By Ray Cardello for January 24, 2024, Season 24 / Post 22

In a remarkable segment of the FOX News coverage of the New Hampshire Primary, Charles Payne went off on Democrat pundit Jessica Tarloff on the divisiveness of Joe Biden and the Democrat message. Payne is a brilliant business and political analyst and is a Black man. On Tuesday night, in an emotional moment, Payne set Tarloff straight on the difference between Trump taking on individual individuals like DeSantis and Haley and the President of the United States denigrating half of the country by calling them MAGAs in a derogatory manner. MAGA is an acronym coined by Donald Trump to denote his Make America Great Again movement. Biden has taken the term MAGA and twisted it to describe the demonic, Nazi-like, radical, white supremacist followers of Donald Trump who are anti-American and a danger to Democracy. As a man who grew up knowing the racism he experienced as a Black child in New York, he dispelled the notion that Trump is a Racist and minimized his personality that takes on opponents with terse terms versus Biden labeling half the country as disgusting human beings. His claim is the vitriol that Biden spews is far more damaging to the country. I could not agree more and have written about it often.

But aside from this uncharacteristic emotional outburst, Charles is a numbers guy, and the results of the 2024 NH Primary are a numerologist’s playground. New Hampshire has a unique voter demographic where the largest block of registered voters identify as Independent. There are roughly 303,000 Democrats, 299,000 Republicans, and 400,000 Unafiliated or Independents registered to vote in the Granite State. NH allows Independents to vote in the Primary on the Party ballot of choice and then change their affiliation back to Independent after voting. It makes predicting elections very difficult in New Hampshire as you need to identify the trend of 400,000 voters that can go either way. The Independents played a significant role in Tuesday’s results.

I covered in a previous article why Joe Biden did not appear on the Democrat ballot, and he won the Democrat race on the wings of a successful write-in campaign, though the Democrat vote count was suppressed. There were over 250,000 Republican votes cast and only 85,000 Democrat votes. There was evidence of many Independents casting their vote for Nikki Haley, but their vote was more Anti-Trump than Pro-Haley. This Independent movement accounted for the closer than expected margin of victory for Trump. Many polls had Trump up by 20-30 percent over Haley, and the actual margin was closer to 12%. This anomaly makes it difficult to analyze the results of New Hampshire to predict future primary election results in upcoming states like South Carolina and Nevada. The Southern NH counties, which tend to be more Liberal, were within the 10-15% range for Trump, and Haley actually won the Western Strafford county. The Northern Coos county, which tends to be more traditionally Conservative, gave Trump a 30% margin.

The write-in victory for Biden and the Independent votes for Trump shows the power of the Democrat machine. The Republicans will not only have to beat Biden at the ballot box in November but simultaneously fight off the Leftist ground game. It will be a battle for Trump and the Republicans to win, but the stakes require our best effort.