5 things past NH primary elections tell us about 2024: John Sununu, John Lynch weigh in

MANCHESTER — “Iowa picks corn and New Hampshire picks presidents,” former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu said Wednesday, echoing an old line. “Until we count our ballots on the 23rd, we’re not going to find out whether we are correcting Iowa’s mistake or just going along and replicating it.”

Past governors John Sununu, a Republican, and John Lynch, a Democrat, and former secretary of state Bill Gardner gathered at Saint Anselm College Wednesday to discuss past New Hampshire primary elections and what to expect Tuesday, Jan. 23 when the first-in-the-nation primary follows the Iowa caucus.

Here are five things we learned:

Iowa’s results don’t affect NH primary

The governors say they don’t know what will happen on Tuesday, but they know that nothing is set in stone after former President Donald Trump's dominant win over the Republican field in the Iowa caucus on Monday.

“It’s important to understand that all the hype press is giving for the Trump victory in Iowa, it doesn’t present the most difficult situation for someone who’s trying to catch someone coming out of Iowa,” said Sununu, who was governor from 1983 to 1989 and served as White House chief of staff under President George H.W. Bush.

Sununu referenced the 1988 election, where Bush lagged behind Bob Dole and Pat Robertson in Iowa, but ended up winning New Hampshire and went on to the nomination.

“Iowa had no indication and no impact on what happened in New Hampshire to Jimmy Carter,” added Lynch, who was governor from 2005 to 2013. Carter also ended up winning New Hampshire in 1976 after losing in Iowa. Same with Hillary Clinton in 2016, he said.

“Maybe it will do something dramatic or maybe it will go along with what happened in Iowa,” Sununu said. “The nice thing about living in this state is you really can’t predict it until it’s over.”

More: What's best strategy for undeclared anti-Trump voters in NH primary: Haley or Biden?

Most important ingredient in a presidential candidate is being genuine

“I think New Hampshire voters can crack through the facade of phoniness that a lot of people bring in,” Sununu said. He said many times, there isn’t much difference between candidates in how they approach the issues, “but in terms of being genuine, being capable, it’s all the personality issues I think that is the common denominator.”

Lynch cited Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush as candidates who weren’t phony. “He was clumsy enough that he was everyman,” Lynch said of Bush.

Both former governors talked about their experiences with Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter: how they knew so much about both the state and towns, and how Rosalyn sent Lynch a handwritten letter. This detail oriented and genuine approach, they said, helped Carter win.

Candidate needs to hit the ground to win in NH

Gardner, who was secretary of state from 1976 to 2022, said the New Hampshire primary in 2024 is different than most because it features two presidents, one former (Trump) and one current (Joe Biden). But Sununu doesn’t think the name value should make a difference.

“My feeling that is even the former president and the current president, if they really wanted to win the New Hampshire primary they gotta to do it the old-fashioned way and invest some time in,” he said, referring to both Biden and Trump’s lack of campaigning in the state. Biden isn't even on the ballot, though a write-in campaign is being conducted on his behalf. Sununu thinks Trump’s campaign is beginning to figure that out and will likely hold more events than originally scheduled.

In the 1988 election, Sununu said, similar to this year, New Hampshire had a snowstorm a few days after the Iowa caucus. Despite the weather, George Bush held a campaign event in Wolfeboro. Thousands of people showed up for him, and he went on to win the state, thanks to the northern counties where he spent time.

Biden will do fine, but how well is yet to be determined

Congressman Dean Phillips and author Marianne are on the Democratic ballot in New Hampshire, competing against the Biden write-in campaign.

“I don’t think Phillips is gonna get over 50%,” Lynch said. He said the write-in campaign has been working very hard and that Democrats really care about the election.

“In spite of my opposition to the decision to dismiss New Hampshire, I’m going to continue to support Joe Biden, and I’ll do that on Election Day as well,” Lynch said. “I think he’s going to do OK, but it’s hard to set a percentage in terms of the threshold he has to meet.”

Sununu thinks whether Biden wins or loses will be determined by the press and compared to how Lyndon Johnson did in 1967. Johnson won 49.7% of the vote during his write-in campaign despite Manchester and Nashua, major Johnson-supporting cities, using lever voting machines that made it difficult to write-in candidates.

“In my opinion that was astoundingly good. But the press deemed that it wasn’t good enough. It scared the hell out of Johnson and he got out of the race,” Sununu said. “I just urge people to analyze it in the context of the fact that it’s really not that easy, across the board, to get a write-in ballot.”

On the Republican side, Sununu thinks Nikki Haley has a 40-50 percent chance to win or come within one to three points of first place, enough that it would still be seen as a win.

More: Biden backers launch write-in campaign amid 2024 primary fight with New Hampshire

You can't rely on unaffiliated voters

Sununu said the independent vote is “completely misunderstood.”

“It’s not really undecided. It’s mostly people who know they are really Democrats or know they are really Republicans,” said Sununu. “Undecided in New Hampshire is not as fluid as the press makes it out to be.”

While the unaffiliated voters “drive the pollsters crazy,” he said, they won’t have a huge effect on the outcome of the election.

More: Why did Exeter woman vote topless in NH primary? State laws on what you can wear to polls

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: 2024 NH primary: John Sununu and John Lynch on what to expect