A three way race on The Republican side with caveats.

As we enter the middle game of this Republican primary process, the information is pointing toward a national three-way race among Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, the three top Iowa vote-getters. New Hampshire remains the last chance to upset the apple cart for the three governors attempting to break into the race. There are two caveats to a three-man race. One is that given the size of Trump’s lead in New Hampshire and the expectations game, a loss here would end him. If Trump loses New Hampshire, he’s likely no longer a contender for the Republican nomination. The second caveat is that anyone who beats any of the top three in New Hampshire has a ticket out of the state. That, of course, makes the multi-candidate field dynamics in New Hampshire particularly intense. Rubio is experiencing a clear bounce out of Iowa into New Hampshire, moving into second place. As a result of that bounce, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie are both swinging hard at him. Just this morning the idea that Rubio has no accomplishments in the Senate was becoming a major theme.  Not to mention John Kasich is still plugging away. Those are the exact dynamics that makes this race so hard to predict.

In 2004 John Kerry road an Iowa bounce to a massive win in New Hampshire. In 2008, Obama’s Iowa bounce had basically faded by the time New Hampshire voted.  At the moment, the Rubio bounce also does not look large enough to catch Trump. If Trump dropped at all in New Hampshire polling, the decline is only off his latest high, not off his long-time average. Remember, as badly as you may have thought Trump did in Iowa, he still was able to convert about 75% of his poll support into votes. If that carries over to New Hampshire, he would be on track for 26% of the vote, which at the moment still looks like a win. And it seems as if he might be. One interesting item in the most recent Umass-Lowell poll is that 74% of Trump supporters say they are definitely going to vote for him, which is by far the best definite score in the field.

Our final call on New Hampshire will be Monday night. (We feel pretty good about our Iowa call, by the way, in having Cruz over Trump.) For now, it is safe to say that anything can happen on the Republican side.