In the 2000 election, Al Gore only lost one state in the Northeast — New Hampshire, where he came up just 7,000 votes short. As has been well documented, a Gore victory in the Granite State would have been enough to win the election, even without Florida.
Going into 2004, Dems have been looking at New Hampshire as exactly the kind of red state that our nominee may be able to pick off. After all, Clinton won New Hampshire’s electoral votes twice, so its not as if the state is off-limits to Dem candidates.
As Tom Schaller recently noted in the Washington Post, Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager, likes to remind reporters that winning all the Gore states plus New Hampshire would put Dean in the White House. Trippi’s not taking into account the electoral changes that resulted from the 2000 Census, but that’s not really the point. If Dean is the nominee, and he’ll need to find a couple of Bush states to win the election, New Hampshire may be ripe for the picking.
Or so the theory goes.
The American Research Group recently published its latest New Hampshire poll (brought to my attention by a regular reader; let’s call him Mark). As other polls have shown, Dean continues to enjoy a laughably-large lead over his Dem rivals in the state; in the most recent ARG poll, Dean’s lead is over 30 percentage points.
So Dean is incredibly popular in New Hampshire, right? Here’s exactly the kind of state Bush won in 2000 that Dean would likely carry in 2004, right? Unfortunately, no.
The American Research Group also did a poll of all New Hampshire voters, not just Dems who are likely to vote in the Dem primary next month. When a random sample of registered voters in the state were asked if they planned to vote for Bush or the generic “nominee of the Democratic Party,” Bush enjoyed a large lead — 51% to 34%, a 17-point gap.
But when New Hampshire voters were asked to choose specifically between Bush and Dean, the results are far worse. 57% said Bush and only 30% said Dean, a 27-point gap.
This is an incredibly bad sign. While Dean may trail Bush in hypothetical match-ups in most states nationwide, it’s relatively easy to dismiss those polls because Dean hasn’t begun campaigning there. Indeed, Dean’s name recognition is relatively low in states that don’t have early primary fights.
But New Hampshire? Not only has Dean effectively lived in New Hampshire during the campaign so far, he’s lived next door, in Vermont, for decades. His name recognition is nearly 100%. These folks know him, his positions on the issues, and his priorities.
And he still trails Bush by 27 points.
I’d love to stop worrying about Dean’s electability, but after seeing polling data like this, I can’t.