RSS 2.0 FeedRon Paul’s Boots On The Ground In New Hampshire
by Doug MataconisToday’s Washington Post takes a look at the ground war that Ron Paul’s supporters are running in the state that will hold the nation’s first primary in February:
STRAFFORD, N.H. — There’s no mistaking which house on Lake Shore Drive, about 45 minutes northeast of Manchester, is the one full of Paulites — the intensely loyal, almost fanatical supporters of Rep. Ron Paul. Signs are everywhere. On the back window of a brand new black Toyota, on the bumper of a green Geo, on a white Volvo station wagon that sits beside a beat-up lime green Honda. “Ron Paul 2008.”
“We can run the whole New Hampshire campaign right here,” says Jim Forsythe, 39, a former Air Force pilot who’s on his driveway in jeans, T-shirt and white socks. “We’re the hard-core supporters.”
(….)
In a state where Patrick Buchanan upset Bob Dole, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, more than a decade ago, anything is possible, says Andrew Smith, a pollster and director of the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center. As of last November, 26 percent of New Hampshire’s electorate were registered Democrats and 30 percent were Republicans. But the biggest block of voters — 44 percent — were undeclared. Forty percent to 45 percent of those, Smith says, leaned Democrat and 25 percent to 30 percent Republican.
(…)
“Everyone — the staffers in the other campaigns, the bigwig political observers in the state — is scratching their heads. They don’t know what to make of this Ron Paul phenomenon,” pollster Smith says. A University of New Hampshire poll last month showed Paul at 4 percent in the state. The most recent Washington Post-ABC News national poll, also from last month, had him at 3 percent. “The other campaigns aren’t worried that he’d win the primary. They just don’t know who his supporters are and whose support he’s taking away,” Smith adds. “His poll numbers aren’t high now, but it’s only October. And they could see him getting 10 percent of the vote here. If you get 10 percent of the vote in a crowded field, well, you might finish third.” But the Paulites are aiming for higher than third place.
But winning has different meanings in an early primary state like New Hampshire. When the race is in its early stages, nominations are largely a game of perception, and a candidate who does better than he or she is expected to — whether in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina — is likely to find themselves catapulted from also-ran to, if not contender, then at least potential spoiler. Ron Paul doesn’t have to win in New Hampshire to be taken seriously, he just has to do better than anyone expects, which is why it might be wise for his supporters to down-play expectations.
It’s hard to “downplay expectations” when in the Mainstream they don’t even expect him to “win, place, or show”. They think he’s barely a blip on the radar screen.
When he takes first (or possibly second) place there will be mass hysteria. The media will be beside themselves.
The biggest gain comes from the fact that so many feel that voting itself is worthless and the few that do vote do so out of “obligation”. Their problem now is they feel no affinity for any particular candidate and are largely apathetic to anyone.
ONLY Ron Paul shows a massively loyal support base who are willing to get out there and vote FOR a candidate and not just for whom they perceive is the “lesser of the evils”.
Comment by 4Freedom — October 15, 2007 @ 10:06 amI completely agree with the above poster. Just like internet polls and conventions get flooded with Ron Paul supporters, so will the polls. It’s the only candidate that people seeem to connect with and are excited about. I really don’t think the ‘scientific’ polls are engineered in a fashion to understand how the internet is playing into this new web 2.0 election. 95% of ron paul supporters will vote, in contrast to 20-30% of some other candidate. Why it still won’t reflect the “will” of the people, it will be the people who care about this country’s direction.
Comment by Marc — October 15, 2007 @ 11:04 amI have little doubt that the current professional polls place RP position in the race fairly accurately. If the election were held today, RP would probably get somewhere around 3-6% of the vote. But the election isn’t being held today, and polls do not PREDICT the outcome of elections. Pollsters themselves stress this all the time.
I remember the 1964 campaign. Nelson Rockefeller was running against Barry Goldwater. There were no Iowa caucuses in those days so NH was the first in the nation test. Goldwater led but Rockefeller was campaigning aggressively. With less than a week to go, Rockefeller had pulled even with Goldwater and it looked like he might have the momentum to pull it out.
But then, on election day, Henry Cabot Lodge emerged as the winner. It was a huge surprise. Lodge wasn’t even on the ballot. His supporters had to write his name in.
Everyone new that there was Lodge write-in campaign, but it was being run by local amateurs. Lodge, himself, was then the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam and hadn’t set foot in New Hampshire.
The upshot of the whole thing was that, as the campaign was ending, New Hampshire voters decided they didn’t like either of the two front-runners all that well and voted for the well-known, but absent, former Senator from Massachusetts.
Word is that Republicans this year don’t seem to like any of the front-runners all too well either. The difference is that, unlike Henry Cabot Lodge, Ron Paul is not well-known. But, then again, RP’s campaign isn’t being run exclusively by local amateurs and, unlike the Lodge campaign, there’s plenty of money available to help make Ron Paul better known. So anything can happen in New Hampshire and it can happen very quickly. That includes a Ron Paul victory.
Comment by Rob — October 15, 2007 @ 2:18 pmThe campaign said that, not the supporters, at least not me.
Comment by Jane Aitken — October 15, 2007 @ 6:43 pm