Clinton, Bush Lead by Narrow Margins in N.H.

8 points

Hillary Clinton’s current lead in New Hampshire over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic race for president, 43% to 35%, according to a new WMUR/CNN Granite State Poll. On the Republican side, the poll finds Jeb Bush remains on top at 16%, followed by Donald Trump at 11%, Rand Paul at 9%, Scott Walker at 8%, Marco Rubio at 6%, Carly Fiorina at 6%, Ben Carson at 5% and Chris Christie at 5%.

The Ten Senate Races Democrats Are Most Likely to Win in 2016

Feingold
Feingold
We’re not yet halfway through 2015 but the 2016 race for control of the U.S. Senate is starting to take shape. This week The Hill ranked the 10 most competitive races — and since then there has been a development in the race The Hill listed as likely to be the easiest pickup for Democrats.

Yesterday former Sen. Russ Feingold, the Democratic incumbent who was unseated by current Sen. Ron Johnson in 2010, announced he was entering the race. Johnson, a tea partyist, won by 5 percentage points in the tea party’s anti-Obamacare wave election after spending millions of his own money. The Hill quotes him as saying he won’t self-fund this year — which only means he’ll rely on his wealthy cronies to spend unlimited money anonymously to fund his campaign. The Hill cited a poll by PPP taken before Feingold’s announcement that found Feingold with 50 percent support against Johnson’s 41 percent. Wisconsin has voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential cycle since 1984.

Within hours after Feingold’s announcement, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts endorsed him, according to an email sent by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

The Hill’s other nine most-competitive races are:

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GOP Not Content with Winning, Wants to Drown Democrats

A wave just doesn’t happen. Waves happen when every single member of a cause or a movement comes together. This is our time, we need to crush it and push their heads under over and over and over again until they cannot breathe anymore.

— New Hampshire GOP Chairman Jennifer Horn, quoted by NH Journal, on defeating Democrats in the midterm elections.

Trips to Iowa, New Hampshire, Just So Much Show

It would be one thing if all of this early activity and attention in Iowa resulted in a smarter electorate, better candidates or a more authentic version of democracy. But in general, the quaint ‘retail’ settings of Iowa diners and New Hampshire living rooms are treated mostly as media sound stages, places where reporters report on how many other reporters showed up… As a result, these scenes have become backdrops for set pieces that blur into an anesthetizing noise: So-and-so has been to Iowa five times; some other so-and-so is ‘thinking about’ running for president; and here’s yet another picture of yet another so-and-so looking a voter right in the eyes and telling him the truth about something or other, as the discerning voters here insist.

— Mark Leibovich, writing in the New York Times.