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By Ronald Brownstein, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Jan. 11, 2008

This could go on for a while.

That was the overriding message from the dramatic comeback victories in the New Hampshire primary by Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Combined with the outcomes of the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire results leave the parties confronting similar situations. Each side faces the prospect of an extended nomination fight between candidates who have established clear demographic strongholds, but have not yet demonstrated enough strength to dislodge their opponents from their strongholds or to unite all the divergent elements of their party's coalition.

"If you look at the results that we have in, you have to say that there is a growing likelihood that this will go on past February 5," said GOP strategist Terry Nelson, the former campaign manager for McCain. "The underlying dynamic is that there is no candidate yet who has unified their party."

The patterns of allegiance for the leading candidates appear much more firmly defined in the Democratic than the Republican race. But on both sides, the leading contenders are drawing from such distinct pools of support that the underlying ideological and demographic characteristics of the next states on the calendar may do more to decide the results than will the evolution of the daily argument between the candidates.

That's especially true in the Democratic contest. In Iowa, Barack Obama showed strength across virtually all segments of his party. But the New Hampshire results re-established the mirror-image portrait that had characterized polling on the race through 2007. In New Hampshire, Obama led among younger, well-educated, and less partisan voters, especially men. Clinton won among older voters, partisan Democrats, and those without college education, especially women. John Edwards drew about evenly from both of those camps, but not at a level that could threaten either Clinton or Obama.

If these patterns hold, the two leaders could trade victories for weeks, as the race rumbles through states that tilt either toward the upscale "wine track" voters who favor Obama, or the downscale "beer track" voters who have been Clinton's foundation. "You are going to have this drag out for a while because as you go from one state to another, the balance tips between them depending on the demographics of the state," says veteran Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, who is neutral in the race. Even so, after Clinton's New Hampshire surprise, Obama may face somewhat more pressure to expand his coalition than Clinton will, because her strongest groups represent a larger share of the vote in more places than his do.

Although the Republican race is not as defined, some dynamics have emerged. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, runs well with evangelical Christians, but his support beyond that group registers in trace amounts. McCain remains a magnet for independents and moderate Republicans, but he faces resistance from partisan Republicans and conservatives -- just as he did in his unsuccessful bid for the nomination in 2000. Mitt Romney has demonstrated the greatest breadth of support -- but in not enough depth to win anywhere larger than Wyoming.

Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani haven't shown much of a pulse, though Giuliani may get another chance in Florida on January 29 if no one else establishes lasting momentum. The best opportunity to do that will come in the January 19 GOP primary in South Carolina, the state that has effectively settled every contested Republican presidential nomination since 1980. "We have a few more preliminaries in the Republican race before we get to the finals," says Ken Duberstein, a former chief of staff for President Reagan. In fact, after the twin New Hampshire earthquakes, it may take several more contests before either race settles back entirely into focus.

The Republicans
McCain's comeback victory in New Hampshire resurrected a campaign that had been left for dead last summer. But the win left the senator from Arizona facing much the same problem he did after he beat George W. Bush in New Hampshire in 2000 -- with one significant difference.

Just as in 2000, McCain won decisively among moderate and independent voters in New Hampshire. But the final results in the New Hampshire exit poll conducted by Edison/Mitofsky showed that very conservative voters preferred Romney over McCain by more than 2-to-1. The results among Republicans are somewhat muddled: According to the exit poll, voters who said they are legally registered as Republicans slightly preferred McCain over Romney. But among voters who identified themselves as Republicans -- the measure more often cited -- Romney and McCain essentially tied.

Republican Contests: The Demographics The GOP faces the prospect of an extended nomination fight between candidates who have yet to demonstrate enough strength to dislodge their opponents from their strongholds or unite divergent elements.

Either way, those results echoed McCain's performance in 2000, when he ran just even with Bush among New Hampshire Republicans and conservatives. McCain then failed to win the 2000 nomination because he ultimately could not attract enough core Republicans in other states. In states with Republican electorates that were more conservative than New Hampshire's -- such as South Carolina, California, Florida, Georgia, and Missouri -- Bush routinely beat McCain among both Republicans and conservatives by at least 2-to-1.

Once again, McCain's most urgent challenge is to expand his appeal among those core Republican constituencies, because few other states are tailored as precisely to his strengths as is New Hampshire. Conservatives represented just 55 percent of New Hampshire Republican voters on Tuesday, according to exit polls. That's lower than in almost any state outside the Northeast.

Likewise, voters who identified themselves as independents (as opposed to those legally registered as independents) cast nearly four in 10 of the Republican ballots in New Hampshire, according to the exit poll. That's a higher percentage than independents contributed in 2000, the last contested GOP presidential race, in almost any other key state -- from South Carolina and Florida to New York and California. The big exception is Michigan, where independents and Democrats actually cast a majority of the ballots in the 2000 Republican presidential primary; a large independent vote could again boost McCain in that state's January 15 primary.

But to win most other pivotal states, McCain will have to perform better with Republicans. Michael Dennehy, a senior adviser to McCain's campaign, says that should be easier this time because McCain isn't facing a rival with as commanding an appeal to core Republicans as Bush enjoyed in 2000.

Indeed, no 2008 Republican candidate has yet displayed broad and deep support. The strength that Huckabee demonstrated among evangelical voters in Iowa and New Hampshire should make him a formidable competitor in states where religious conservatives cluster, such as South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Texas (where about one-third of Republican voters in 2000 identified themselves as members of the Religious Right). Huckabee's prospects in those states will further improve if Thompson continues to fade -- removing a competitor for social conservatives' votes -- and if McCain, Romney, and even Giuliani continue to divide the support of more-secular Republicans.

But among voters who did not identify themselves as born-again Christians, Huckabee won just 14 percent in Iowa and 6 percent in New Hampshire. Unless he can improve those numbers, most GOP analysts believe, he won't be able to compete in the big states outside the South that have few religious conservatives or to grow into a true competitor for the nomination.

Romney has displayed the broadest appeal among the Republicans, finishing second in Iowa and New Hampshire, and attracting meaningful backing in both states from independents and Republicans, conservatives and moderates. But he hasn't generated enough support to win anywhere outside of Wyoming; and the upcoming contest in Michigan, where his father, George Romney, served as governor, could determine whether voters still view him as viable in the showdowns looming in South Carolina and Florida (on January 29). "With every state that goes by without a win ... it becomes harder for him to get a win," Nelson says.

Giuliani faces the same problem, only more so. If the race remains jumbled, many Republicans believe that he will get a final opportunity to boost his candidacy in Florida, where he has campaigned heavily. But if Huckabee or McCain emerge from South Carolina with significant momentum (among evangelicals or moderates, respectively), Giuliani could be left on the runway in Florida as well.

The Democrats
Most of the contested Democratic presidential races since 1968 have come down to one contender each from the "wine" and "beer" tracks. The beer track candidate has typically attracted economically strained voters without college degrees who tend to be somewhat more conservative on social and foreign-policy issues; the wine track contender has assembled a coalition centered on better-off, college-educated voters with fewer material concerns and more-liberal social and foreign-policy views. Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore have fit into the first group; Eugene McCarthy, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, and Bill Bradley into the second. Each time, the downscale candidate has beaten the upscale contender.

Democratic Contests: The Demographics The top contenders are drawing from such distinct pools of support that the upcoming results may turn less on the evolution of the daily argument than on the next state's underlying ideological characteristics.

Through the first two contests in this cycle, exit polls show signs that the race between Clinton and Obama is re-creating that pattern, with Clinton in the Humphrey-Mondale role and Obama cast as Hart or Bradley (both of whom recently endorsed him). To underscore the picture, Clinton even recently jabbed Obama with the famous gibe that Mondale (who has endorsed her) directed at Hart: "Where's the beef?" The new twist is that Clinton, in most polls, runs more strongly among women than men.

In Iowa, Obama dominated upscale voters while beating Clinton or running even with her among most of the groups presumed to be her base -- partisan Democrats, voters earning $50,000 a year or less, even women. Obama remained strong among upscale voters in New Hampshire. But in the Granite State, Clinton restaked her claim to those core Democratic constituencies, beating him by double digits among women and Democrats, and by 8 percentage points among voters without college degrees. She defeated him soundly among seniors in both states.

If Clinton can maintain that coalition, it should favor her in many states between the coasts where college graduates constitute only a minority of the Democratic electorate, such as Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, which vote on February 5. His pattern of support should benefit him in such affluent coastal states as Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Virginia, where college graduates represent a majority of Democratic voters.

Veteran Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who is unaffiliated in the race, says that Obama, though capable of winning many states, now faces a more pressing need than Clinton to expand his coalition, especially with economic issues rising in prominence for Democratic voters. "She is winning a much more bread-and-butter coalition," Greenberg says. "The rise of the economy makes it more urgent that he expand [his appeal] if he is going to win this."

Still, Obama has financial, organizational, and personal assets that exceed those of any of his upscale predecessors. First, he demonstrated an ability in Iowa to compete for downscale voters, and even in New Hampshire he actually carried men without college degrees (while Clinton dominated with non-college-educated women, consistently her strongest group). Obama received another boost among working-class voters when he was endorsed on Wednesday by the Culinary Workers Union, whose support could prove insurmountable in the January 19 Nevada caucuses.

Second, as Carrick notes, Obama is strongest with the elements of the Democratic coalition -- younger voters, independents, upscale "knowledge workers" -- that are growing the fastest. He has compounded that advantage by demonstrating an enormous capacity to increase turnout among those voters. Such surges in participation, Greenberg says, might allow Obama to surprise in some lunch-bucket states that now appear unattainable for him.

Most important, Obama has a far greater appeal to African-Americans than candidates such as Hart or Bradley did. That could deny Clinton a key element of the coalition that has sustained previous downscale candidates and could make Obama the favorite in less-affluent Southern states that might otherwise prefer her. The first contest that will test that dynamic comes on January 26 in South Carolina, where pre-New Hampshire polls showed African-Americans (who constitute nearly half the Democratic vote) moving rapidly toward Obama.

The Clinton camp is hoping that Latino voters, who gave Bill Clinton high marks and who are casting a growing number of votes in such Southwestern states as Arizona and Colorado, will help her offset Obama's advantage among African-Americans. To counter Obama's consistent strength among college-educated men, Clinton will also probably need to continue winning college-educated women -- a key cross-pressured constituency -- as she did in New Hampshire.

As a place where many of these demographic trends collide -- and the one big February 5 state where neither Obama nor Clinton enjoys a home-field advantage -- California looms as a potentially pivotal showdown. The Democratic electorate there is heavily female, but also mostly college-educated; Latinos will vote in large numbers, but independents will probably turn out in even larger ones; Bill Clinton was radiantly popular there, but the state, as Carrick says, "is always very attracted by new and independent and change."

The Obama camp, as one senior adviser put it, believes "if we beat the Clintons in California ... then she's done. It's her last stand." That could be right. But Clinton supporters are already pointing to such beer-track states as Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania that vote after February 5.

Which brings us back to where we started: This could go on for a while.

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