As presidential hopeful Patrick Buchanan eeked his way across the New Hampshire Primary's finish line, political pundits claimed they were unruffled by what many voters saw as a surprising upset.
While few analysts think Buchanan will be handed the GOP nomination at San Diego, they say his New Hampshire finish may cause voters and candidates alike to pay more attention to him.
The candidates will have just a few days to reflect upon the results in New Hampshire before the scene shifts to Delaware, Arizona, North Dakota and South Dakota.
By March 12, or "Super Tuesday," more than half of the delegates for this August's Republican convention in San Diego will be determined.
Since New Hampshire holds the first primary in the nation, the outcome of the election here is always significant, and few men have procured their party's presidential nomination without first receiving New Hampshire's stamp of approval.
Following Tuesday night's election, the conventional wisdom among most analysts is that the number of candidates vying for the Republican Party's nomination has been definitively narrowed down from eight to three -- Buchanan, Kansas Senator Bob Dole and former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander.
Buchanan garnered 27 percent of the vote, slightly ahead of Dole's 26 percent. Alexander finished a strong third at 23 percent. Publisher Steve Forbes, who lead or tied Dole in several New Hampshire polls just two weeks ago, finished a distant fourth, with 12 percent of the vote.
An expected victory
While many students at the College expressed great surprise at Buchanan's victory, analysts said his win on Tuesday night has not sent shock waves throughout the political scene.
Dennis Johnson, associate dean of the graduate school of political management at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a former political consultant, said one year ago it seemed unlikely Buchanan could win New Hampshire, but in the week before the primary, Buchanan's popularity soared.
"I wasn't surprised, because it seemed that thanks to Iowa and Louisiana there was a certain amount of anger and residual disrespect of the frontrunners, and it looked like Buchanan would do alright," he said.
Buchanan began to generate momentum when he won the Feb. 6 Louisiana caucuses and placed a strong second to Dole in the Feb. 12 Iowa caucuses.
Pete Snyder, the senior project director for Luntz Research Companies and Strategic Services, a group of Republican pollsters headed by Frank Luntz, said Buchanan's victory was not surprising because the issues central to his campaign resonate best with New Hampshirites.
"Pat Buchanan has a strong following in New Hampshire," Snyder said. "The issues he deals with -- trade and the economy -- are important to New Hampshirites, much more so than to the nation as a whole."
Buchanan proved himself to be a force in New Hampshire Republican politics in 1992, when he challenged George Bush, the sitting president, for the Republican nomination and finished a strong second to Bush by garnering 37 percent of the vote.
David Shribman '76, Washington bureau chief for The Boston Globe, said Buchanan's arguments have been "driving the race for some time, so it's not really so surprising that he should be doing so well."
But other pundits did not expect such a strong showing by Buchanan.
Government Professor James Shoch said he did not think Buchanan's themes of economic populism and nationalism would resonate to the extent they did.
Shoch said Buchanan effectively played on New Hampshirites' dissatisfaction at the state of their economy, and united this constituency with his core social conservative supporters to form a coalition of 27 percent.
A real contender?
Analysts differed over whether or not Buchanan will be able to carry his momentum into the other states, but most agreed it was unlikely he would get the GOP nomination.
Johnson said in the upcoming primaries Buchanan will not be able to get much higher than the 27 percent of the vote he got in New Hampshire.
"I don't think he can sustain the momentum," Johnson said. "He is going to be the kind of individual who is going to gain a protest vote of 20 to 25 percent throughout the country ... I don't think he is going to go any higher."
Government Professor Richard Winters said Buchanan is in a position to sustain momentum in some of the southern and western states, but predicted "it will be difficult for him to put together a coalition that achieves a plurality in larger or more diverse states."
Shoch said Buchanan's support has plateaued.
"I think Buchanan has a real ceiling," Shoch said. "His base of support is limited to angry white males in the working class, and social conservatives, which together add up to about 30 percent."
Morton Kondracke '60, executive editor of Roll Call, a twice-weekly Capitol Hill newspaper, predicted Buchanan would not get the Republican nomination, but said as long as both Dole and Alexander are in the race and continue to split the moderate vote, Buchanan will still make a strong showing in the other states.
James Pinkerton, who worked in Ronald Reagan's 1980 and 1984 campaigns and George Bush's 1988 and 1992 campaigns, said he would be surprised if Buchanan were able to win in many other states.
Pinkerton wrote a book titled "What Comes Next: The End of Big Government -- and the paradigm ahead" last fall and has an article on the decline of political parties and the rise of political consultants in the latest issue of George magazine.
He did not rule out the possibility of Buchanan continuing to accumulate delegates for the convention, though.
Others said even if Buchanan does not win the nomination, he is still likely to make his presence felt at the party's national convention, as he did in 1992.
At the GOP national convention in Houston in 1992, where Bush accepted the Republican nomination, Buchanan delivered a scathing address, in which he declared there was a cultural war going on for the soul of America. Shoch said such a production could easily be repeated this summer in San Diego.
Government Professor Constantine Spiliotes said he does not anticipate Buchanan's receiving the nomination this year, but added "he's going to control a fair number of delegates at the convention and he'll make things relatively uncomfortable for whoever the nominee is."
'Serious trouble?'
The biggest loser in Tuesday's primary was clearly Dole, who just months ago had a commanding lead in the polls, the endorsements of nearly every prominent Republican elected official in the state, and was seemingly on his way to a blowout win in New Hampshire.
Some analysts felt Dole's inability to take first place foreshadows big problems for his campaign.
Snyder, who called the Kansas Senator's loss the "big story" of the primary, characterized Dole's support as "a mile wide and an inch deep."
Johnson suggested that Dole's failure to sway New Hampshire voters represents a pattern.
"This is his third time in striking out with New Hampshire voters," Johnson said of the Senate Majority Leader, who did not win here in his campaigns in 1980 or 1988 either. "You would expect that he would have won given all the money, the organization, the backing of all the state leaders ... There was no way he could lose." Johnson said Dole's campaign is in "serious trouble now."
This primary was considered Dole's best chance to win New Hampshire, given the massive support given to him by Gov. Steve Merrill, Sen. Judd Gregg, Rep. Charlie Bass '74 and other prominent Republican officials.
Winters, though he said he felt Dole would be able to rebound eventually, said Tuesday night's results represent "a tremendous loss for Bob Dole."
He said a "gentle, graceful slide into second place" is not the kind of result one wants when he is looking for money and organizational and voter support in the upcoming primaries.
Others said the loss, while disappointing for Dole, would not weigh too heavily on the his campaign because of his superior organization and his experience of having campaigned for the Republican nomination twice before.
Shoch pointed to Dole's inability to articulate a convincing vision of the future of our country, and said Dole cannot inspire loyalty or enthusiasm among his potential supporters. But he said Dole can never be counted out because of his substantial strengths in money and organization.
Porter Mongtomery '96, a staffer in the Dole New Hampshire campaign, said "obviously we would have liked to have won but ... we're in as good a standing as we can possibly be after having lost."
Montgomery said Forbes, just two weeks ago Dole's main rival, has seen his support base rapidly erode, and added Alexander might not be able to remain in the race because his campaign is cash poor.
With these two candidates out of the race, Mongtomery said, Dole will easily triumph over Buchanan .
'Position of great opportunity'
If Buchanan was the big winner and Dole was the biggest loser on Tuesday, then Alexander appears to be the candidate with the greatest chance to gain support coming out of the New Hampshire primary.
Alexander followed up his third-place finish in Iowa on Feb. 12 -- where he won 18 percent of the vote -- with another solid third-place showing in the Granite State where he picked up 23 percent of the vote.
In the past few months, he has, in his own words, risen from "relative obscurity" to one of the three main contenders for the nomination.
Shribman said the former Secretary of Education is "in a position of great opportunity and it's really up to him to decide whether this is a blip or the beginning of a trend."
Snyder attributed Alexander's surge to a good campaign organization and a clearly defined message. Alexander, who advocates devolution of federal responsibilities to the states and supports the abolition of the Department of Education, has had a message "since day one," Snyder said.
Claiming Alexander is currently in a better position than Dole, Johnson said many Republicans are looking at Dole and saying "he couldn't come up with the big win in Iowa or New Hampshire, maybe we had better take a second look."
Pinkerton agreed Alexander's popularity is "a function of Dole's weakness," and said Alexander supporters are younger people who would otherwise support Dole.
But others were not as quick to call Alexander one of the three contenders for the nomination.
"It is not clear to me that the vote was a definitive declaration of Alexander as the alternative to Buchanan," Spiliotes said. "All his third place finish means is he'll get a closer look going into the southern primaries. He needs to win one or two to be taken seriously."
Winters said it is "really hard to speculate about Alexander's future," though he said the longer Alexander can stay in the race, the greater the pressure will be on Dole to step aside, especially if Dole cannot deliver a "knockout blow" to Buchanan.
Possible scenarios
The analysts discussed a number of possible scenarios for how the rest of the primaries and caucuses would play out.
Shoch said Alexander would eventually drop out of the race because he lacked the funds to continue, and his supporters, in order to block the nomination of Buchanan, would back Dole and propel the Senate Majority Leader to the nomination.
Kondracke said in his opinion, Dole was still the GOP favorite.
Either Dole or Alexander is likely to get the nod, Pinkerton said. He said even though Buchanan won New Hampshire, the second and third place finishers in Iowa or New Hampshire always have the potential to win any future primaries or caucuses.
For instance, Pinkerton said, during 1988, when he was working for the Bush campaign, his candidate, then the vice president, finished third in Iowa, behind Pat Robertson and Dole. But Bush rebounded in New Hampshire, and later won the nomination.
Spiliotes said the nomination would likely come down to Alexander or Dole.
Brad Davis '99, the chair of the Forbes campaign at Dartmouth, said Dole is on the decline and Buchanan does not appeal to a national audience, so he envisioned a two-man race for the nomination between Forbes and Alexander.
But at least one analyst attempted to avoid the pitfalls of punditry.
"Clinton should never sit back, light up a cigar and gloat," Johnson said. "At this time four years ago, it looked like the Democrats, whoever the nominee would be, had no chance whatsoever."
The political life-span is too short for people to say the Republican candidates would all lose to Clinton, Johnson said, because it is a long way from now until election day on Nov. 5.
Snyder a put short time frame on the Republicans' decision-making process. He said the primary and caucus process is so front-loaded -- the nominee could be determined as soon as 45 days from now, he said -- that there will be "months" for the Republicans to "patch the wounds back up."
Maintaining symbolic importance
New Hampshire has always had symbolic importance with its outstanding track record of accurately picking presidential nominees through the primary.
The Republican nominee for president has won the New Hampshire primary in every presidential election year since 1964.
The last time the Republican presidential nominee did not take the New Hampshire primary was in 1964, when GOP voters rejected both Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller '30 and instead launched a massive write-in campaign that propelled Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge to victory here. Goldwater eventually won the Republican presidential nomination that year, but lost the general election to incumbent president Lyndon B. Johnson.
But if Buchanan does not get the Republican nomination, it would mark the second time in the past two major New Hampshire primaries that winner did not go on to win the nomination of his party for the presidency.
In 1992, Clinton came in second in New Hampshire to former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas '62.
Despite the fact New Hampshire may not be as reliable a predictor of nominees in recent years, analysts said the state still has great importance.
Spiliotes said if Buchanan did not get the nomination, it would be only the second time in 30 years the primary has not been a good predictor for the Republican party. He said he is not convinced New Hampshire has lost its luster as "the great predictor."
"It's going to take another couple of primaries here ... before we see any discernible pattern," he said.
Winters said New Hampshire voters this year decided not to give a resounding endorsement to any of the candidates, and instead passed that chore on to the other states.
"When they look back at this year's nominating process I think analysts will conclude New Hampshire did a pretty good job of scrutinizing the candidates and ... couldn't come to a clear resolution, and the other states ought to be passed the chance to decide among them."
George Bruno, the former New Hampshire Democratic State Chair and current U.S. ambassador to Belize, also said the result of this year's primary did not serve its usual predictive function.
"I think the Primary was different this year in that it did not alter the Iowa mix. It confirmed Iowa and slightly shuffled the candidates," Bruno, who is currently in Belize, wrote in an electronic-mail message.
