Satisfied Voters Are No Guarantee for Favorites

John McCain built a powerful coalition of independent voters and mainstream Republicans to overwhelm George Bush in New Hampshire’s Republican primary, while Al Gore held onto enough of the Democratic base to win his fierce contest with Bill Bradley, a Los Angeles Times exit poll found.

Like McCain, Bradley ran extremely well among independent voters, who can vote in either primary here. But while McCain also comfortably carried partisan Republicans en route to his big win, Gore fought off Bradley by maintaining the allegiance of core Democrats--albeit by more precarious margins than last week in Iowa.

To some extent, the results represented a revolt of the contented: an electorate that mostly expressed satisfaction with its financial situation and the country’s overall direction decisively rejected the Republican front-runner and gave the Democratic leader a more anxiety-filled evening than he had anticipated. One key to that paradox may be the weight voters placed on the candidates’ personal traits after President Clinton’s bruising impeachment battle last year.

Voters who cited the candidates’ qualities of leadership, empathy and trust as key factors in their decision all gave large margins to both McCain and Bradley. While McCain also led Bush among voters who cited experience, Gore led strongly on that count among Democrats--helping him push through to victory.

The results ensure that McCain and Bradley can forcefully continue their challenges in other contests down the road. But they leave open the question of whether either insurgent can dethrone the front-runners in states where independents don’t play as large a role and other groups underrepresented in New Hampshire--minorities on the Democratic side, religious conservatives for the Republicans--loom larger.

Bradley faces the additional challenge of badly needing a win, after failing in a state whose well-educated, socially liberal electorate offered him an ideal audience.

The Los Angeles Times exit poll, supervised by poll director Susan Pinkus, surveyed 2,232 Republican and 1,510 Democratic voters in 61 precincts around the state; it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

A Quite Contrary Electorate

For an electorate that produced so much turbulence, New Hampshire voters showed little unease with the conditions in the country. Nearly nine in 10 Democratic voters, and a solid majority of Republicans, said the country was moving on the right track; about half of Republicans and three-fifths of Democrats said the economy was doing very well. A strong plurality of Republicans, and a majority of Democratic voters, said they were financially better off than four years ago.

Yet a characteristically contrary New Hampshire current ran through the results.

In the last two decades, several front-runners, from Democrat Walter F. Mondale in 1984 to Republican Bob Dole in 1996, have been upset in this flinty state. But none were defeated by as large a margin as McCain beat Bush.

McCain showed an impressive breadth of appeal: he carried both men and women, all age and income groups, and voters at every level of education. He amassed roughly equal margins among voters who made their decisions early and those who decided in the final hours. He was as strong among married voters as among unmarried voters, and as attractive to high-tech workers as to gun owners, groups at opposite ends of the New Hampshire cultural spectrum.

McCain ran slightly better among men than women. There was no gender gap among independent voters, but partisan Republicans did diverge. Bush actually carried female Republicans, the survey found, while McCain carried Republican men by almost 15 percentage points.

Still, the core of McCain’s victory was his dominance in the ideological center of the electorate. That strength was measured in several distinct respects.

About 30% of Republican voters described themselves as moderates: McCain won them by well over 2 to 1. About another 40% of voters--the largest single ideological block--called themselves somewhat conservative; these are generally considered the rank-and-file Republicans at the heart of the party. McCain beat Bush among these voters by about a ratio of 3 to 2.

Above all, McCain proved an irresistible magnet for independent voters, who play as significant a role in the primary here as in any other state. Independents comprised about one-third of voters in the GOP primary, and they gave McCain an insurmountable ratio of almost 4 to 1.

One other intriguing result measures the centrist tilt of McCain’s support. Bush spent weeks bashing McCain for proposals that the Texas governor argued were too close to Clinton’s; but, here at least, that comparison wasn’t necessarily a weight on the Arizona senator. While more than 80% of McCain voters said they personally disliked Clinton, half said they liked his policies.

Some Danger Signs for Bush

If there is any silver lining for Bush in these heavy clouds, it was McCain’s more modest performance among some core Republican groups. Among partisan Republicans, as opposed to independents, McCain easily bested Bush, but only by about half of his large overall margin. Bush narrowly carried the one-fifth of GOP voters who called themselves “very conservative.” And, though he edged Bush among the group, McCain ran well behind his statewide total with Republican voters who described themselves as born-again Christians.

That wasn’t much of a problem for McCain here, because such evangelical Christians constituted only about one-eighth of all GOP voters. But religious conservatives are a much larger factor in the next critical showdown: the South Carolina primary on Feb. 19.

Beyond the overall thrashing, the exit survey contains another vivid danger sign for Bush. On the key policy issue that both Bush and McCain have forced to the center of the campaign--what to do with the swelling federal budget surplus--the poll found that voters in the GOP primary here overwhelmingly sided with McCain.

Only about one-fourth of Republican voters said they would prefer to use the surplus primarily for a tax cut, as Bush has proposed. Three-fourths said they preferred McCain’s option of providing a smaller tax cut, while using much of the money to strengthen Social Security and Medicare. (Even among partisan Republicans, two-thirds sided with McCain.) If that advantage holds, it may provide McCain an effective wedge to chip away at leads Bush still enjoys in most other states.

On the Democratic side, Gore relied on core Democratic groups to overcome Bradley’s strength among more independent and upscale voters. As in polls throughout the election year, the sharpest divide was along lines of education: Bradley won voters with a college or graduate degree, but ran well behind the vice president among those with only a high school degree or less, or some college experience. Likewise, Bradley ran best with voters earning $60,000 or more, while Gore carried those earning less.

These results underscore the central challenge facing Bradley. If he can’t expand beyond his base with college-educated voters--especially men--he’ll have trouble seriously challenging Gore in states where voters with such advanced degrees constitute a much smaller share of the electorate than in high-tech oriented New Hampshire.

Bradley showed strength at the ideological poles--running best among liberal voters (who may have responded to his call for ambitious new government programs) and conservatives (who may have been looking for change from Clinton.) But Gore amassed a lead among moderates substantial enough to carry him over. As in Iowa, Gore was also boosted by solid support from union households.

Clinton Factors Into Results

Attitudes toward Clinton exerted a complex effect on the result. More than 8 in 10 Democrats said they approved of Clinton’s performance in office; and they gave Gore a double-digit margin over Bradley. Likewise, nearly 9 in 10 Democratic voters said they liked Clinton’s policies, but, intriguingly, they gave Gore only a thin margin. On the other hand, an unusually high percentage of Democratic voters, about 6 in 10, said they personally disliked Clinton, and they gave Bradley a huge advantage.

The two seemed to battle to a draw on issues. By far, the issue most cited by Democratic votes as important in their decision was education: those voters strongly preferred Gore. Health care ranked next in priority: voters who cited that issue went for Bradley. Next came the economy: Gore carried the voters who cited that issue.

Indeed, in the campaign’s final days, Gore had stressed New Hampshire’s economic renaissance since 1992, and he clearly reaped some benefits from the recovery: voters who said they were financially better off than four years ago, gave him a majority, while those who didn’t preferred Bradley.

In the Republican race, education and taxes ranked as the top concern, and voters who cited both preferred McCain. Though taxes were a central element of the Republican race here, McCain actually said little about education, which may be a hint of the secondary role that issue distinctions played in the choice for many voters.

Asked in a separate question to identify factors that influenced their vote, McCain supporters pointed mostly to his proposals on campaign finance reform and his performance in the GOP debates; Bush backers cited his tax plan, the debates and his “faith . . . in God.”

As for the vaunted Manchester Union-Leader, the staunchly conservative newspaper that endorsed Steve Forbes in the GOP race and regularly strafed McCain and Bush, only about 1 in 16 Republican voters said its endorsement was a major influence on their decision.

The other Republican contenders failed to generate much of an audience beyond the most committed conservatives. Alan Keyes drew about one-fourth and Forbes about one-fifth of the vote among those who called themselves very conservative.

But the two showed minimal appeal for more moderate voters. Though Forbes built a strong following among religious conservatives through relentless campaigning in Iowa, he did not attract many of their votes here. That doesn’t augur well for South Carolina, where he also lacks the personal networks he constructed in Iowa.