Mitch Perry
Winning New Hampshire doesn’t determine anything when it comes to winning the Republican presidential nomination. If that were the case, Pat Buchanan would have been the nominee in 1996, and John McCain the party’s standard bearer in 2000.
But they weren’t. Bob Dole and George W. Bush rallied from their stunning early losses to capture the nomination for president.
Having said that, though, Marco Rubio can’t be too pleased to see that a new Suffolk University Poll released Thursday shows the Florida U.S. senator well back of the pack with just 3 percent, tying with with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
There are six other Republicans listed ahead of Rubio, starting with Jeb Bush, who led the poll with 19 percent. Scott Walker is next at 14 percent, followed by Rand Paul at 7 percent.
In fourth place is businessman Donald Trump, who is testing the waters in New Hampshire. He got 6 percent of the vote. Ted Cruz and Chris Christie came in tied behind him at 5 percent.
Ten other candidates received less than 2 percent, and 24 percent were undecided.
“The single-digit candidates need to go to New Hampshire and make a personal appeal to likely Republican voters there if they want to become the Republican alternative to Jeb Bush,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. “There are still plenty of undecided voters who might be won over if they make their case.”
Among self-described conservative voters, Walker leads Bush in New Hampshire, 20-14 percent. Overall, Walker’s favorable rating of 46 percent was below Bush’s 54 percent, and his unfavorable rating was 15 percent compared with Bush’s 27 percent unfavorable rating.
The statewide survey of 500 likely voters in New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary was conducted March 21-24 using live telephone interviews and a split sample of landline and cell phone numbers. The margin of error is +/-4.4 percent at a 95 percent level of confidence.
