Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has become a anti-social socialist and has largely stopped taking audience questions at his campaign events, a Herald review has found.

The review found that at 10 of Sanders’ last 13 town hall and town meeting events in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, online videos show him thanking the audience and leaving at the end of his speeches without taking questions, a practice analysts say could turn off undecided voters.

And though his camp says the larger crowds make taking questions harder, political strategists say the ?Vermont senator has to engage if he wants to win the undecideds.

“He has been taking less questions but that’s only because we’ve been getting these huge crowds that make it difficult if not impossible to have a small, more intimate town hall meeting set-up like we did earlier on,” said ?Tad Devine, Sanders’ senior advisor.

“Personally, he loves taking questions,” Devine added. “I think if we had the option of just taking questions he would take questions from the audience all day.”

Franklin Pierce University professor Frank Cohen suggested Sanders, who has opened up a 22-point lead over rival Democrat Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, is “playing the front-runner’s game” to validate his campaign and trying to manage the expectations of his supporters.

“It could be that he wants to have more control over the events for a while and soften the expectations of the more extreme folks in the crowd who think they should be able to say whatever they want,” Cohen said. “Because he’s seen as progressive, people think they should be able to have a voice (and) they get very disappointed if he’s not immediately receptive.”

University of New Hampshire political science professor Dante Scala said that needs to change if he wants to win.

“Over the next several months as he tries to court voters who perhaps are more undecided and don’t know much about Sanders, then a meeting that is open to more questions may work to his advantage,” Scala said.

“It’s one thing early on to have a lead in the polls and attract a lot of attention from voters … but the question will be, as we get into the latter months of the year, whether he’s going to try to appeal to more voters.”

Julia Barnes, Sanders’ state director in New Hampshire, said all of his town meeting events were supposed to have a question-and-answer segment but it didn’t always work out because of crowd size and the heat.

“All of our town halls were originally billed to do the Q&A session … As far as I know, in New Hampshire, all of the town halls going forward will have a Q&A,” Barnes said, adding, “It’s tough when you have 500 people in one room and 500 people in an overflow room to do a meaningful Q&A.”

When asked if the decision to stop taking questions was related to heckling from Black Lives Matter protesters who disrupted a Sanders rally in Seattle last month, Devine said, “absolutely not.”

“That’s just part of the process,” Devine said. “I think people in New Hampshire are more used to having presidential candidates and the environment up here has been a great one.”

Devine said Sanders is prepared to open himself up to undecided voters and will look to field more questions from the crowd moving ?forward.

“I think there will be a lot of opportunities to speak to soft, undecided voters, the people who will decide at the end,” Devine said. “That will be great and I expect in those environments there will be a smaller, more intimate setting and a lot more opportunity for back-and-forth with the audience.”