Bernie Sanders wins big: Gathers young, independent votes in N.H.
Politics
Bernie Sanders wins big: Gathers young, independent votes in N.H.
Bernie Sanders defeated his rival Hillary Clinton by an eye-popping 21 percentage points — the largest margin of victory in a contested Democratic primary in the Granite State since the start of the modern era. When Sanders announced his presidential bid in April, with a ramshackle press conference in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, almost no one in Washington, D.C., took him seriously. Clinton was supposed to be inevitable; Sanders, a Democratic socialist, was supposed to be inconsequential. Sanders won the New Hampshire primary by focusing on income inequality, campaign finance reform, universal health care and free public college education.
Young people and the independent, undeclared voters — they came out and they made the crucial difference in this election.
Karthik Ganapathy, Sanders’ New Hampshire communications director
When Sanders finally took to the stage, about an hour after the results were announced, he characterized his victory as a message to the nation’s elites. The Clinton campaign was quick to feed reporters a prewritten “strategy memo” that downplayed the significance of Iowa and New Hampshire, and argued that Clinton would defeat Sanders in the contests ahead, where voters are less culturally homogeneous. In her speech, Clinton hit a popular theme — that Sanders is overpromising with his talk of “political revolution.”
