New Hampshire voters see Mitt and Hillary as winners

A new poll of likely primary voters in New Hampshire finds Republicans and Democrats agreed on at least one, no, two things: Members of both parties believe that Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton will win their party's primary vote in the Granite State.

The Franklin Pierce University/WBZ Poll of 401 likely voters finds that 31% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans see Romney as the state winner compared with 20% of Democrats and 31% of Republicans who believe Rudy Giuliani will win and 9% of Democrats and 6% of Republicans who see John McCain as winning.

This continues a positive trend for the former Massachusetts governor who trailed Giuliani with only 12% in March, which grew to 23% in June and to 26% in September. The same poll found that Fred Thompson's campaign has failed to register with New Hampshire voters with only 1% believing he will win compared to 2% for Mike Huckabee and 6% for McCain.

Fully 71% of Democrats and 59% of Republicans believe Clinton will win the state's Democratic contest. Only 8% of Democrats and 11% of Republicans expect Barack Obama to win while only 6% of Democrats and 3% of Republicans see John Edwards as carrying the primary day.

Expectations of a Clinton win among Democrats have grown from 38% in March to 48% in June to 61% in September while expectations of an Obama victory have dropped from 18% in March to 8% today.

Fifty-six percent of Democrats expect Clinton to capture the White House while only 8% see Obama doing that and 2% see Edwards as president. Among Republicans, 23% see Giuliani winning the presidency, 21% see Romney winning and 16% see Clinton winning. Fully 32% of GOP voters claim to be unsure.

--Andrew Malcolm 

Comments

[D Evans]

Okay. The questions is who do you believe, not who do you want to win. Once again the Poll question is the benchmark for the validity of the poll. Why not ask both Republicans and Democrats who they want to win in their party and outside their party. Then ask Independents to chime in. See if you ask African Americans in SC do they think Obama will win, they would say no Hillary is going to win. But if you ask them who they want to win, Obama leads by 8+ percentage points.

If you ask people in the country who they think will win they will all say Hillary, but polls say that 50 percent of likely voters regardless of party will not vote for Hillary. This poll does absolutely nothing to help the reader to understand the positions in the election. Useless polling strikes again.

Here is a good Poll... Place the leader of these so called national polls against every other candidate, regardless of party.

We know Politician x is at x percent say Hillary has 45 percent of the Democratic vote. But why are the other 55 percent NOT in her camp. Also is it possible that maybe for the first time a few of these contenders should run anyway? There are republicans supporting Obama and there are democrats supporting Ron Paul or Guiliani. Why doesn't everyone just run for President and take the highest vote getters above 20 percent and have a runoff. First to 50.1 wins.