Romney, but by how much?

Friends at my alma mater will be casting their vote in the first in the nation primary later today. New Hampshire, polls would have you believe, is Romney country. The question it would seem is by how much. The media will play the expectation game and anything less than a sizable 15%+ victory for Romney is likely to be viewed as a disappointment.

Many in the press worry that the polls will repeat their 2008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary performance, but many of these same people forget that the 2008 New Hampshire Republican Primary was very well predicted. Indeed, most of the aggregates all point in a similar direction. They all have Romney winning with near 40% of the vote and by about 20%.

In fact, exactly like Iowa, all the aggregates have the order of the finishers identical. Mitt Romney is first, Ron Paul is second, and Jon Huntsman is third.

This is not to say that there isn’t some movement in the polls. All the aggregates have shown a decay in Mitt Romney’s support. If the Public Policy Polling poll is right, it’s possible that Romney could end up with less than 35%. This will almost definitely be spun by the media, even though Romney would win by a sizable margin.

Some analysts have argued that recent polls may be undercounting independents, men, and younger voters. These are all groups among Mitt Romney performs worse, and Ron Paul performs best. One, Jeff Winchell, believes Romney might only win by ~10% with Paul ending up in the mid 20s.

Count me as somewhat skeptical as pollsters did a very good job of gauging both of these candidate votes in Iowa, but it something to keep in mind.

The candidate most likely to surprise is Jon Huntsman, as polls often do not fully catch the rise of the “momentum” candidate. That said,only one poll has him overtaking Ron Paul for third. Huntsman will not be the Rick Santorum of New Hampshire, but he has been gaining almost every day. If he were ever to get 20% of the vote tonight, Huntsman probably will deem himself the “Comeback Kid”.

The rest of the candidates seem pretty stable in support. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have seen that New Hampshirites were not open to their campaigns, although Santorum seems in a slightly better position than Gingrich. Their lack of a support is of no surprise to this analyst, but does not bode well for them heading into South Carolina.

Rick Perry is stable at 1%, and the only question seems to be whether Buddy Roemer will get a higher percentage of the vote than Perry.

The fact remains, like Iowa, New Hampshire has been polled until the very last minute. All the aggregates are pretty much identical, which gives me confidence that there will not be too great of a surprise. Polls in primaries are not perfect, and any one candidate may exceed or fail to meet their polling numbers.

Still, Mitt Romney seems destined for a big New Hampshire 15-20% win, and Jon Huntsman looks to come up just short of a second place finish.