at +16.9 Sanders right now. The last time I checked, it was >20 Sanders. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/nh/new_hampshire_democratic_presidential_primary-3351.html
That's a big gap. But I still maintain that there could be "surprises" on voting day to Clinton's benefit, e.g., whether Indies will choose to vote in the GOPer primary rather than in the Dem to give Bernie support and whether GOP women may cross-over to vote for Clinton because every GOPer candidate is a true believer in the War on Women.
FiveThirtyEight (Harry Enton) believes that Bernie needs a BIG win in NH and suggests than beating HRC merely by single digits will not bode well for his candidacy. He also believes that most interpretation will depend on the press "spin."
One easy answer is that the press will go with the simplest angle: Clinton has no business losing to Sanders. She led in New Hampshire by nearly 40 percentage points in early June 2015 after all. It doesn’t matter if she loses by 9, 17 or 31 percentage points. Add a loss in New Hampshire to her near loss in Iowa, and you can see a narrative building that Clinton is in serious trouble. The press has the added incentive of knowing that Sanders is all that’s standing between Clinton and an easy waltz to the nomination. It can be quite tempting to cover a competitive race.
Of course, Clinton probably won’t let that storyline spread without a fight. She’ll probably point out that Sanders is from next-door Vermont, and candidates such as Edmund Muskie, Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, John Kerry and Howard Dean — all from states bordering New Hampshire — finished first or second in the New Hampshire primary. She might also point out that Iowa and New Hampshire should be two of Sanders’s strongest states demographically — they’re full of white liberals.
All the spinning probably won’t do Clinton any good, though, if she loses by a ton — let’s say around 15 percentage points or more (that’s an educated guesstimate). Clinton might be more credible in claiming a moral victory if she were to lose by a margin in the single digits. Her husband, Bill Clinton, declared himself “the comeback kid” in 1992 after losing the New Hampshire primary to Tsongas by 8 percentage points. And the media bought it because Bill Clinton outperformed expectations; charges of marital infidelity in the lead up to the primary had caused Clinton’s poll numbers to tumble.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-needs-a-big-win-in-new-hampshire/
Tuesday cannot come soon enough, IMO.
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