My Less Than Humble Opinion

Three’s a Crowd

There are 3 Democratic Presidential Debates in February 2020:

1. February 7th at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire;
2. February 19th in Las Vegas, Nevada; and
3. February 25th in Charleston, South Carolina.

It’s a good thing that February has 29 days in election years. ^[1]  This plethora of debates is not surprising when you realize that:

• The New Hampshire Primaries are scheduled for February 11th;
• The Nevada Caucuses are scheduled for February 22nd;
• The South Carolina Primaries are scheduled for February 29th; and,
• March 3rd is “Super Tuesday”.

John Delaney dropped out of the Democratic Presidential Race on January 31, 2020 leaving 11 active major candidates.

Seven of them met the eligibility requirements for the February 7th debate … the same seven who participated in the December debate.

For this debate, I tried a more “scientific” approach for evaluating the candidates’ performances. Previously, my evaluation was based on my overall impression of each candidate. This time, I did my best to keep a running tally of pluses and minuses throughout.^[2]  The results surprised me.^[3] 

1. Elizabeth Warren ^[4]  
2. Amy Klobuchar ^[5] 
3. Bernie Sanders
4. Tom Steyer
5. Joe Biden
6. Pete Buttigieg
7. Andrew Yang

The last poll that I saw was one conducted in New Hampshire on February 7th and 8th. News reports of that poll  listed only the top 5 candidates. In an earlier poll, Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang were preferred by 4% each. The pollsters used a Margin of error of 4.4 yielding this ranking:

1. Bernie Sanders
2. Pete Buttigieg
3. Amy Klobuchar
4. Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren virtually tied
5. Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang virtually tied.
    

The “Republicans”

Yes, it’s still plural. Joe Walsh ended his primary run against the President on February 7, 2020 leaving the President and Bill Weld.

The President was in New Hampshire fulfilling what he considers to be a major duty of the Chief Executive … holding self-aggrandizing political rallies. Bill Weld was a guest on many of the TV News and Opinion programs.
 

New Hampshire’s Idea of Early Voting

Some states allow early voting. Because its primaries have been the “first in the nation” for a number years, New Hampshire has a unique form of “early voting”. Three tiny voting districts open their polls at Midnight on election day and all of their voters show up to be the “first in the nation” voters. Here are the results of the voting of the first 65 primary voters in the 2020 Presidential Race.

 

1 Hour and 45 Minutes

In 1 hour and 45 minutes, the New Hampshire Primaries will close. These are the “only polls that matter” … for now. Unless they screw up like Iowa did, I’ll have more to report soon.
 

 A Night at the Primaries

By 9 PM on the night of the New Hampshire Primaries:

• Michael Bennet and Andrew Yang have dropped out of the Democratic Presidential Race.
   
• Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar are running first, second, and third in the reported votes.
   
• Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden seem unlikely to gain enough votes to win any of the state’s delegates.^[6]
   

And, the Winners Are …

The projected ^[7] results of the New Hampshire Democratic Primary are:

1. Bernie Sanders won 25.8% of the votes and 9 delegates.
2. Pete Buttigieg won 24.5 % of the votes and 9 delegates.
3. Amy Klobuchar won 19% of the votes and 6 delegates.

None of the remaining candidates reached the 15% minimum that New Hampshire requires for a candidate to earn delegates. Their shares of the votes were: Elizabeth Warren (9.3%), Joe Biden (8.4%), Tom Steyer (3.6%), Tulsi Gabbard (3.3%), Andrew Yang (2.8%), Deval Patrick (0.4%), and Michael Bennet (0.3%). By Wednesday, February 12th, Deval Patrick had dropped out as well. 

Not surprisingly, Donald Trump won 85.8% in the Republican Primary, but Bill Weld took 9.1% of the vote. Apparently, 13,207 of New Hampshire’s Republicans haven’t heard that the President has a 94% approval rate within the party.

That’s it for New Hampshire.

On to Nevada.

 
 

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End Notes

1. Presidential election years will aligned with Leap Years until 2100 C.E. Because an astronomical year is a bit less than 365.25 days, calendar schemes require special rules to avoid getting out of synchronization with Earth’s seasons over several centuries. The Gregorian Calendar has an average year of 365.2425 days … 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, 3.36 seconds. The calendar’s “Leap Year Algorithm” is:
    
           if (year is not divisible by 4) then (it is a common year)
           else if (year is not divisible by 100) then (it is a leap year)
           else if (year is not divisible by 400) then (it is a common year)
           else (it is a leap year)
    
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2. One candidate carried a score of -2 through part of the debate. Fortunately for that candidate, it was a long debate,
    
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3. The candidate who accumulated the highest score was not the one who I thought had performed best overall.
    
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4. This time that Senator Warren avoided “losing her cool” like she did when she got into a spat with Bernie Sanders during the January 14th debate.
    
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5. Amy is the one who I expected would win my one person poll. I was surprised by her placing second in the tally.
    
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6. According to the rules of the New Hampshire Democratic Party rules, a candidate must earn 15% of the votes in either of the congressional districts or in the state as a whole. Warren and Biden have only 9% each.
    
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7. Remember the 2000 Presidential election. 🙄  Since then, the electronic media have been reluctant to actually call any election. Instead, they project.
    
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