HUDSON, New Hampshire — If the Iowa caucuses all came down to turnout on the Democratic side, New Hampshire will come down to spin.
There’s little question that Clinton will lose the state, and there’s little question that both sides will try to claim the result as a relative win for their side. But how large the margin is will determine who succeeds.
Sanders has been leading in most polls since August, with a brief intermission at the end of the year, and is currently 20 points ahead according to the latest NBC News Wall Street Journal poll.
RELATED: Live updates and analysis from the 2016 New Hampshire primary
Clinton and her team have done everything they can to broadcast, without ever quite saying it, that they are OK with losing New Hampshire and are already looking ahead to the next batch of contests in late February and March.
The overwhelming Democratic front-runner dropped the word “victory” from her election-night watch party. This weekend, she traveled to Michigan, which holds a primary in March, while Bill Clinton traveled to Nevada ahead of a caucus later this month.
In the lead up to the New Hampshire primary, her campaign released its first South Carolina TV ad, featuring former Attorney General Eric Holder. They released their second South Carolina ad, focused on criminal justice reform. They released their first Spanish language ad for Nevada.
The campaign went out of their way to announce that Bernie Sanders had out-raised them by $5 million in January. They’ve pointed out repeatedly that New Hampshire is basically the Vermont senator’s “backyard.”
And here are some of the email fundraising subject lines the campaign sent. From Chelsea Clinton: “My mom is down in the polls.” From Bill Clinton: “out-raised and outspent.” From Hillary Clinton: “Help close a $5 million gap.”
The night before the New Hampshire primary in 1992, Bill Clinton went to a bowling alley at 11:00 p.m., trying to wring every last vote of the Granite State. He went on to come in second behind a neighboring-state senator Paul Tsongas, but his campaign and supporters successfully spun the finish as a win that made him the “comeback kid” and put him on the path to the nomination.
This year, there were no late-night trips to bowling alleys for Hillary Clinton Monday.
Instead, she had a quiet dinner with her daughter at a rustic tavern before heading to her final rally, which was more or less indistinguishable from any other rally she’s had in the state.
Meanwhile, across the state, Sanders was holding a blow-out concert with model Emily Ratajkowski and a crowded marquee of indie bands, headlined by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.
RELATED: Bernie Sanders suddenly looks like a winner
“Tomorrow, if we have a good voter turnout,” Sanders declared to thousands of screaming fans. “I think that we’re going to have a very, very good night.”
Clinton made no such declaration at her rally. “I will ask you respectfully to please consider giving me the chance to do this job for you,” she said.
Aware that too-high expectations could rob Sanders of the full weight of his victory, he and his team have been playing with their own forecast. While Sanders hails from a neighboring state, Clinton is the only candidate who has actually won any votes in New Hampshire, they correctly note.
She and her husband have been campaigning in the state since 1991, when New Hampshire effectively launched her husband to the White House. Not long ago, especially after her 2008 primary win, everyone called New Hampshire “Clinton County” and assumed it was Iowa where Sanders would try to pull ahead of Hillary. They are supported by practically every elected Democrat in the state and most from Vermont.
She hasn’t exactly abandoned the state, holding 85 events here to Sanders’ 93, according to the NECN candidate tracker. Clinton also has 19 offices and get-out-the-vote centers in the state to Sanders’ 18 campaign offices.
Both teams refused to discuss numbers they’d consider a win, at least on the record, but some data points to consider: No one has ever won a New Hampshire Democratic Primary by more than 16 points. But if Clinton loses by 10 she can claim she cut Sanders’ lead in half.
What’s likely to determine the margin? New Hampshire’s notoriously fickle and hard to poll independents. Unaligned voters make up 40 percent of state’s electorate, but a much smaller portion are actually up for grabs between the parties.
Sanders and Clinton are roughly tied among registered Democratic voters, but he swamps her among unaligned voters. If they show up and vote for Sanders, and don’t decide to vote in the Republican primary, he can expect to expand his margin greatly.
Trump goes blue, Rubio tries to fend off rivals
On the Republican side, the race is as uncertain as ever. Donald Trump leads all polls by double-digits, but many voters say that they’re holding out until the last minute to make their decision.









