But the polling that shows Sanders ahead also shows there are no guarantees: Pete Buttigieg has been rising fast behind him after their neck-and-neck race in Iowa, leaving Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden further back in the latest surveys. Amy Klobuchar, meanwhile, has seen a fundraising boost and higher support in some polls since Friday’s debate at Saint Anselm College.
Here’s everything you need to know about Monday’s strategy, where the campaigns were and what they were doing. Our reporters fanned out across the state following all the top campaigns.
9:54 P.M. In MANCHESTER, N.H.
Klobuchar makes one last pitch
Amy Klobuchar enlisted the help of New Hampshire voters one final time just hours before the voting booths open. She ended the day with a rally in Manchester’s Penuche’s Music Hall, hoping to capitalize on her post-debate surge in the polls and fundraising with a surprise result in Tuesday’s primary.
“It is time to decide,“ Klobuchar said.
„We’ve decided,“ shouted a supporter.
The excited audience packed into the bar for the Manchester event, which was added in the middle of the day. The campaign announced 25 New Hampshire leaders had endorsed Klobuchar today, including eight current and former state representatives.
She gave a quick but familiar speech — primarily addressing her ability to unite not only the Democratic Party but bring in independent and Republican voters, as well as the lack of empathy in the current White House.
If you have to decide if you’re going to fill your refrigerator or you’re going to fill that prescription for insulin, I know you and I will fight for you.“ Klobuchar said. „This is empathy.“
Klobuchar made stops in Exeter and Rochester earlier in the day. The Exeter event required an upstairs overflow room, which held a raucous audience heard stomping above the stage.
–Marcus Navarro
8:35 P.M. In DURHAM, N.H.
Sanders supporters rally
Bernie Sanders’ campaign wanted to send a clear message the night before New Hampshire’s primary: He’s the one to beat Donald Trump.
While the president held a rally in Manchester, Sanders turned out 7,500 people to a get-out-the-vote concert with The Strokes and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 45 minutes away, according to his campaign.
“In case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people here tonight — in fact, three times more here tonight than in any other Democratic rally in New Hampshire!” Sanders said as he took the stage. “This turnout tells me why we’re going to win here in New Hampshire, why we’re going to win the Democratic nomination, and why we’re going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of America.”
Ocasio-Cortez said: “We need to nominate someone with a political revolution at their back.” Activist Cornel West called Trump a “neofascist gangster” who has “got to go.”
At the same event, actress Cynthia Nixon tried to reach out to those who had voted for Hillary Clinton, just as she had sought to do hours before at a town hall. She said she voted for Clinton in 2016, and some in the crowd booed. “Oh no,” she said. “We’re not going to do that here.” The crowd cheered, and she explained that she was supporting Sanders in 2020 because he has “irrevocably changed the terrain and the conversation of this country.“
-Holly Otterbein
6:58 P.M. ABOARD WARREN’S PRESS BUS
Warren meets the press
After Warren’s event in Rochester, she jumped on the press bus for 15 minutes to take some questions on the record.
She got a barrage of questions about her poor poll numbers, media coverage, and her delegate path to the nomination. She frequently brought her answer back around to her plans, “selfie” lines, or why she’s in this “fight.”
At one point, Warren just stopped the loop and explained she wasn’t going to bite on such inquiries. “I get questions about process and what do I do? I talk about policy,” she said.
She did engage in a little horse race talk near the end, however, arguing that the primary race was “fluid” and prognosticators have been wrong all year. “Who was supposed to still be in this race today? And who wasn’t? I think I wasn’t,” she said. “So I think the prediction business right now is not something I’d be investing heavily in.”
A reporter also asked Warren whether she felt there the coverage of her Iowa finish was at all gendered. “You can’t pull the pieces apart. I am who I am,” she said. “I just have to keep fighting … I cannot say to all those little girls: ‘This got hard.’”
5:14 p.m. in Rochester, N.H.
Warren praises vanquished 2020 rivals
Warren leaned into her pitch as someone who can unite the Democratic Party in her first town hall on New Hampshire primary eve, at the Rochester Opera House. An excited crowd of about 200 people waving red “Vote To End Corruption” placards greeted Warren there.
The unity focus is part of a larger push by Warrent to address potential “electability” concerns in recent weeks. She paid tribute to several of the former presidential candidates who are no longer in the race, including Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Kamala Harris and talked about how she incorporated some of their ideas into her own plans.
Despite sagging poll numbers in New Hampshire, the crowd was enthusiastic, giving Warren two standing ovations as she concluded her speech.
Warren kept her stump speech short and took several audience questions, including one from a man who said he was from Sweden and came to the United States just to hear her speak. He asked about health care for the disabled.
Warren made smaller, quick stops in northern New Hampshire earlier Monday. In the morning, she unwittingly walked by the press bus full of reporters, who quickly swarmed her. Wearing a „Make America Cool Again“ ballcap, she explained she had just walked two miles in the snow and got breakfast at McDonald’s. „We’ve got just the right amount of snow and it, uh, feels like a great day for democracy,“ Warren said.
–Alex Thompson
4:42 P.M. in SALEM, N.H.
Over coffee, Sanders talks Trump
Bernie Sanders swung by a coffee shop — an event that wasn’t on his schedule — and immediately began talking about Donald Trump.
With the president in New Hampshire today for a rally, Sanders’ aides were eager for him to take on Trump in the hours before the first-in-the-nation primary and explain why he is a strong candidate to run against him in November. On that note, Sanders and Trump also are holding dueling rallies tonight — an attempt by Sanders to show that his campaign has the passion to defeat him and attract the same massive crowds.
“I believe that the best way to beat him is to have the largest voter turnout in American history,” said Sanders in Salem, “and the way you do that is running a campaign of energy and excitement.”
When Sanders later said that employers are making it “impossible” to join labor unions, a man in the crowd shouted, “Like mine!”
Before that last-minute stop, Sanders went to a get-out-the-vote canvass launch at a campaign field office in Hudson. His team has claimed hordes of volunteers are pouring into the state to campaign for him, and that they knocked on 150,000 doors on Saturday alone.
Sanders talked up his small-dollar donors and again criticized Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden over their wealthy donors.
“Our average contribution is somewhere around $18.50, but that comes from 1.5 million people,” he said.
-Holly Otterbein
4:40 p.m.
State party bigwigs bounced from Trump rally
Nearly 200 New Hampshire Republican Party VIPs had their access to President Donald Trump’s Monday night rally revoked at the last minute, upsetting some of the party’s most prominent elected officials and activists.
The big names who were booted include state Rep. Jason Osborne, an influential member of the House who spearheads the GOP’s policy team; Fran Wendelboe, a former deputy majority leader and state commissioner; and Diane Bitter, a party activist.
Those who were no longer welcomed inside the lower-level VIP reception were told they could wait in line for general admission. As of four hours before the event, the line stretched about a half of a mile down the city’s main street, including people camped outside the arena in approximately 20 degree weather.
-Trent Spiner
2:20 p.m. in Nashua, N.H.
Klobuchar pitches small business plan to Rotary members
Klobuchar paid a visit to the Nashua Rotary Club Monday, a change of pace from the more energetic rally crowds she’s been drawing in the days leading up to the New Hampshire primary. The senator won applause from Rotarians just finishing their lunch, deviating slightly from the normal stump speech to talk more about small business and touted her 14 years in the private sector as an attorney.
„We should be a country that makes stuff, which you do so well here in New Hampshire,“ Klobuchar said. „Makes stuff, invents things and exports to the world.“
Klobuchar spoke of the Senate Entrepreneur Caucus she began last year with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in response to the decline of startups and the importance of antitrust regulations. Klobuchar told attendees she was opposed to free four-year college but would like to make apprenticeships and associate degrees free.
Klobuchar began Monday with a get-out-the-vote event in Keane. She has three more this afternoon in Exeter, Rochester and Manchester.
–Marcus Navarro
1:45 p.m. in Plymouth, N.H.
Buttigieg presses Sanders on Medicare for All
Buttigieg continued to press his case against Bernie Sanders, who leads in-state polling here by an even wider margin since Friday’s debate. The former South Bend mayor spoke to about 100 voters at Plymouth State Universty who were slip-sliding their way in from snowed-in streets.
Buttigieg, who started calling out Sanders and Biden by name in recent days, laid into Sanders again, questioning how he’d pay for Medicare for All.
Of the estimated $50 trillion the program would cost, „about half of it is unaccounted for, and there’s no explanation for where the other $25 trillion is supposed to come,“ Buttigieg said. „How are we going to pay for it? Are we going to pay for it in the form of still further taxes, or are we going to pay for it in the form of broken promises?“
Buttigieg, for his part, said he’d go everywhere — including to Fox News — to make his case for Democrats, calling the move „a bit controversial within my party.“ Fox News’ Chris Wallace, who has hosted televised town halls featuring Buttigieg, smiled on from the press section as Buttigieg spoke.
-Elena Schneider
12:58 p.m. in Rindge, N.H.
Sanders gets help on the stump from Cynthia Nixon
Actress and activist Cynthia Nixon stumped for Sanders in New Hampshire for the first time Monday.
At Franklin Pierce University, Nixon, who ran in a primary against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2018, made a subtle appeal to former Hillary Clinton voters. Nixon said she voted for Clinton in 2016 because she thought she was a “safe and secure” candidate, though she liked the Vermont senator’s ideas.
Now, she said: “The world has changed enormously in the last four years,” and not only because of President Donald Trump. „It’s changed, in my mind, because of what Bernie Sanders has shown is possible in this country.”
As Sanders has been doing, Nixon also implored the college students to turn out, saying that he would win in New Hampshire if there is large voter turnout, particularly among young people.
The crowd was enthusiastic for Sanders, chanting his name and cheering when he said numerous people can’t afford college tuition and “many others by the millions are leaving school deeply in debt — something wrong with that!” A woman shouted out, “I love you!”
-Holly Otterbein
12:45 p.m.
Tracking polls: Sanders leads on eve of primary
Sanders is the unanimous, but not overwhelming, leader in polls conducted on the eve of the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary.
The polls generally show Sanders leading Buttigieg, while Klobuchar makes a last-minute charge to compete for a third-place finish with Biden and Warren.
Of the tracking polls conducted for media outlets, only a Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University poll, released late Sunday night, was conducted entirely after last Friday’s debate in Goffstown, N.H. That survey, with interviews on Saturday and Sunday, showed Sanders leading Buttigieg, 27 percent to 19 percent. Klobuchar was third, at 14 percent, followed closely by Biden and Warren, each at 12 percent. No other candidate was above 3 percent, and 7 percent were undecided.
A CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released Monday afternoon also showed Sanders leading Buttigieg by a similar margin, 29 percent to 22 percent. This poll, which includes two days of interviews before the debate and the two days immediately after, had Biden (11 percent), Warren (10 percent) and Klobuchar (7 percent) well behind the leaders.
The latest RealClearPolitics average — which includes other polls, one of which doesn’t meet POLITICO’s standards — shows Sanders leading Buttigieg by 6.5 points, with Warren (12.5 percent), Klobuchar (11.3 percent) and Biden (11.3 percent) in a close battle for third.
–Steven Shepard
11:11 a.m. in Manchester, N.H.
Sanders keeps up contrast with Buttigieg on donors
Unlike Sunday, Sanders and his surrogates did not criticize Buttigieg by name at his first campaign stop Monday morning. But they did reference him implicitly at the event, a breakfast at a sports academy.
“You can have a guy who’s funded by corporations, by Wall Street, by the health care industry,” said Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen, a Sanders campaign co-chair. “Or you can pick the candidate who’s been funded by the millions of Americans who have been being screwed by the corporations, Wall Street financiers and the health care industry.”
Sanders has previously hit Buttigieg over the fact that several billionaires have contributed to him. Sanders’ campaign also released a negative video online on the issue.
On Monday, Sanders also sought to contrast his small-dollar fundraising powerhouse with his rivals’ big-ticket fundraisers, but without naming them.
“What we have done is change the nature of the game in terms of funding campaigns,” Sanders said. “Historically in America what candidates did is, ‘Oh, I need a lot of money, I’ll go to some billionaire, billionaire’s home, sit around, raise a lot of money.’ Even in the newspaper today, you can see candidates conferring with their donors.”
Sanders added: “You are my donors!” to cheers.
–Holly Otterbein
10:31 a.m. in Concord, N.H.
State Senate president boosts Biden
New Hampshire state Senate President Donna Soucy of Manchester tweeted Monday morning that she would vote for Biden, making her the second-highest ranking elected official to weigh in on the race in the first primary state.
„We need a strong, proven leader who can bring our country together and get things done,“ she said. „Joe has the experience, the tenacity, and the empathy that we need in the White House.“
The tweet didn’t actually include the word „endorsement.“ Soucy declined media interviews and there was no immediate plan for her to campaign for the former vice president.
Campaigns spent the better part of a year fighting for Soucy’s support. Besides her powerful elected role, Soucy is also a well-respected operative from the state’s largest city. Her choice of Biden isn’t entirely surprising, because she does significant work for the local chapter of the International Association of Fire Fighters as part of her day job. (New Hampshire part-time legislators are paid $100 a year though she gets an extra $25 a year for serving as president of her chamber.) The firefighters union endorsed Biden soon after he launched his presidential campaign.
The most senior New Hampshire Democrat to endorse in the presidential race, Rep. Annie Kuster, is supporting Pete Buttigieg.
-Trent Spiner
10:02 a.m.
Biden’s tough morning
Biden began the final day before the New Hampshire primary swatting away questions from CBS about his electability, his sagging poll numbers, his finances and a Republican effort to investigate his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
“You’re always behind the 8-ball when you’re running in New Hampshire if you have two people from the neighboring states,” Biden explained when asked about his standing in the first primary state, where a non-neighboring state politician and former small town mayor, Indiana’s Pete Buttigieg, has surpassed him.
“I feel good about what what we’re doing up here,” Biden said.
Asked by CBS’s Gayle King if his campaign is having a “‘Houston we’re having a problem moment,” Biden denied it, saying that “no one has ever won the nomination as a Democrat without getting overwhelming support from the Latino community and the African American community. And we’re just getting to the game here.”
But “it’s also true that no one’s ever won the nomination after finishing out of the top two in Iowa and also out of the top two in New Hampshire, which according to polls is where you’re headed,” said CBS’ Tony Dokoupil. “So you’re making an electability pitch, if voters from these two states are not saying we want to elect this guy. Why should the other voters out there, listen?”
After Biden repeated his line about non-white voters who overwhelmingly favor him in South Carolina and Nevada, Dokoupil asked about Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and asked if Biden was concerned that Sen. Lindsey Graham told CBS News “the Justice Department is vetting information from Rudy Giuliani about your son’s work in Ukraine.”
Biden laughed at the mention of Rudy Giuliani, who has peddled numerous widely discredited conspiracy theories.
“No one has said [Hunter Biden’s] done anything wrong except the thug, Rudy Giuliani,” Biden said. “Come on, Rudy Giuliani? A character witness?”
Asked about reports he was running out of money, Biden denied that, too.
“We’ve been raising about a half a million dollars a day. We’re doing fine,” Biden said.
-Marc Caputo
8:30 a.m.
Biden campaign looking beyond New Hampshire
Biden senior adviser Symone Sanders told viewers on CNN’s “New Day” Monday morning that the former vice president “will still be in this race” no matter what happens on Tuesday.
“Regardless of what happens, we believe and we have said for a long time that this race absolutely runs through Nevada, South Carolina and Super Tuesday,” Sanders said. “And it would be a mistake for the media to try to count Joe Biden out before other folks in this party have had their chance to have their say in this race.”
“The reality is that since 1992, the Democratic nominee in this party has been the person who has been able to garner a substantial amount of votes from African American voters,” Sanders added later. “You just don’t get those votes out of just Iowa and New Hampshire, John. So we’re here to say that this process does continue.”
-Quint Forgey
Source: politico.com
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