There are a couple of things I found interesting in the recent USA TODAY/Gallup polls of Democratic and Republican voters likely to vote in the New Hampshire primary. The first was the large number of voters, Democratic and Republican, who said they might change their minds between now and the primary: 43% for the Republicans and 42% for the Democrats. That suggests there could be a certain amount of flux in the results. That means that the results of the Iowa caucuses might have some impact on the New Hampshire voters’ choices. I guess it depends on just how likely they are to change their minds.
The other thing is Democratic and Republican voters’ second choices. As their second choice Republican favored Giuliani (27%), Mitt Romney (20%), and John McCain (19%) while Democrats favored Edwards (23%), Obama (22%), and Clinton (20%).
Taken in combination those two factor may suggest that, if, for example, Edwards does as well in Iowa as I suspect he will, the Democratic primary in New Hampshire may be very close indeed.
