News of the New Hampshire Primary gives pundits plenty to chew on this week. Later this year, momentum will flag and campaigns will wear on. Absent an imminent vote or sex scandal, media-makers occasionally flirt with exciting uncertainties – or as Steve Kornacki calls them, political red herrings. Steve is news editor for Salon.com– he wrote about The 5 Biggest non-stories you’ll hear far too much of during campaign 2012– none of which, he says, will amount to a hill of beans.
Final results: Summary results | Town resultsThe BasicsThe New Hampshire primary is a mainstay in American electoral politics. Every four years, voters gather to help determine the Republican and/or Democratic nominee for President. While the state only has 12 electoral votes in 2012 (normally it’s 24, but the Republican National Committee penalized the state party for moving up the event date), the primary’s position as one of the earliest contests gives the state out-sized influence over the nomination process.Only the Iowa caucuses come before New Hampshire’s primary. Traditionally, New Hampshire’s broad-based primary contest has been seen as a counter-weight to Iowa’s more drawn-out caucus process, which tends to draw a smaller core of party faithful. In the case of the 2012 Republican race, New Hampshire’s electorate is seen to represent the more libertarian-leaning, fiscally conservative wing of the party, while Iowa voters are seen as representing the socially conservative wing of the GOP base.N.H. Primary summary provided by StateImpact - NH reporter, Amanda Loder
The Political Red Herrings of 2012
Photo by peekabou, courtesy of Flickr creative commons
