Voters in New Hampshire went against establishment thinking of both the Republican and the Democratic parties, handing down landslide wins to self-styled Socialist Bernie Sanders and billionaire Donald Trump in presidential primaries in the Granite state.
Victory by a huge margin for veteran Senator from Vermont means the possibility of stiff competitions for Hillary Clinton in the states of Nevada and South Carolina, and possibly extending into an arduous race for Democratic nomination. Trump’s first victory will help him shed the pain of first defeat in Iowa. Ohio governor John Kasich is a distant-second in the projected results.
Irrespective of what happens in the next states in line for voting, the results offered an insight into the appeals by both Sanders and Trump who have played domestic cards of economy and immigrants to attract common citizens.
“What the people here have said is that given the enormous crises facing our country, it is just too late for the same old, same old establishment politics and establishment economics,” said the grey-haired Senator in his winning remarks, while promising a revolution to his supporters drawn from all ideological groups. Exit polls showed he had a support from “very liberal”, “somewhat liberal” and “moderate”.
“The people want real change,” he said to a cheering crowd presenting himself as a champion for the people of low-income groups against the “one percent” who are keeping them hostage to their interests. His oft-repeated attacks on the power of Wall Street drew long applause.
Some analysts opine that Clinton’s use of private email server for official correspondence seems to linger on and is impacting her campaign with particularly young voters doubting her “honesty” and swinging them towards Sanders.
“Now we take this campaign to this entire country,” she said telling the youth, she supports them even if they don’t.
In the group that favored honesty, Sanders won by 92 percent to 6 percent, according to CNN.
The former first lady is confident to do better in Nevada and South Carolina but Sanders can give her a tough fight if he can make inroads into the Latinos and African American – ethnic groups which are big in numbers in these two states and are expected to favor Clinton who is seen as “electable”.
For Republican, the race was more for the second and third place as Trump had led the poll in the state for many months in running. For the real-estate tycoon, the resulted was as predicted. Trump appeared to have been able to sell his fight against illegal immigrants to voters who are fed up with Washington.
Repeating his promise to build a wall on the southern border and deport undocumented immigrants, Trump said: “We are going to do something so good, and so fast, and so strong.” His landslide victory over a bunch of rivals showed his message of discontent with the establishment was resonating well with the voters.
New Hampshire, however, did not totally live up to the expectations of being a state that begins the process of thinning the list of candidates. Governor Kasich, on the second spot, was closely followed by Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – the establishment’s “fantastic-four”.
The results showed, the Republican establishment will have to wait for results in Nevada and South Carolina to pick someone they hope can take on “Trump the outsider”.
