As a practical matter, George W. Bush is not facing a primary challenge for the GOP presidential nomination. But as a literal matter, he is, with unknown people challenging the incumbent for the Republican nod. This sort of thing happens every year, but it never really means anything.
Looking over the results from New Hampshire’s Republican primary, Bush obviously cruised to an easy win with over 85% support. But Kos noticed on interesting result from the GOP primary — a bunch of Republicans wrote in Democratic candidates’ names.
Bush — 53,749 votes
Kerry — 1,420 votes
Dean — 974 votes
Clark — 851 votes
Edwards — 808 votes
Lieberman — 511 votes
That’s over 4,500 Republicans who not only backed Dem candidates over Bush, but took the proactive step of writing the Dem candidate’s name in, since none of these names actually appeared on the GOP ballot.
When Dems look at a national map, wondering which “Red” states Dems are hoping to pick up in November, results like these suggest New Hampshire — which backed Clinton twice — might be ripe for the picking.
Update: Upon further thought, I’m wondering if this is as interesting as I initially thought. It turns out these kinds of results are not terribly uncommon.
In 1984, for example, Reagan was facing irrelevant challenges in the GOP New Hampshire primary and even more people wrote in Democratic presidential candidates names on their ballot:
Hart — 3,968 votes
Mondale — 1,090 votes
Glenn — 1,065 votes
Hollings — 697 votes
Jackson — 455 votes
McGovern — 405 votes
Did this matter in the general election? Did it hint at GOP discontent for Reagan? Not even a little. New Hampshire backed Reagan over Mondale by a better than 2-to-1 margin.
In other words, never mind.