The upcoming New Hampshire primary elections will play an important role in the developing race for the Republican presidential nomination, government professor Ronald Shaiko said in an interview with WPTZ Burlington on Jan. 3. The primary, like the Iowa caucus, will help the Republican party decide which candidate will win the nomination, as no Republican candidate has ever won the nomination without winning either New Hampshire or Iowa, according to Shaiko. The timing of the New Hampshire primary, which closely follows the Iowa caucus, means that candidates who fared well in Iowa will still be in the spotlight during the primary, Shaiko said. By the end of the primary, candidates who performed poorly are expected to drop out, narrowing the race for the nomination.
A study conducted by The Chronicle of Higher Education found that New Hampshire ranks as the nation's least-educated state legislature, with only 53.4 percent of members holding a college degree of some kind, Menlo Park Patch, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based news source, reported. California ranked first in the nation with 89.9 percent of legislators holding college degrees, though the New Hampshire legislature, composed of 424 representatives, is significantly larger than California's legislature of 120 representatives. The most popular alma mater for Californian representatives is the University of California, Los Angeles, followed by the University of California, Berkeley, with the University of California, Davis and Harvard University tied for third. Although New York ranked fourth for its college graduation percentage, it has more representatives with education levels higher than a bachelor's degree, at 56 percent of the legislature, than the California legislature, 48 percent of whose representatives hold a degree higher than a bachelor's, according to Menlo Park Patch. The study found that the five states with the highest percentage of college graduates are California, Virginia, Nebraska, New York and Texas.
