a caucus, the latter which involves standing awkwardly in groups like human chess pieces moved by promises of donuts and other sweets (if you'd originally stood with a fringe candidate) until at some point late in the night you are recessed.
This makes New Hampshire look like an easier pick such that I could just go with the current poll results. But the famous twist is that New Hampshire wants to stand out from the crowd (the crowd of Iowa) and pick someone new. This is perhaps less of an issue this time because Iowa picked almost everybody.
New Hampshire Democrat voters are generally agnostic on personality or the “would you like to have a beer with them?” test: they voted Sanders, Kerry, Hillary Clinton (twice!). I’m not sure they feel the sentimental tug that would cause them to vote for Joe Biden but we shall see. It’s possible he’ll do better than I expect.
From the outset I suspected Buttigieg would be stronger candidate than people thought since he’s all things to all white people: a liberal, a centrist, an anti-Trump in temperament, someone older white people felt comfortable voting for, someone young people felt comfortable voting for, someone robots felt comfortable voting for, etc...
But ultimately it’s all Sanders all the time in New Hampshire.
Sanders 30%
Buttigieg 24%
Warren 14%
Klob 10%
Biden 10%
UPDATE: Final results were Sanders, Buttigieg, Klob, Warren and then Biden so I needed to flip Warren & Klobuchar for exact order of finish. Percentages were off. I thought Klobuchar was a dead (wo)man walking. In retrospect I should've seen it coming since New Hampshire not very wild-eyed (they didn't vote for Howard Dean or Bernie in the past). So not enough room for hard leftists Bernie and Warren to do well. They got only a combined 35% or so and I had them at a 44%. Wonder if influenced by open voting, where non-Democrats can cross lines and vote.
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