I’m definitely not a morning person but last Monday, at 4:30 a.m., I stood in some nondescript Chinese restaurant’s parking lot, in the freezing cold, clustered around the flatbed of a Ford in Concord to welcome the newly arrived Sen. Bernie Sanders to his next primary state. Later that day, when I woke up in the early afternoon, I watched some footage of the previous night’s event on MSNBC. One of the reporters described Sanders’ rally as “American politics at its best.”
Sure, maybe all the Sanders naysayers do have a point. Maybe the country cannot afford to pay for public college education and health insurance for all of its citizens. Regardless of this, the MSNBC announcer accurately described an incredible event. Sanders won 84 percent of the vote in the 17-29 demographic in a still-disputed victory for Hillary Clinton by the narrowest of margins, so narrow that some of the caucus votes were even decided on a literal coin flip. Sanders drew a crowd of roughly 200 people to stage an impromptu welcoming at the crack-of-dawn. Say what you will about the formerly-Independent, self-identifying “democratic socialist” senator from Vermont, but there is no denying the seemingly infectious effect he has on his millennial voter base.
Even after what Sanders called a “virtual tie” in Iowa, most polls still show Clinton comfortably ahead of him nationally. In Iowa, Sanders won the very liberal vote by 19 percentage points; unluckily for him, however, while 68 percent of Iowa caucus goers identified as liberals, only 47 percent of Democratic voters identified as such in the 2008 election. In fact, some critics see Sanders’ performance in Iowa as a harbinger for his future demise due to his inability to decisively win a state made up of his most devoted electorate.
Now, with the national spotlight turned to our state for the New Hampshire presidential primary today, Democratic primary voters have the ability to dictate the direction of our country in what some pundits think might turn into one of the landmark elections in United States history, à la the 1904 election in which the dark-horse progressive Theodore Roosevelt came out of nowhere to defeat the establishment candidate. If history is going to repeat itself in the form of Sanders beating Clinton, he will no doubt rely heavily on his millennial base.
Similar to Iowa, New Hampshire has predominantly white, liberal Democratic voters: in the 2008 election, 54 percent of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters identified as white and liberal, the second highest percentage nationally. This means that, although polls may lean heavily in Sanders’ favor, the margin of victory will be significant in deciding whether or not a win today gets portrayed in the media as an underdog upset. America loves a good underdog story, so if the media deems this an upset and sticks to the accompanying narrative, the Sanders campaign will have momentum heading into the less freindly states of Nevada and South Carolina two weeks from now.
In essence, Dartmouth students will have a chance to impact what may turn out to be a historically significant primary race. If students turn out to vote in support of Sanders and thus bring a win for his campaign, they would help Sanders increase a margin of victory that will be crucial for the next stage of the election cycle. And furthermore, Sanders is not the only candidate with a lot on the line here. Clinton has the chance for an ’08-like comeback, in which she trailed Obama by eight percent in the polls before upsetting the future president and jumpstarting a close, drawn-out campaign. On the Republican ticket, a Ted Cruz victory would likely paint him as that party’s frontrunner if he adds a victory in New Hampshire to his win in Iowa. For Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, two candidates headed in apparently opposite directions, this Tuesday could either rescue or curse their future chances for the nomination.
Regardless of party or candidate affiliation, Dartmouth students need to get out and vote on Tuesday. All eyes have turned to New Hampshire. It’s exciting, really. The future of America hangs in the balance.
