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Check back for updates from the New Hampshire campaign trail today before Tuesday’s primary:
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – Inside a packed unitarian church here in the city’s downtown, many New Hampshire voters waiting for a Sen. Elizabeth Warren event to begin Monday night said they were still undecided even with the first-in-the-nation primary looming the next morning.
Mark and Judy Fahnestock, of Madbury, New Hampshire, said they’re looking at Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. They want a candidate who can appeal to a wide swath of voters during the general election, not just Democrats.
“There’s five states that matter, and you’ve got to run to the right of the Democratic Party during that time,” Mark Fahnestock, a research scientist, said of the type of Democrat he prefers. “It’s an ability to communicate an acceptance of others in a way that doesn’t turn off the independent voters to the right.”
Denise Johnson, 69, from Cape Neddick, Maine, came down to Portsmouth even though her state doesn’t vote until Super Tuesday. She was a state delegate for Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 and contributed to his campaign, but she also gave to Warren. She’s torn on who to support.
“I’m still feeling loyal to Bernie, but I’m still on the fence, I guess,” said Johnson, who volunteers for nonprofits. “What I’m mostly worried about is somebody going against the foul-mouthed president in the debates and beating him at the polls. I’m most concerned with that man should no longer be leading this country, and I’m very much concerned about what the debate and what that election is going to be about.
Richard Lemmerman, a 60-year-old investor from Hampton, New Hampshire, said he’s leaning toward supporting Michael Bloomberg — but he won’t be on the New Hampshire ballot as the billionaire former New York mayor skips the four early-voting states to focus on Super Tuesday in March.
“It might be possible to write him. Everybody wants somebody who’s going to win, right? I think he’s got the strongest possibility to beat Trump.”
As for Warren?
“She’d made a great secretary of state, a great attorney general. I just don’t think she’s going to be a good president,” Lemmerman said.
— Joey Garrison
Biden ‘confident’ in his campaign despite Iowa disappointment
Former Vice President Joe Biden said Monday that he remains “confident” in his campaign despite the fourth-place finish in Iowa he described last week as a “gut punch” and polls showing him in fourth or fifth place in New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday’s primary.
“You’re always behind the eight ball when you’re running in New Hampshire if you have two people from the neighboring states,” Biden said on “CBS This Morning,” referring to Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. “But I feel good about what we’re doing up here.”
Biden also downplayed the importance of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary because they don’t reflect the racial makeup of the wider nation.
“I view the beginning of this campaign being the first two caucuses and first two primaries. Nothing’s going to happen until we get down to a place, and around the country, where there’s much more diversity,” Biden said. He argued that no Democrat has won the nomination without “overwhelming support from the Latino community and the African-American community.”
Biden expects to perform better in the Nevada caucuses on Feb. 22 and the South Carolina primary on Feb. 29 where there are larger minority populations.
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“Look, we’re just getting going. You’ve got to get 1,900 delegates or more,” Biden said, disputing the idea that “if you come in third or fourth in the first two primaries, or a caucus and a primary, that that knocks you out of the box.”
“I don’t see any diminution in national support,” he added, pointing to recent endorsements from the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
– William Cummings
Biden says he is ‘still leading in all the national polls’ moments before new poll shows him trailing Sanders
Leaving an event in New Hampshire Monday, former Vice President Joe Biden told reporters that he doesn’t “have to do anything differently to stay in this race” because he “is still leading in all the national polls.”
His comments came just before a new national Quinnipiac University poll showed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., taking the lead at 25%. Biden trailed at 17% while former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was close behind at 15%, after seeing a surge in support.
The national poll comes just days after Biden performed poorly in the Iowa caucuses, and one day before New Hampshire’s primary. Biden has acknowledged he faces a tough race in New Hampshire.
The new numbers are a major shift from Quinnipiac’s Jan. 28 national survey which had Biden leading at 26%, followed by Sanders at 21%.
– Savannah Behrmann and Joey Garrison
Klobuchar climbs into third place, two polls find
Sen. Amy Klobuchar continues to enjoy a post-debate bounce in New Hampshire and has sailed into third place, according to two polls released a day ahead of Tuesday’s primary.
A Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University poll found Klobuchar was the choice of 14% of likely primary voters behind Sen. Bernie Sanders (27%) and former mayor Pete Buttigieg (19%). Sanders’ eight-point lead over Buttigieg reflected a shift from Friday, when the poll found the former mayor slightly ahead of the senator from Vermont.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren were tied for fourth in the poll at 12% each.
The final tracking poll from 7News/Emerson College before the primary found Sanders first among likely primary voters at 30%, followed by Buttigieg (23%), Klobuchar (14%), Warren (11%) and Biden (10%).
– William Cummings
‘Stakes are incredibly high’:New Hampshire voters feel the pressure as primary looms
Dems making final appeal to voters before Tuesday
After a weekend of barnstorming the Granite State, Democrats running for president are making the final push in New Hampshire as Tuesday’s primary approaches.
New Hampshire’s first voters head to the polls at midnight Monday in the township of Dixville Notch.
The Republican primary is also Tuesday and President Donald Trump is expected to win decisively over challengers Bill Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts, and Joe Walsh, a former U.S. House member from Illinois.
Riding momentum out of the Iowa caucuses, former mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders both have gotten good news in recent polls.
A recent CNN/University of New Hampshire poll out Sunday showed Sanders leading with 28% of likely primary voters, a 7-point lead over Buttigieg, his closest rival. Buttigieg had 21% support and former Vice President Joe Biden 12%. No other candidate hit double digits.
But another poll released Sunday, the CBS News/YouGov poll, found the race even tighter, with Sanders the choice of 29% of likely voters in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary and Buttigieg favored by 25%. That poll found Sen. Elizabeth Warren (19%) in third ahead of Biden (12%) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (10%).
The polling came just before updated results from the Iowa caucuses were published by the Iowa Democratic Party. The results showed Buttigieg had picked up another national delegate, but no winner has been declared by the Associated Press.
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