3 Lessons the New Hampshire Primaries Taught us

Author's Note: People won, people lost, so what do we do with this information?

As I wrote earlier, there were three clear winners of the New Hampshire primaries, but there is a lot more to glean from the overall results. We saw different strategies employed in the Granite State than in Iowa, and we got substantially different results. Here, we will look at what we can look forward to going into South Carolina and beyond, and what voters will actually consider when voting for a candidate. Get out your shovels, cause we're going to really dig into this....
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Get it?
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yes
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'Cause, shovel...dig...it's a--
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I get it.

1. "Independents" Go for Trump
Independents are important, and they probably really affected the elections yesterday. Due to the crowded GOP field, New Hampshire-ites had a lot of choices, and 35.3% of them chose the Donald. When looking at the numbers, Trump got a healthy amount of support from moderates. He and Kasich tied at the top  among that demographic. The edge that Trump had over John "second place" Kasich, is that he dominated him among conservatives. It was kind of sad. Like watching Hayden Christensen work with a George Lucas script.

Sorry Hayden.

With a field so crowded you can't make your way to the open bar, Trump will probably continue to do fairly well. The support stays split, and that usually favors polarizing candidates when there are five five other not-so-polarizing candidates for the rest of us to choose from. The only way to beat him is to have a few of the others drop out. Luckily, a few of them already have, which only leaves a few more stragglers left...

Sorry Ben.

Just remember guys, if Trump ends up being our president, in the words of Trump to New Hampshire, "You started it."

2. A Flub Won't Go Unnoticed (But the Attacker Might Be)
I'm pretty sure Marco Rubio didn't want to finish less than second. I'm even more sure that he didn't want to finish fifth. But that might just be me. 

With Rubio, he knows that his flub on Saturday killed him and his momentum. He might be able to get over it, but it was pretty bad. Like, really bad. It's so bad...you know what, if you haven't seen it (or want to re-watch the train-wreck) check it out for yourself in it's full glory here.

Yeah dude.

In case you didn't  notice, Chris Christie was the samurai who sliced and diced up Rubio like shitaki mushrooms. However, while Rubio took a big his Christie didn't rise as much as Rubio fell. What that shows is that people didn't want to vote for Rubio as much as many thought, but they didn't give those votes to the man who revealed a potential major weakness in Rubio. It seems that they distributed those votes to Trump. So while people do care about someone's credibility, they don't necessarily care about whoever takes down that credibility. The result? The attacker (Christie) does so poorly he is forced to suspend his campaign.

3. The Ground Game is Important
John Kasich is already being labeled the anti-Trump. He is much more moderate, cool-headed, and has a healthy amount of experience as the governor of Ohio. 

Sorry Ohio.

However, he did substantially better than the other governors running for office, especially when you include the ones who were forced to drop out months ago. The difference? There could be a ton, but I noticed that he is staying fairly center in a party that is very staunchly conservative, and is getting out this message personally. People even traveled unpaid to campaign in his "army." This speaks to the fact that he does have good support, and some of them are as devoted as many Trump-ites. Kasich obviously mastered his ability to make up for what he lacked in flashy hair-synthetics and real-estate-mogul-looking Botox, with a solid approach and lots of hard work going door to door. This will be interesting to see going forward, and will see if New Hampshire is an isolated occurrence, or a pattern. 

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Did you like what I had to say? yes? No?...Okay, you don't have to be mean about it. But do carry on the conversation in the comments, and let me know what else can be gleaned (I like that word) from the Granite State results.
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Iain Coston