From the Union Leader and CNN:
But CNN's exit polls showed 37 percent of Republican primary voters were self-described independents, and 39 percent of them went for McCain, while 27 percent supported Romney. Romney had expected a big advantage among registered Republicans but the two broke even in that category, CNN said.
Maybe I should have just said Independent voters. Certainly there is much less reason for Democrats to be crossing over this year. I was probably being defensive after having my character impugned.
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I don't think you've got an accurate picture of the results of the NH primary. McCain would have beat Romney in NH without independent votes. And there's no reason to think that insincere democrats pretending to be independents played a role in McCain's win.
According to the info on Washington Post's elections results site (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/primaries/states/nh/r/): Total number of people who voted in Repub primary in NH = 238548.
According to the exit poll info reported by Wash Post (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/primaries/exit-polls/states/nh/r/)
37% of those were independents (=88,262).
McCain won 13% more independents than Romney (=11,474). (McCain got 40%; Romney got 27%.)
McCain bested Romney by 13,123 votes.
Therefore, the independents didn't win the night for McCain.
Besides, there's no info here to suggest that these were insincere votes. In fact, in 2008, more independents voted in the Republican primary (41% of all votes or 97,088 in 2000, compared with 37% or 88,262 in 2008.) McCain received 35,304 votes from Independents; in 2000, he got 60,195. Statistics in this paragraph from here http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/primaries/NH/results.html and http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/primaries/NH/poll.rep.html.
So I don't think you can look to NH as justification or rationalization for insincere voting.
Michael's MN cousin
Correction: Second sentence in second to last paragraph is supposed to be: In fact, in 2000, more independents voted in the Republican primary...
Michael's MN cousin
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