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On Tuesday night, Donald Trump took his battle for border wall funding to primetime TV, but Democrats refused to even acknowledge there was a border “crisis” to battle over.  In fact, listening to the three speakers, it was hard to tell they were discussing the same topic.

President Trump addressed the issue of the ongoing government shutdown briefly, but spent most of his time talking about the surge of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers crossing the borders, as well as the negative impacts of illegal immigration.

“In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 violent killings,” the president said. “Day after day, precious lives are cut short by those who have violated our borders.

“In California, an Air Force veteran was raped, murdered and beaten to death with a hammer by an illegal alien with a long criminal history. In Georgia, an illegal alien was recently charged with murder for killing, beheading and dismembering his neighbor. In Maryland, MS-13 gang members who arrived in the United States as unaccompanied minors were arrested and charged last year after viciously stabbing and beating a 16-year-old girl.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, on the other hand, made vague references to Democrats supporting border security while opposing what Schumer called an “ineffective, unnecessary border wall” and talking mostly about government workers and their families hurt by the shutdown.

“The fact is: President Trump has chosen to hold hostage critical services for the health, safety and well-being of the American people and withhold the paychecks of 800,000 innocent workers across the nation – many of them veterans,” Speaker Pelosi said.

“There is no excuse for hurting millions of Americans over a policy difference. Federal workers are about to miss a paycheck. Some families can’t get a mortgage to buy a new home. Farmers and small businesses won’t get loans they desperately need,” added Sen. Schumer.

Liberal groups like the League of Women Voters joined in: “The real threat to the safety and security of Americans is the loss of paychecks for hundreds of thousands of hard-working public servants during the ongoing shutdown,” they said in a statement.

So who carried the day? “Judging by the comments from both sides, we’re no closer to ending this impasse,” Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies told InsideSources. Vaughan, who supports stricter immigration enforcement, said that Trump “did a good job promoting border security, but I wish he’d spent more time explaining why there’s a crisis.”

“As long as we have policies that allow people who make asylum claims–claims they know are almost certain to be rejected–to be released into the country if they have a child with them, we’re encouraging desperate people to risk the lives of children. That’s the ‘immoral’ part  that Speaker Pelosi won’t fix,” Vaughan said.

President Trump echoed that sentiment in what was probably the most memorable line of the evening:

“Some have suggested a barrier is immoral. Then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences and gates around their homes? They don’t build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside. The only thing that is immoral is for the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized.”

While President Trump and the Democrats mostly talked past each other, there was one clear area of disagreement. President Trump insists that there is, in fact, a “crisis” at the southern border, while both Pelosi and Schumer referred to it as Trump’s “manufactured crisis.”  Who’s right?

According to the Washington Post, “2,000 unauthorized migrants who are being taken into federal custody each day” at the Mexico border.  Another anti-Trump outlet, Vox.com says: “More families crossed the US-Mexico border without papers in November 2018 than in any month since the Department of Homeland Security started tracking family apprehensions separately.”

But the final judgment belongs to the voters, and according to a Morning Consult poll released the day of the speech, they are with President Trump on the “crisis” question.  The poll found that 42 percent describe the current situation as a “crisis” and 37 percent say it’s “not a crisis but a problem,” while just 12 percent agree with the Democrats that there’s no problem at all.

“This is why Trump may have won the night. Democrats are still denying there’s a problem. Americans can see people rushing the border and climbing the fences, they see the coverage of the overcrowded border facilities. Of course there’s a problem–a major one,” Vaughan said.

Reports of Donald Trump’s demise have been greatly slightly exaggerated. At least in the Granite State.

In the newest state-by-state polling from Morning Consult, the president’s approval is just one-point shy of his all-time New Hampshire high, and his overall approval is the best it’s been since May of 2017. And while Trump is still underwater with Granite State voters, he has managed to make up more than half that gap in just three months.

When Trump was first sworn in, his New Hampshire poll number’s were 45 percent approve, 44 percent disapprove–the only time in the past two years he’s been above water with Granite Staters in the Morning Consult monthly polling.  In fact, in the fall of 2017 Trump fell underwater by a whopping -19 percent and as recently as this past September, he was underwater by -17 percent.

But in just three months, President Trump has gotten his approval rating back up to 44 percent approve/52 percent disapprove,  and he has cut his negative approval margin to -8 points.  Not great, but his margin is better than President Obama’s in October of 2011, for example (-12), though Obama was at -3 in New Hampshire around this point in his first term.

“Armchair political analysts love to talk about Trump being a one-term President because he is unpopular. This shows his numbers continue to rise and he will very likely be in the same spot Obama was when he began his re-election,” says longtime NH GOP strategist Mike Dennehy.  “Bottom line: anyone who counts out Donald Trump and ignores his ability as a candidate does so at their own risk of looking foolish.”

While New England remains America’s most deep-blue region (the six states have a total of ONE Republican in Congress–Sen. Susan Collins of Maine), there’s an interesting geographic divide: In Maine (45/51 percent) and New Hampshire, Trump’s numbers are at or above his national average of 44/52 percent; but in the other four states, Trump’s numbers are far lower.  Massachusetts and Vermont are tied with California as the states with the lowest Trump approval rating (33 percent), with Connecticut and Rhode Island at a dismal 38 percent.

(DC isn’t a state and is also in a league of its own when it comes to Trump hatred. His December numbers in the District are an abysmal 17 percent approve/79 percent disapprove.)

Meanwhile, Morning Consult also found an 84 percent approval rating among GOP voters, which makes a serious primary challenge very difficult to mount.   The NHGOP is certainly on board: “As our economy continues to soar and as Democrats continue to move further and further to the left, with talk of 70% and higher tax rates, Granite Staters will further support President Trump and the Republicans who have delivered such a strong economy,” says NHGOP Comms Director Joe Sweeney.

Soon-to-be Utah Senator Mitt Romney’s op-ed attack on President Donald Trump got a lot of attention, but it didn’t answer the key question: What does Mitt want?

“He doesn’t ‘want’ anything,” longtime Romney ally and advisor Jim Merrill told InsideSources on Wednesday. “He’s just doing what he thinks is right.”

Romney’s opinion piece in Wednesday’s Washington Post decried President Trump’s character (“presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring”) and Mitt pledged to “speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”  Tough talk–but what does it mean?

According to Romney, what it doesn’t mean a primary challenge. “No,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper who asked him about a 2020 POTUS run. “You may have heard I ran before. I’ve had that experience.”

So why release the op-ed?  It’s certainly not a message GOP voters–who still overwhelmingly support President Trump–want to hear. On talk radio Wednesday, callers from across the nation and from his former home state of Massachusetts expressed their anger with the 2012 GOP POTUS nominee. “He should be loyal to Trump–period!” one caller told national talk host Hugh Hewitt Wednesday morning. “Every Republican needs to support President Trump.”

On Boston’s WRKO, which serves vote-rich southern New Hampshire, a Republican called Romney a “two-faced, back-stabbing snake.”

Stephen Stepanek, the likely incoming NHGOP chairman, isn’t much kinder. “Trump is out fighting for Americans and Republicans like Mitt Romney aren’t standing with him like they should. When it gets nasty and the Democrats start attacking, they aren’t there in the trenches,” Stepanek told NHJournal.

“When the going gets tough, Mitt gets going,” Stepanek says.

Mitt has even annoyed some family members, with his niece (and GOP Chairwoman) Ronna Romney McDaniel tweeting: “For an incoming Republican freshman senator to attack @realdonaldtrump as their first act feeds into what the Democrats and media want and is disappointing and unproductive.”

Not that Romney’s prospects in a primary against Trump were strong before the Wednesday papers hit. In a Suffolk poll of New Hampshire voters released last May, Trump was handily beating Romney 63-28 percent, similar to his 66-23 percent margin over outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich, though better than the projected 72-15 percent beatdown he’d give former AZ Sen. Jeff Flake.

One theory is that Romney wants to establish himself as the leader–not just a member–of the loyal GOP opposition to Trumpism. One longtime GOP activist, however, told InsideSources that Romney wrote on the eve of his entrance in the US Senate in order to “get him in the conversation about 2020. He’s clearly got it on his mind.”

But as Merrill, a key GOP player in New Hampshire politics and longtime Romney ally, pointed out, Romney was already there.

“He doesn’t need to interject himself into the conversation, he’s already in that conversation.  Mitt Romney is a leader in the party and he’s going to be a leader in the Senate,” Merrill said. “When people start thinking about alternatives to President Trump, his name is always going to come up.

“Which is why calling Mitt a ‘freshman senator’ was so unnecessary. Nobody looks at Mitt Romney that way,” Merrill said.

For his part, President Trump doesn’t appear to be worried, quipping that “If he fought [President Obama in 2016] the way he fights me, I’m telling you, he would have won the election.” Trump pointed out that he endorsed Romney “and he thanked me profusely.” If there’s a potential political foe keeping Donald Trump awake at night, it’s not Mitt Romney.

So the question remains: What was the purpose for releasing the op-ed?  According to Ryan Williams of FP1 Strategies (and a former Romney spokesperson), it’s all about timing.

“Romney has said all these things about [Trump] before. The reason for writing this now is because December was a bad month for Donald Trump. Romney’s been looking for a big moment to speak out. This is the moment,” Williams said.

Both Williams and Merrill are actively involved in GOP politics and both reject the premise that the op-ed is related to a POTUS bid.  Instead, they told InsideSources they believe Romney’s primary motivation is to lay the groundwork for how he plans to work with the president in the future.

“Read that paragraph about how he would work with Trump like he would with any president, it’s all there,” Williams said. He also believes Romney’s op-ed avoided personal attacks on the president. “He wasn’t gratuitously attacking President Trump, he was pointing out how character effects our relationships with our allies, how willing people are to work with you on policy.”

The bottom line, according to Jim Merrill:  “Mitt Romney didn’t need a political motivation to write this. He was doing what he thought is the right thing.”

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who just survived a massive blue wave that handed control of the legislature to the Democrats, has announced he opposes a proposal to have the state party openly support President Trump in the 2020 primary.

A vocal group of Republicans, led by Trump supporters state Rep. Fred Doucette and Windham town selectman Bruce Breton, are promoting a rule change allowing state party officials to promote incumbent Republican presidents in the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation (FITN) primary.

“Whether it’s President Trump or President XYZ, it’s the same,” Doucette told NHJournal. “Republicans work too hard to win the White House to sit back whenever an incumbent Republican is being challenged.”

Gov. Sununu does not agree.

“Whether it’s a primary for the New Hampshire House or the White House, the New Hampshire State Republican Committee must remain neutral in primaries,” Gov. Sununu said in a statement released to NHJournal. “After hard-fought primaries, the State Party is the vehicle to unite Republicans, and that is hard to accomplish if they try and tilt the scales for any candidate.”

Gov. Sununu did not mention the other commonly-made argument against ending the NHGOP’s neutrality policy: The risk it might pose to New Hampshire’s precarious position at the front of the line in electoral politics.

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The new Morning Consult poll of President Trump’s state-by-state approval ratings for November show that, while the president remains unpopular in New Hampshire, his numbers here have edged up slightly.  In fact, New Hampshire–which long had a more negative few of the president than the nation as a whole–is now close to the national polling average on the Trump presidency.

Trump’s November numbers in New Hampshire are 42 percent approval/55 percent disapproval among registered voters a net – 13.  In September those numbers were 40-57 percent, a net -17 percent. In September of 2017, Trump was underwater by 19 points--quite a turnaround for a candidate who lost New Hampshire to Hillary Clinton by just 0.4 percent of the vote a year earlier.

By comparison to New Hampshire’s 42/55, Morning Consult put Trump’s national average at 43 approve/52 disapprove, a 9-point deficit. So while Trump is still less popular in New Hampshire (hardly a surprise in deep-blue, anti-Trump New England), the gap between the Granite State and the rest of the nation has narrowed.

Trump’s numbers across most of New England are abysmal, ranging from -16 in Rhode Island to -25 in Vermont. The notable exception in Maine, where Trump’s under water by just 9 points, matching the national average.

So in a state where the incumbent Republican president is unpopular and Democrats just won a crushing victory, how should the NHGOP respond?

Longtime Republican strategist Mike Dennehy tells NHJournal that how Trump governs in the new era will be important:

“People will be paying very close attention to how Trump interacts with the new Democrat Senate Majority Leader and the Democrat Speaker,” Dennehy said.  “And in similar fashion, people will be looking to see how Governor Sununu gets along with the new Democrat majorities in the State House.  People are looking for action, but the current political environment doesn’t appear to allow for it so it will take strong leadership at the top.”

Dave Carney, another veteran NHGOP consultant, says “President Trump is in a decent position today, but in this new political world 18 months is like five lifetimes. The world will change many time before the electoin rolls along.”

Carney warns that both Republicans and Democrats in the Granite State should avoid overreaching when it comes to Trump and 2020, for the sake of the First In The Nation primary.

“That means not trying to tilt the tables in the primary,” Carney told NHJournal.  “New Hampshire is unique in that anyone can run for president and get a fair hearing from our voters.  Any perception that the game is rigged will help the other states undercut our position.”

“The people of New Hampshire should not underestimate how many other states want to take our FITN status away from us,” Carney said.

Last June, just five months into his presidency, Donald Trump was underwater with New Hampshire voters by -10 in Morning Consult’s monthly state-by-state polling.

After a year of Mueller investigations, the Stormy Daniels sturm und drang, and Trump’s torrential tweet storms, what’s happened to the president’s approval rating in the Granite State?

They’ve gone from underwater by 10 points to…underwater by 11.  In the updated Morning Consult polling released today, Trump’s popularity (or lack thereof) is virtually unchanged–43 percent approve, 54 percent disapprove–after a year of presidential soap opera and anti-Trump media coverage.

The June number is  a recovery from where Trump was in the winter (-17 in February), but he’s still down over the course of his presidency. It’s hard to remember, but when President Trump first took office, more New Hampshire voters approved of him than disapproved,  45-44 percent.

Is his baseline permanently below 50 percent because he’s a Republican?  Or because voters are just in anti-incumbent mood? Apparently not, based Morning Consult polling of Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.

Last March, Sununu’s ratings were a solid 57 percent approve, 23 percent disapprove. In March 2018, the most recent update from Morning Consult, Sununu’s approval advantage had grown to 63-21–in a state whose entire D.C. delegation is Democratic and that Hillary carried (albeit narrowly) in 2016.

As a recent Concord Monitor story put it: “Four Months To Election Day, Sununu Has History and Poll Numbers On His Side.”

Donald Trump… not so much.

The good news for Republicans is that Trump doesn’t have to face the New Hampshire voters again for another two years. The bad news is that presidential approval ratings tend to be a significant predictor of midterm performance.

Can Trump narrow this gap between now and November? Absolutely. And if Democrats keep up the extreme rhetoric on issues like abortion, or Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, they may give the GOP a boost.

But when the Trump trend is essentially flat over the previous year, it’s hard to imagine a big 1o-point breakout in the next four months.

In the wake of the shocking suicides of celebrities like Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade comes word that suicide rates are rising across the US.  According to new data from the CDC, suicide rates rose in every state except Nevada.  And one of the states with the highest increase in suicide deaths is New Hampshire.

According to the CDC, New Hampshire’s suicide rate jumped 48.3 percent from 1999 to 2016–the third-highest increase in the U.S.  Suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people in New Hampshire and eighth overall.

“Suicide rates in the United States have risen nearly 30% since 1999, and mental health conditions are one of several factors contributing to suicide,” the CDC report says. “Examining state-level trends in suicide and the multiple circumstances contributing to it can inform comprehensive state suicide prevention planning.”

New Hampshire does have a State Suicide Prevention Council and a State Suicide Prevention Plan. However, it also has one of America’s worst opioid-abuse rates and this may be contributing to the spike in suicide deaths.

According to the Washington Post, “the CDC has calculated that suicides from opioid overdoses nearly doubled between 1999 and 2014, and data from a 2014 national survey showed that individuals addicted to prescription opioids had a 40 percent to 60 percent higher risk of suicidal ideation. Habitual users of opioids were twice as likely to attempt suicide as people who did not use them.”

Will suicide become the “opioid addiction” of the next political cycle? President Trump, who focused on the opioid epidemic before any other national politician during the 2016 campaign, has already begun talking about suicide–particularly among veterans. But the issue is rarely mentioned in either the the New Hampshire governor’s race or the campaigns for New Hampshire’s two  congressional seats.

That may all change soon.

The “Politics and Eggs” breakfast at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics is one of the compulsory events in Granite State politics for anyone considering a presidential run.  Conservative journalist and national leader of the #NeverTrump movement, Bill Kristol, will be making an appearance–and firing up the 2020 rumor mill–on Wednesday, May 23rd.

NHJournal’s Michael Graham caught up with Kristol at one of his Harvard Yard haunts on the eve of his speech for a quick Q&A:

MG: My first question for you is this: Is Bill Kristol coming to “Politics and Eggs” to formally announce his candidacy in the 2020 presidential race?

BK:  It’s tempting, it’s tempting. But then I’d be laughed out of New Hampshire and I’d be slipping back across the border to Massachusetts in about 12 minutes. So I think I won’t do that.

I’m just talking about my analysis of the political situation. It’s always great to be in New Hampshire because people here are so interested in national politics, and they follow it much more closely than almost any other state because they’re so conscious of their “First in the Nation” primary. And I do think the fact that independents can vote in either primary–and so many New Hampshire voters are independents–means they tend to follow both parties. In some states the Republicans follow Republican stories, and the Democrats have the Democratic stories. In New Hampshire, everyone follows everything.

MG: Which potential 2020 candidate best matches the mood of the Democratic electorate?

BK:  I think there are several moods going at once, which is why it’s complicated. There’s obviously a ‘We hate, loathe and despise Trump and we will reward the person who hates, loathes and despises him the most’ [mood].  There’s also a ‘Look, we’ve got a win’ [mood], with Democrats saying ‘We cannot afford to lose to this guy and, incidentally, we lost because we were out of touch with parts of middle America. Some of those concerns were legitimate, and some of those concerns are traditional Democratic concerns–stagnant wages and stuff like that–and so we need somebody who can speak to them.’

That leads you in two pretty different directions.

The conventional wisdom among Republicans in Washington is the Left has all the energy. Everything’s going Left. The empirical evidence so far in the primaries is a little mixed, I would say. Some moderates have won primaries. Some Lefties have won some primaries, and some have just been extremely close like the Nebraska [NE-2] primary. So I’m sort of open-minded about that debate on the Democratic side.

MG: What about Republicans?  Trump’s approval is back in the upper 80s, approaching 90 percent among Republicans. Of those Republicans who are dissatisfied–maybe they’re reluctant Trump supporters, whatever. Are they angry at Trump, or do the just want their party to go in a different direction?

BK:  I think Trump supporters–let’s just say it’s 80, 85 percent of the Republicans–are split into two categories: Half of them, some 40 percent of the Republican Party, are Trump loyalists. They believe in him. They are proud to have voted for Him. They hate his enemies and they like the fact that he’s shaking things up.  But about half of Trump supporters are reluctant Trump supporters. They voted for someone else in the primary–Bush or Cruz or Rubio.  They mostly voted for Trump in the general election because of Hillary and judges and so forth.

They support some of the things Trump has done, but they’re not Trump loyalists and I think they’re open to the following argument, one which you can’t really make now, you have to make it the day after the midterms:

It goes like this: ‘You voted for Trump. We’re not gonna criticize that. You support a lot of things he does. You think a lot of the criticisms of him are unfair. We’re not going to quarrel with that.  But–do you really want to do this for another four years?

It’s a little crazy. It’s a little chaotic. He comes with some downside risks. In foreign policy and and other things, maybe you could just like pocket the gains and get a more normal, so to speak,  Republican or Conservative.’

I think that message would have–could have– more appeal after Election Day this year. Right now it sounds like, ‘Well, you’re just anti-Trump. We’ve got to rally to Trump, we’ve got to defeat the Democrats.’  But I think November 7th [the day after the midterms], everything changes.  Because the question becomes not a retrospective question of were you right to vote for trump or his critics, or ‘what about Hillary?’ It becomes a prospective question. What do you want going forward?

MG: Last question: The Democratic ticket that you think Republicans should be the most afraid of in 2020?

BK: That’s a good question. These things are actually harder to predict.  I’m inclined to give the conventional answer, which I think is right, which is the more moderate the candidate Democrats nominate, the easier it is to win back some Republican voters and independents.  I guess I have the kind of conventional view that that’s the most dangerous thing for the Republicans.

But you know, sometimes history fools you.  Everyone thought Reagan would be easier to defeat than a more moderate Republican.  Take Elizabeth Warren. [Republicans think] That’d be great. We can demonize her. She’s scary. She’s left wing.

Well, I don’t know.  Maybe she could run a campaign that was pretty intelligent and get the best of both worlds: The Hillary Clinton appeal, first woman president; And some of the Sanders energy. Look, she’s a Harvard law professor. She’s not crazy.

It could be like Obama. [Independent voters saying] ‘She’s a little more liberal that I like, but she comes from modest origins.’ So I think [my fellow conservatives] may underrate Warren a little bit.

On June 5th, 2017, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan joined their fellow Democrats in a unanimous vote reaffirming their commitment to the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995.  That act also passed with massive Democratic support (the only Senate Democrat to vote against it was former Klansman Robert Byrd of West Virginia) and was signed into law by Democrat Bill Clinton.

But on Monday, when the Shaheen/Hassan-supported law’s mandate that “the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem” was finally put into effect,  Sen. Shaheen was silent. Sen. Hassan said nothing–despite repeated requests for comment.  The top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, released a subdued statement “applauding President Trump” for the embassy move. But from New Hampshire–nothing. Why?

It hasn’t always been “no comment” from the New Hampshire delegation. When President Trump announced his intentions regarding the US Embassy in December, Sen. Shaheen criticized the proposal, saying it was “harmful to both U.S. and Israeli interests” and “moves all parties further away from a peaceful solution.”

Is that still her position?  You’ll have to ask her–though you might get some insights from J Street as well. They are one of Sen. Shaheen’s top contributors, donating more than $112,000 since 2013.  And they’ve given more than $200,000 to Sen. Hassan as well.

J Street has been described as a “liberal fringe group” by some, and it certainly has a pro-Left, pro-Obama, anti-Netanyahu view of Middle East policy.  Unsurprisingly, they oppose the embassy’s move.

But what about Sens. Shaheen and Hassan?  Do they regret their support for the Jerusalem Embassy Act less than a year ago? Has something changed?

She says she’s not running.

He’s in the middle of a “pay-offs to porn stars” story that would kill any conventional politician.

And yet the (very) early tea leaves from the “First in the Nation” primary state already point to the match-up many pundits dream of:

President Donald Trump vs. Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020.

Let’s take a moment to insert all the standard disclaimers: We haven’t even gotten to the midterms yet, two years is a political eternity, Sen. Warren could (theoretically) lose her re-election bid in November, President Trump could (less theoretically) be unable to seek re-election due to incarceration, etc.  The fact remains that the new poll from Suffolk University aligns with the emerging conventional wisdom:  Democrats want Liz Warren and the GOP is going to stick with Donald Trump.

In his analysis of the numbers. Suffolk University’s David Paleologos notes how Sen. Warren’s strength draws from virtually every other major Democratic candidate.

“When we first asked likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire who they would prefer—and we left Liz Warren’s name off the list— we got the expected results:  Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders well ahead of the pack of list seven possibilities:

Biden 30%

Sanders 25%

Booker 10%

Patrick 8%

Harris 6%

Gillibrand 3%

McAuliffe 2%

“Then we introduced Sen. Warren’s name to the mix,” Paleologos told NHJournal, “and she cleared the field:

Warren 26%

Biden 20%

Sanders 13%

Booker 8%

Harris 4%

Patrick 4%

Gillibrand 2%

McAuliffe 2%

According to Paleologos, what makes Liz Warren’s position so strong is that “looking at the cross tabs, what we see is that all of the candidates lose something to Elizabeth Warren. Most of the candidates lose about one in five core supporters between scenario one without Warren and scenario two. And [former Massachusetts governor) Deval Patrick and Bernie Sanders lose a very big share of their voters.”

If Warren were merely strong in New Hampshire because of geography, the implications would be as significant. Instead, her strength is ideological–she’s the first choice (by far) of the voters looking for a nominee on the left end of the Democrats’ spectrum.  Plus, the fact that a third of Biden voters would jump on her bandwagon shows she’s strong with more old-school Democrats as well.

“On the progressive side, it appears voters are saying ‘Sanders had his chance,'” Paleologos suggests. “Elizabeth Warren is a little bit younger, a woman who has been carrying the challenge to big business, big dollars in politics.  And you may have some Hillary Clinton supporters who, if given the choice, either gravitate to Biden or to Warren, but not to Sanders.”

And that’s how Sen. Warren wins the nomination: Progressive voters, a few establishment voters, and some Hillary voters still smarting from the Bernie vs. Hillary fallout.  What about President Trump?

Two months ago, a New Hampshire poll gave him a narrow six-point lead over Gov. John Kasich. In the new Suffolk poll, he’s crushing all comers:

Trump beats Kasich 68-23 percent;

Trump beats Sen Jeff Flake 72-15 percent;

Trump beats Sen. Marco Rubio 65-23 percent;

Trump beats Mitt Romney 63-28 percent.

Trump lost New Hampshire, though narrowly, to Hillary Clinton in 2016. It’s a state more known for it’s moderation than it’s bombast, where candidates with names like Bush, McCain and Romney tend to do well. For Trump to be dominating like this, Paleologos notes, is a sign that he’s in no real danger within his party.

Once again: It’s early, it’s politics and it’s Trump.  But if you are hoping for a Trump vs. Warren throwdown in 2020, we are well on our way.