Keller @ Large: New Hampshire poll shows many don't want Biden to run again
BOSTON - President Joe Biden is expected to announce later this winter if he'll seek a second term. But a new poll of likely New Hampshire primary voters suggests he won't necessarily have it easy there if he does run.
Biden fled New Hampshire on primary day two years ago as it became clear he would finish poorly. And almost three years later, it seems little has changed. A new Granite State Poll from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center found 82% of progressives and 57% of liberals, groups that usually dominate the Democratic primary there, probably or definitely do not want Biden to run again next year.
"This is stronger than the animosity that there was towards Lyndon Johnson back in 1968," a time of intense opposition to the war in Vietnam, notes, survey director Andrew Smith. His poll found that if the primary were held today, Biden's transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, would beat him, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders breathing down his neck.
No wonder Biden is pushing for a change in the presidential primary calendar that would strip New Hampshire of its first-in-the-nation status and replace it with less left-leaning electorates in South Carolina and Nevada. Doesn't this almost validate Biden's instincts that New Hampshire shouldn't go first, we asked Smith?
"I think it certainly is not gonna be anything that really surprises him," he says.
To veteran New Hampshire political observer Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, this poll is a warning sign that a Biden re-election bid could face a bumpy ride. "If there's anyone on the ballot who's opposing the president - we've seen this many times in the past - that could be real trouble if you believe these numbers today, particularly among those progressives where a lot of challengers tend to come from," he says.
But veteran political reporter Kevin Landrigan of the Union-Leader newspaper notes the non-Biden vote is, for now, divided. "There can be a lot of people unhappy with you, but if the people who are unhappy can't agree on who they want to replace you with then you can win renomination and you can win pretty easily," he notes.
Speaking of Lyndon Johnson, he actually won the 1968 New Hampshire primary. But anti-Vietnam-War challenger Eugene McCarthy's strong showing was the beginning of the end for Johnson, who withdrew from the race soon after.
So, perhaps Biden figures, let the party's left wing have their fun, and he'll mop up when the race turns south and west, like he did last time.
There's nothing in this new poll that would persuade him otherwise