For and against: How voter dissatisfaction played out in New Hampshire

Voters, long tired with the same Biden-Trump contest, share interest in voting for someone new

Elections have moods — excitement, anticipation, elation, dread. Voters reflect that mood by casting a ballot either for a candidate or against a candidate.

The 2024 first-in-the-nation presidential primary here in New Hampshire definitely had a pall over it, with an angst that many Granite Staters went to the polls Jan. 23 to vote against Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Clearly, Biden and Trump won their respective races — Biden in the party’s unsanctioned Democratic primary and Trump in the Republican primary.

But a close look at how those votes break down is instructive in understanding just how dissatisfied voters are with the two frontrunners who will most assuredly face off again in the November general election.

“You have that same scenario that we’ve seen before where a lot of voters go to the polls in New Hampshire and elsewhere feeling like they have two bad choices,” said Dante Scala, political science professor at the University of New Hampshire and frequent commentator on presidential politics.

New Hampshire primary results

The Republican primary was the clear winner in terms of voter interest. A total of 306,872 GOP ballots were cast (with an additional 17,740 votes by absentee). Undeclared voters who chose a Republican ballot numbered 134,362, according to new numbers from the Secretary of State’s office. That means 43.8% of Republican ballots were cast by undeclared voters.

On the Democratic side, 22.1% of the ballots cast came from undeclared voters who took the Democrat ballot — 116,398 ballots cast, 25,735 of them from undeclared voters. There were 8,847 absentee ballots.

A total of 444,318 Granite Staters went to the polls on election Tuesday, roughly 51% of eligible voters, a very healthy turnout by all measures, reflecting the engagement of the local electorate.

Of those ballots cast, 43.2% voted against Biden and Trump. Here’s the math: Trump received 175,308 votes in the GOP primary, Biden got 77,061 votes in the Democrat primary. All of Biden’s votes were write-ins because, given that the Democratic National Committee doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of our primary anymore, he wasn’t listed on the ballot.

That’s a total of 252,369 votes of the 444,318 cast, or 56.8%. But a total of 191,949 votes went to others on the Democratic and Republican sides. That’s 43.2%.

The not-for-Trump result was stronger than the not-for-Biden result.

While 54.25% of the voters in the GOP primary cast a ballot for Trump, 45.75% did not.

Trump trumps again

“Trump is such a dominant figure in the Republican Party that I do think there was a clear split between moderates and conservatives in the Republican primary, according to the exit polls,” said Scala. “But I do think a lot of that you could boil down to anti-Trump and pro-Trump.”

Trump and his campaign boasted of their double-digit victory over Nikki Haley, the last Republican candidate standing. Indeed, his margin of victory was about 11 points better than Haley, just what the UNH Survey Center had surmised in its last poll going into primary day.

But added to the Haley vote in the anti-Trump column are another 8,066 votes cast for others on the ballot, such as Chris Christie (1,488), Ron DeSantis (2,223), Asa Hutchinson (106), Mike Pence (401), Vivek Ramaswamy (826), Tim Scott (189) plus others on the ballot and a variety of write-ins. The write-ins alone accounted for 1,158 votes against Trump.

Christie, DeSantis, Pence, Ramaswamy and Scott had suspended their campaigns prior to primary day, but their names were still on the ballot, giving voters an opportunity to mark their ballot for them.

The successful write-in campaign gave Biden 63.61% of the Democratic vote, compared to 36.39% cast for everyone else.

According to Scala, those votes for everyone else could be a reflection of voter anger at Biden and the Democratic National Committee for discounting the New Hampshire primary.

“The fact that Biden’s relationship with New Hampshire Democrats was troubled by his actions and the actions of the National Democratic Party with regard to the primary, I do think that presents a unique set of factors,” said Scala. “So I don’t know how that all plays out. I’m inclined to think a lot of New Hampshire Democrats will let bygones be bygones in the general election.”

Will the same be true for Trump? Will Haley voters, for instance, let bygones be bygones and vote for Trump in November?

“I think for those independent voters who decided to participate in the Republican primary, I do tend to think Biden could have those voters if a third party candidate doesn’t become a real possibility,” said Scala.

“Some of those moderate Republicans might go back home to the party eventually, but a lot of them have serious concerns about the direction of their party,” Scala added. “And some of them might be anti-Trump Republicans who’d be willing to kind of stick with Biden in the hopes that, maybe in 2028, there’ll be, you know, ‘We can recover our party, but we’re really concerned the party as Trump’s party.’”

A third-party surprise?

Third-party candidates have dotted the modern presidential landscape several cycles now.

Among the most prominent, George Wallace ran as a segregationist candidate in 1968. Richard Nixon won that election, beating Humbert Humphrey and Wallace. Ross Perot ran in 1992, losing to Bill Clinton and the Republican nominee Bob Dole. Ralph Nader ran as the nominee of the Green Party in 1996 and 2000 (losing to Clinton, then George Bush); in 2004, he ran as the nominee of the Reform Party, losing to Bush.

Scala believes the door is ajar for a third party candidate in 2024, be it from No Labels or some other political entity.

“It’ll be interesting to see whether No Labels gets its act together at some point, puts forward a candidate,” said Scala. “Come November there could be 1, 2, 3 different choices other than the main two.”

He can envision a scenario where some voters say to themselves: “I really want, most of all, to express my disapproval of the two main choices, and I don’t care how it works out.”

After caucus and primary results in Iowa and New Hampshire, it’s likely that the race for president will feature a Democrat and Republican match-up that most Americans don’t want to see.

A Reuters poll showed that about 67% of respondents said they were “tired of seeing the same candidates in presidential elections and want someone new.” But just 18% said they would not vote if Biden and Trump were their choice.

“If there’s a third-party choice that does seem different than the two main choices, I think that that could prove interesting,” said Scala.