Only three presidents have been elected without benefit of having won the New Hampshire primary: Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. So the only three presidents to pull of this feat are the last three presidents. It looks very likely that that streak will run to four now that the 2016 New Hampshire Primaries were won by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
I. The Big Picture: Hillary is More Likely Than Not to be the Next President.
Bernie beat Hillary lost by 22 points. That is an ass-whopping and coming off of their virtual tie in Iowa, there is much reason for Sanders to be encouraged. The next states to vote for the Democrats are Nevada, which should be very close and South Carolina, which Hillary is expected to win comfortably. The early states are likely to result in two ties and two blowouts in opposite directions.
Hillary is likely to survive that. The predictions market at predictwise.com gives here an 82% chance of being the nominee. And they give the Democratic nominee a 61% chance of winning the general election. If you multiply those possibilities, she has a 50.002% chance of being the next elected president of the United States.
I like her chances even better than that. The theory of my 2016 posts has been that the prediction markets are underestimating the Democrats' prospects. Instead of being a 60% favorite, I think the Democratic nominee should be more like a 2 to 1 favorite at about 66%. I think the market is about right on her being the nominee, so .82 *. 67 is right about 55 percent. But a lot has to happen before then and we have two very interesting races unfolding for the weeks and months ahead.
So here's some fun with math. Here are the probabilities of each candidate becoming president, based solely on the two prediction markets on predictwise.com:
Clinton 51%, Trump 22%, Sanders 10%, Rubio 9% Cruz 6%, Bush 5%, Kasich 1%.
And here are the most likely candidate match-ups for the general election:
| Match-up Probability | Clinton | Sanders |
| Trump vs..... | 39.0% | 8.0% |
| Rubio vs.... | 18.3% | 3.7% |
| Cruz vs.... | 13.3% | 2.7% |
| Bush | 10.0% | 2.0% |
| Kasich | 1.7% | 0.3% |
II. The GOP State of the Race.
Trump dominated New Hampshire. Before the primary I was not sure if he could get over 30% of the vote. He blew that away with 35.3%. He more than doubled his nearest competitor, John Kasich. Kasich had a great night too, but only got 16% of the vote in a state that he campaigned in almost full time. Ted Cruz also had reason to be happy with a third place finish.
Perhaps the most significant result is that Jeb Bush beat out Marco Rubio for 4th place by just over 1,000 votes. I don't think Jeb would have dropped out if he finished 5th, but the 5th place finish cemented the image of Rubio coming off the rails because of his terrible debate performance.
South Carolina will decide a lot for the Republicans. Trump is very likely to win and that will mean that his appeal is not just a quirk of New Hampshire. Cruz seems like a lock to finish second, but if Rubio somehow passes him, then the narrative will be that he overcame his New Hampshire slip up. He will then head into Nevada and Super Tuesday with some momentum.
But Jeb Bush is the most interesting story. He did terribly in Iowa and middling in New Hampshire. Between the two states he has received less than nine percent of the votes. But he is doubling-down on this effort and has recruited his brother George W. Bush to record commercials and campaign for him. This is a classic short-term decision based on W's inexplicably high approval ratings among South Carolina Republican voters. So they seem to think he can be of help in the SC primary. But who is really persuaded by learning that a candidate is supported by his sibling? And if Bush somehow does well enough in SC to continue his campaign and be nominated, those commercials will just be used against him by the Democrats. So yes, a Bush has once again committed to a strategy without contemplating an exit strategy.
III. My Updated Forecast.
I remain bullish on Rubio, relative to the predictions market. But I think this has now become a pretty close race between Trump, Cruz and Rubio. Kasich is also in better shape because I think he benefits from Rubio's stumble. I give Bush a 5% chance mostly because he has the resources to compete.
This chart lists some relevant numbers for the Republican race. The IA&NH column reflects the share of each candidate's votes among the remaining candidates. (Votes for Paul, Huckabee, etc are not included in the math.) The Predictwise column is their current marketshare to be the nominee. The last two columns refer to my personal forecast. The yellow column reflects where it was before New Hampshire and the orange is my current forecast.
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