NH’s undeclared voters main factor in 2016 primary of discontent

By Paul Briand
The question for New Hampshire’s undeclared voters is this: Will you take a Democrat ballot to help propel Bernie Sanders in his quixotic political campaign against Hillary Clinton, or will you take a Republican ballot to help decide one of the more complex and polarizing GOP contests in decades?

The 2016 presidential primary elections will not be decided by registered Democrats or registered Republicans. It will be decided by the undeclared voters who make up a majority of registered voters in the Granite State. The primary is expected to be held on Tuesday, Feb. 9.

As of early November, there were 872,541 registered voters here. And here’s the breakdown, in order of most to least:

• Undeclared: 380,751
• Republicans: 261,906
• Democrats: 229,884

In New Hampshire’s primary system, an undeclared voter can walk into his/her precinct and request the ballot of whatever party primary he/she wants.

At almost 381,000 strong, that should give pause to any candidate who is perceived as being too tied, too beholden to their party.

Granite Staters like their independence. It is a sign of the pragmatism they show in their lives and their politics. They can appreciate Republican values while they appreciate Democratic values. They especially like when those values can come together to get things done.

Bernie Sanders will need those undeclared votes in New Hampshire to stake his claim for the Democratic party’s candidate for president in 2016. This is Hillary Clinton’s nomination to lose, and she’ll get the Democratic base.

Sanders is the independent U.S. senator from Vermont, running as a Democrat - a socialist Democrat, in his words - for president.

If ever there was an appealing candidate for the convince-me-to-vote-for-you undeclared candidates, Sanders is the one. He is about as anti an establishment candidate as there is on the Democratic side. And he’ll need to do very well in New Hampshire to propel his campaign into state -- particularly in the south -- where socialist and Democrat don’t mix as well.

A Dec. 9 CNN/WMUR New Hampshire Primary Poll done by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center shows voters participating in the Democratic primary favoring Sanders over Clinton 50 to 40 percent. But more than a third of those polled haven’t made up their minds yet on the Democratic side.

According to the survey center, New Hampshire voters typically decide who they will vote for in the last weeks, or even days, of the campaign.

The survey center also notes that there is less interest in the Democratic primary than the Republican primary among the undeclared voters.

Currently, 48 percent of undeclared voters say they plan to vote in the Republican primary, 38 percent plan to vote in the Democratic primary, and 14 percent are unsure just which primary they’ll vote in.

So why might undeclared be more interested in the Republican primary? Either to vote in a primary that appeals more to their political sensibilities and has more variety, or to vote in a primary to create a bit of mischief within the GOP.

I can envision a scenario in which undeclared voters take a Republican ballot and vote for an establishment outlier like Donald Trump to tweak the Republican Party for not learning the lessons of 2012 (when Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama) that it needs to be more inclusive and more representative of average, middle class Americans.

What better way to show that dissatisfaction than to vote for a showman like Trump in the hope that enough independent-minded voters do the same, the Republican Party will be thrown into complete chaos, forcing it to re-examine what it represents and just whom it represents.

Trump leads in New Hampshire in the Nov. 8 CNN/WMUR poll by the survey center. But that race remains very fluid with only 18 percent of those who say they’ll participate in the Republican primary having definitely made up their minds.

Whatever their motivation, the undeclareds will be the voting block to watch come February.