Who cares about Iowa? NH is the real action.

Trump picked up the 7-10 split in Iowa, but he won't get that in New Hampshire.

I’m telling you all this to help you.

There are 130 bowling alleys in Iowa, according to the best source I could find. There’s somewhere between 15 and 25 of these establishments in New Hampshire, but at least seven of them are what is known in New England as “candlepin.” Growing up in the Granite State, I used to bowl at the Bowl-O-Rama in Portsmouth, next to the movie theaters on Route 1. There’s some distinctives to candlepin bowling that make it ridiculously harder than regular ten-pin bowling. First, the pins are skinny and tall; second, the ball is small enough to throw from your palm without finger holes.

Image source: Wikipedia

Also, in candlepin, the lanes don’t reset every time you roll a ball. There’s “wood” left on the lane which can be used, or can make your game hell. Ten-pin is boring, white-bread, a snore-fest, while candlepin is unpredictable, difficult, and quirky. All the bowling centers in Iowa are ten-pin. A candlepin bowler couldn’t care less about Iowa.

I told you all that to tell you that New Hampshirites couldn’t care less about the Iowa caucuses, and neither should you. Or, for that matter, the national media. In fact, after today’s festival of news about it, you won’t hear another peep about Iowa until, say, 2028.

But I will say this about Iowa, continuing the bowling analogy. Donald Trump picked up the 7-10 split in a spare and cleared the wood. With 110,298 caucus-goers expressing their preference (it’s not really “voting” in any sense), Trump got 51%, Ron DeSantis got 21.2%, and Nikki Haley got 19.1%, with Vivek Ramaswamy clocking in fourth at 7.7%.

If you add up both of Trump’s main rivals, he beat them combined by 10 points. The bitter cold kept people away: in 2016, around 187,000 Republicans showed up for the caucuses (a record), and in 2012 the total was close to 122,000. It seems Trump voters took their man’s advice to get out there even if it killed them. (Happily I don’t see any reports of deaths related to the caucuses, despite icy roads and wind-chills in the minus 20 range.)

The best news out of Iowa is that the execrable Vivek Ramaswamy has, without really needing to, decided to end his campaign. I’ll leave it to David Thornton to pen a bye-ku for Vivek. I am not sorry to see him go.

Enough about Iowa; it’s over, gone, and never mattered.

New Hampshire is where the action always was and continues to be. It’s candlepins all the way—the wood might be cleared in Iowa, but it’s all sitting on the lane in NH. Ramaswamy was polling at 8% in the latest published UNH poll from last week. The RCP average has Trump ahead 14.2% to Haley’s 29.3%, with Christie still pulling 11.3%, and Ramaswamy at 5%. The questions are: where will the dead wood fall and can Trump pick up a 7-10 split again?

I do like to use the CNN/UNH poll, not because it happens to give Haley the most votes, but it tends to be closer to the ground as we approach the actual voting. In that poll, Trump has 39%, Haley is at 32%, Christie at 12%, Ramaswamy at 8% and DeSantis at 5%. Let me make a few predictions based on little more than itches I am scratching.

Advertising matters. DeSantis has been in NH for months, and has basically pulled all advertising since before Christmas to focus on Iowa. The Iowa organization and ad boost worked, denying Haley the “pre-NH bump” where she takes second place. But DeSantis is trimming the ground game in New Hampshire, heading straight for South Carolina.

Ground game matters. The relative absence of DeSantis from NH, while Haley has been ubiquitous on the trail, matters. All three candidates, Trump, Haley and DeSantis, are making stops in NH this week. There’s a WMUR-sponsored debate Thursday, of course Trump will skip it, leaving Haley and DeSantis to trade barbs. [Update: Haley has announced she will not participate in any debate unless Trump is also there. This means the WMUR debate is going to be cancelled.] Haley will have to watch herself for gaffes, but being there in the state is a sign of her momentum.

Momentum matters. As my brother Jay has told me many times, there’s a lot of disaffected independent voters looking to cast their primary vote for “whoever is number two.” It’s clear that Haley is very established in NH as number two. I don’t see DeSantis picking up any of those votes, even though he managed to beat Haley by 2,357 in the Iowa caucuses, because the Iowa caucuses matter about as much as the weather in California to northern New England yankees. It will also help Haley that popular Governor Chris Sununu is in her corner.

Dead wood matters. Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy are dead wood. But they represent 20% in the polls. Christie voters are anti-Trump, while Vivek voters are rabid libertarians who think Trump isn’t wild enough or smart enough. Capturing both of these populations is like picking up a 7-10 split in candlepin bowling: really hard. Trump will have to decide if he wants to try for Ramaswamy’s voters or just attack Haley—or more-or-less ignore Haley and go after DeSantis for South Carolina.

Undecideds matter. This close to the polls, there’s still 5% expressing “don’t know/not sure.” Those voters—if they show up—could make a difference in the results. Haley needs to pick up equal shares of the Christie and undecided votes—if she got half of those, it would put her ahead of Trump, but just by a hair.

Undeclared voters matter the most. Registered GOP voters in NH prefer Donald Trump even more than they did in Iowa—58%, to Haley’s 21% and 3% for Christie. Among undeclared voters, who in NH can participate in either primary, those who plan to take a Republican ballot, Haley leads Trump 43% to 17%. The more undeclared voters who decide to vote Republican, the better Haley’s chances. Crossover votes from undeclared Democrat-leaning voters could change the results in unpredictable ways.

But let me make a few itch-scratching predictions.

Trump is topped out. I don’t see him getting more than 40%, though the RCP average has him at 43, and some polls (St. Anselm) at 45%. I might be wrong, but I don’t see more voters gravitating to Trump in NH—if Iowa matters at all it’s because NH voters don’t like to do what Iowans do.

Haley will get a very narrow victory, which won’t be apparent on election night, but will be cemented by the early hours of the next day. DeSantis will perform better than his polling, possibly as high as 10%. Vivek’s support will evaporate, as will Christie’s. People do not want to throw their votes away on dead wood to make some stupid point.

At least one network will try to call the race early, and possibly get it wrong. I’d love to see Fox call the race for Trump and then have to eat it the next day, especially after what the AP and networks did in Iowa with early race calls before caucus speeches ended. I believe the AP is more disciplined and won’t call the race too early in NH, especially because this isn’t a caucus, it’s an election run by the people who run elections in NH (every town has its own election official, it’s maddening).

I believe the NH primary will be close, but turn out something like this:

• Haley 41.1%

• Trump 40%

• DeSantis 14%

• All others 4.9%

The only thing I know for sure is that I’m wrong. I don’t think Trump will pick up the 7-10 split in NH, and it will establish the race going into South Carolina. If Haley can keep any momentum with a win, this can be competitive. If she can’t then, as DeSantis tweeted in agreement with Christie, she’s “smoked.”

I’ve run out of space to talk about anything else, but I’m working on a piece about the Houthis. I wish it was good news, but it’s not. Stay warm everyone!