Democrats’ Attacks Get Personal Ahead of New Hampshire Primary Image Senator Amy Klobuchar’s “Get Out The Vote Event” at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester on Sunday. Credit... Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times The Democratic presidential contest reached a new, more contentious phase in the final weekend before the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., the two victors in the Iowa caucuses, are also leading in the New Hampshire polls as their rivals try to topple them.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who finished fourth in Iowa, and Mr. Buttigieg are engaging in unusually personal attacks over experience.

Mr. Buttigieg and Mr. Sanders, meanwhile, are clashing as they try to make the New Hampshire primary a two-person race and clear away rivals on the center and left.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who finished third in Iowa, is working to turn out her army of volunteers, and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who finished fifth, is trying to capitalize on her debate performance.

The Iowa Democratic Party indicated that Mr. Buttigieg was the delegate winner, but The New York Times has not called the race and Mr. Sanders’s team is calling for a partial recanvass.

Feb. 9, 2020, 8:31 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 8:31 p.m. ET By Sydney Ember and Sanders campaign will request a partial recanvass in Iowa. Image Senator Bernie Sanders held a town hall in Keene. Credit... Chang W. Lee/The New York Times MANCHESTER — Bernie Sanders’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, said on Sunday that the campaign would call for a recanvass of specific precincts in Iowa, extending the Iowa caucus catastrophe to a second week. In an interview with CNN, Mr. Shakir said: “You can expect us to be asking the Iowa Democratic Party for a recanvass of the discrepancies that we have identified and found for them. We will be searching for and identifying even more.” He added that the process had been “handled incompetently from our perspective.” Also Sunday, the Iowa Democratic Party announced that it had updated data from 55 problematic precincts, about 3 percent of the total, and determined that Pete Buttigieg had won 14 national delegates from the caucuses and Mr. Sanders 12. But reports have shown that many precincts had inconsistencies in their results, and internal party emails showed that the party would not correct errors that had occurred on handwritten worksheets from the precincts — only discrepancies between what was reported on those worksheets and results that were released publicly. The Sanders campaign had announced last week that it had found discrepancies in delegate calculations in 14 precincts. The Iowa Democratic Party has extended its deadline to Monday for campaigns to seek a recanvass of caucus results. Mr. Shakir expressed confidence that Mr. Sanders would have the same number of national delegates as Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., “after it’s all said and done.” A Sanders aide confirmed that the campaign would be seeking a partial recanvass of results. Asked on Thursday on CNN if he would call for such a recanvass, Mr. Sanders responded, “We’ve got enough of Iowa,” and said it was time to “move on to New Hampshire.” Read more

Feb. 9, 2020, 8:09 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 8:09 p.m. ET By Warren’s new mantra: I win ‘unwinnable fights.’ Image Senator Elizabeth Warren arrived for a town hall at Lebanon High School. Credit... Ruth Fremson/The New York Times LEBANON — Elizabeth Warren made a rare change to her stump speech Sunday evening, as she ditched her traditional message of tackling corruption in Washington in favor of highlighting her history of winning “unwinnable fights.” Ms. Warren, who needs a good result in New Hampshire to reignite her campaign’s energy, said her life had been a testament to persistence, citing her success establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau amid opposition and her defeat of a Republican incumbent in 2012. She also sought to address Democrats’ anxiety regarding the general election. “We have one job in November: beat Donald Trump,” she said. “This may be an unwinnable fight,” she added. “I’ve been thinking about unwinnable fights, but the only reason they’re unwinnable is if you don’t get in the fight and fight it.” Ms. Warren finished firmly in third in Iowa, a cut above the lower-tier candidates but below the expectations the campaign set for itself earlier on in the race. As the race has progressed, Ms. Warren has strayed from her plan-driven message of last year and embraced a theme of uniting the Democratic Party to defeat Mr. Trump. In one memorable moment on Sunday, a voter asked Ms. Warren if she ever wondered, “Who is going to be my Mike Pence? Who is going to look at me with adoring eyes?” “I already have a dog,” Ms. Warren shot back. The crowd cheered. Read more

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Feb. 9, 2020, 7:38 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 7:38 p.m. ET By No longer ‘chained’ to Senate desk, Klobuchar says she’s ‘surging’ in New Hampshire. SALEM — Amy Klobuchar can’t stop smiling. The Minnesota senator is drawing some of her biggest crowds of the race, announced she had raised $3 million since Friday’s debate and declared in a brief interview with two reporters after a rally in Nashua that “we’re surging.” “I know we have legitimate enthusiasm,” she said Sunday evening. “No one can refute it.” Another factor going for Ms. Klobuchar is that her two chief rivals for moderate support, former Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Pete Buttigieg, have spent the weekend taking swings at each other. Ms. Klobuchar told PBS’s Judy Woodruff that there was “like a push-up contest going on” between the two men. Ms. Klobuchar, of course, has declared momentum before, and she finished in fifth place in Iowa, though relatively close to Mr. Biden. New Hampshire will be different, she predicted, in part because she will actually be able to campaign here. “That was hard to do in the caucuses, especially when I was chained to my desk for two weeks,” she said, referring to the recently wrapped impeachment trial of President Trump that filled her schedule ahead of the Iowa caucuses. “But now I can get out there and I can bring people with me, and this is the beginning.” Ms. Klobuchar would not say what position she needed to finish in to consider the New Hampshire primary a success. “No, I’m not going to put any numbers on any of this,” she said. Read more

Feb. 9, 2020, 7:28 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 7:28 p.m. ET By Iowa Democrats give Buttigieg the most delegates. But counting errors remain. Image Pete Buttigieg visited a campaign phone bank in Somersworth, N.H., on Sunday. Credit... Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times DES MOINES — Nearly a full week after the Iowa caucuses, the state Democratic Party on Sunday released results indicating that Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., was the winner after it updated data from 55 precincts. But errors in the result tabulations have led several news organizations, including The New York Times, to refrain from calling the race. The re-examination did not change earlier projections that Mr. Buttigieg led in the count of national delegates, but it moved one more into his column. The party said that Mr. Buttigieg had received 14 delegates, Senator Bernie Sanders took 12, Senator Elizabeth Warren earned eight, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. received six and Senator Amy Klobuchar got one. The Associated Press, which historically verifies election results and makes calls on the outcome of races, has not allotted the final delegate to Mr. Buttigieg because of the errors in the caucus results-counting, nor has The A.P. declared a winner in the Iowa race. The Times, which has followed The A.P.’s calls in the past, has not assigned the final delegate to Mr. Buttigieg. And the new results are not necessarily final: Campaigns have until noon on Monday to request that the statewide vote count be re-examined, after the party moved the deadline from Friday. In recent days Mr. Buttigieg has claimed to have won Iowa because he leads the delegate count by a thin margin, while Mr. Sanders claimed victory because he had the most total supporters in both rounds of voting on caucus night. A tally of another metric, “state delegate equivalents,” showed an even tighter race: By the party’s count, Mr. Buttigieg earned 564.302 and Mr. Sanders had 561.528 — a difference of one-tenth of one percent of the total awarded. Read more

Feb. 9, 2020, 6:10 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 6:10 p.m. ET By Biden rules out Sanders as a hypothetical running mate, but has ‘Indiana’ on his mind. HUDSON — At Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s second event of the day, two audience members raised the issue of a running mate. One asked Mr. Biden about assembling a Democratic “dream team,” and the other suggested that he should choose a potential vice president from the list of other leading Democratic presidential contenders. Mr. Biden, who came in fourth place in the Iowa caucuses, faces a daunting challenge in the New Hampshire primary this week and uncertainty about the viability of his candidacy going forward. Yet while he insisted that he did not want to be “presumptuous,” he did offer his most detailed assessment to date of the options still in the race and laid out fresh criteria. “One, that they are younger than I am,” he said, a requirement that would rule out Mr. Sanders, 78, as well as Michael R. Bloomberg, who is a few months older than Mr. Biden, 77. “And No. 2, that they are ready on Day 1 to be president of the United States of America.” “And there has to be some correlation between their views and mine,” he went on, noting that someone who “insisted that we do ‘Medicare for all,’” a top priority of Mr. Sanders, would present “a real problem.” “But there are at least four people running that in fact are simpatico with where I am, starting with Indiana” — Mr. Buttigieg is from South Bend, Ind. — “and starting with other places. And don’t read that as, ‘Biden thinks’ — I’m getting in trouble here.” The crowd laughed. Mr. Biden praised the qualifications of some who “have dropped out already” and said that a future Biden administration would “look like the country,” and that “there are at least six women I can think of off the top of my head” as well as people of color as possible running mates. He noted that he had the support of more than 300 “major national security people,” suggesting that he would have no issue filling out teams at the intelligence agencies and the state and defense departments. He suggested that at least some preparation for a future administration was already underway, despite the extraordinarily uncertain future he faces. “They’re ready to go, they’re already working,” he said, an apparent reference to the working groups of policy experts who share advice with his campaign. “I’m not being facetious. Because you can’t wait around till you decide you have the nomination and then start to figure out how you put a transition team together. I’m not being presumptuous. Please don’t — this is complicated stuff, and you can read it the wrong way.” Read more

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Feb. 9, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ET By Sanders recalls the spirit of his 2016 campaign. Image Bernie Sanders hugged a supporter after his rally in Claremont. Credit... Chang W. Lee/The New York CLAREMONT — As Bernie Sanders pushes for a victory in the New Hampshire primary, he’s recalling his successful effort in the state four years ago. “New Hampshire, you helped make it happen,” he said. “When you voted for our agenda, 21 other states also voted for our agenda and that agenda is unfolding across the country.” Mr. Sanders cited his support for a $15 minimum wage, saying he campaigned on that promise in 2016 and now it’s been adopted by a series of states. His 22 point victory in New Hampshire in 2016 dealt a remarkable rebuke to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment, presenting him as a serious challenger to the former secretary of state. Now a leader in the 2020 primary race, Mr. Sanders encouraged voters to remember the underdog spirit of his last presidential bid, even as he touted what he sees as a victory in Monday’s Iowa caucuses. “What our campaign is about is essentially asking, ‘Why not?’” he said. “Why not?” Read more

Feb. 9, 2020, 5:09 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 5:09 p.m. ET By Biden takes credit for the discussion of unity in the primary. Image Shadows of audience members at Mr. Biden’s campaign stop in Hampton on Sunday. Credit... Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times HUDSON — Joseph R. Biden Jr., who just a day earlier had lashed Pete Buttigieg and his résumé in sharply personal terms, on Sunday struck a vastly different tone as he sought to take credit for the ongoing discussion in the Democratic primary of party unity. “Now everybody’s talking about unity, thank God,” he said. “If I’ve done nothing else I’ve got the entire cast running for president of the United States on the Democratic side, ‘We have to unify the country.’ Well remember before, just three months ago, ‘We can’t unify the country. Biden’s pipe dreaming.’” That’s a reference to the criticism Mr. Biden has faced for asserting that it remains possible to find common ground with Republicans. “We can do this,” he said. “We will first have to begin by unifying the party. And I believe we can do that and I’m determined to do that.” Read more

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Feb. 9, 2020, 4:29 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 4:29 p.m. ET This dog agreed to hear a candidate’s case. Image Sandra Day O’Harris, a dog named after Sandra Day O'Connor, waiting with the crowd at Pete Buttigieg’s “Get Out the Vote” campaign stop in Nashua. Credit... Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Feb. 9, 2020, 3:49 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 3:49 p.m. ET By Tim Robbins hits the trail with Sanders. Image The actor and activist Tim Robbins introduced Bernie Sanders at a campaign stop in Keene. Credit... Chang W. Lee/The New York Times HANOVER — Tim Robbins set the mood, and Bernie Sanders followed. The actor, a supporter of Mr. Sanders during his 2016 run who had spent his morning knocking on doors in Nashua, introduced Mr. Sanders here at a question-less “town hall” event, telling two stories in a subdued voice about the role of immigration in American history. Mr. Sanders was similarly reserved, though no less impassioned, as he ran through his platform of climate change, gun control, campaign finance reform and health care. He spent more than 10 minutes talking plainly, rather than in his often soaring, stoking style, about the need for “Medicare for all,” and exactly how it would work. But as he lambasted the nation’s wealthy elite, Mr. Sanders took time to thank a member of that group at the top of his remarks: Mr. Robbins. “What Tim does, and other celebrities do as well, they can’t just make movies and make a whole lot of money,” he said, before quickly looking at Mr. Robbins, “and you do.” “But some of them, like Tim, use their name and their influence to try to shape public policy,” Mr. Sanders said. “And Tim has been especially concerned about the environment, pollution and climate change.” Read more

Feb. 9, 2020, 3:44 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 3:44 p.m. ET By Warren has raised $2 million since Iowa, hopes to hit $4 million goal by Tuesday. CONCORD — The day after the Iowa caucuses, where she finished in third place, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign announced a $2 million fund-raising goal it hoped to hit in the seven days ahead of the New Hampshire primary. On Sunday, her campaign told supporters that it “blew right past” that target — and was doubling the goal to $4 million. “Unlike some of our opponents who can count on wealthy donors and outside PACs to boost their Get Out the Vote efforts, we only rely on grassroots supporters like you to get it done,” her campaign said in an email, echoing a line Ms. Warren used in Friday’s debate. Multiple campaigns have used pronouncements of fund-raising windfalls to try to show momentum in recent days. Money is a necessity to stay competitive, especially as the political playing field will expand dramatically in the coming weeks as candidates must compete in delegate-rich Super Tuesday states that vote in March. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., announced on Saturday that he had raised $4 million after the Iowa caucuses. Senator Amy Klobuchar said that in less than a day after Friday’s debate, she had raised $2 million. Senator Bernie Sanders became the first candidate to disclose his full January haul: an eye-popping $25 million. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., notably, has not disclosed anything since his 4th place finish in Iowa. His campaign said Friday’s debate day had led to more online fund-raising than any past debate day, but it provided no actual amount. Read more

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Feb. 9, 2020, 3:37 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 3:37 p.m. ET By Buttigieg hits Sanders over ‘Medicare for all’ and talks potential running mates. Image Audience members listen to Mr. Buttigieg at a campaign stop in Dover on Sunday. Credit... Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times DOVER — Pete Buttigieg on Sunday offered a pointed critique of Bernie Sanders over health care, reminding voters that it remained unclear how Mr. Sanders would pay for “Medicare for all.” “It raises the question of whether the American people deserve somebody who can actually deliver math that adds up,” Mr. Buttigieg said at a rally in Dover. Joseph R. Biden Jr. has offered similar criticism of Mr. Sanders over the unanswered question of how exactly he would pay for Medicare for all, a government-run health insurance program under which private coverage would be eliminated. Mr. Sanders has released a list of financing options that could help pay for his proposal, but unlike Elizabeth Warren, he has not detailed precisely how he would finance it. (Mr. Buttigieg would allow people to choose a public health insurance plan, an idea he calls “Medicare for all who want it.”) The last question for Mr. Buttigieg at the rally offered three options for a critical decision that could lie ahead. “Amy, Elizabeth or Kamala as your vice president?” he was asked. “You just named three people that I really respect,” Mr. Buttigieg said in response to the question, which referred to three of his current or former rivals: Amy Klobuchar, Ms. Warren and Kamala Harris. Ms. Warren and Ms. Klobuchar are both in the primary race, while Ms. Harris dropped out in December. “And actually, sometimes the more you compete with somebody, the more you come to respect them,” Mr. Buttigieg continued. “Obviously we have different approaches and different views. But I think that they would deserve to be considered by any nominee. As would a lot of other people that maybe aren’t as much household names.” Read more

Feb. 9, 2020, 3:21 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 3:21 p.m. ET By Elizabeth Warren: ‘I’ve got plenty of energy left.’ Image Ms. Warren at a “Get Out The Vote” rally in Concord on Sunday. Credit... Ruth Fremson/The New York Times CONCORD — Senator Elizabeth Warren has long insisted she doesn’t “do polls.” A third-place Iowa finish and some discouraging surveys from the state she neighbors have not changed that. “There are 55 more states and territories after this,” she told reporters after a rally here, swatting away a question about whether New Hampshire might functionally amount to a final stand. Despite the urgent electoral hour, two days out from the primary, the event itself could have been airlifted from just about any other month of Ms. Warren’s presidential campaign. She spoke of “corruption, pure and simple” and her plans to root it out. She described her childhood in Oklahoma. She took questions at random from enthusiastic supporters who were told to shout “persist” if their number was called in a lottery. And in her remarks afterward for the cameras, Ms. Warren forcefully rejected any suggestion that the campaign calendar had taken a toll. “I’ve got plenty of energy left,” she said. Read more

Feb. 9, 2020, 2:54 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 2:54 p.m. ET By A big crowd for Buttigieg, with more than a few political tourists in the mix. Image Mr. Buttigieg greeted the audience at his campaign stop in Nashua. Credit... Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times NASHUA — An hour before Pete Buttigieg showed up at Elm Street Middle School here on Sunday, hundreds of people stood in the morning cold, wrapping around the school. It was an immense turnout, the kind rarely seen in this election so far. According to Mr. Buttigieg’s campaign, 1,824 people showed up. “Biggest of any candidate in New Hampshire this cycle,” said Chris Meagher, his national press secretary. It’s undeniable, and the polls here bear this out, that Mr. Buttigieg is on the move in New Hampshire. But looks can be somewhat deceiving — especially on the Sunday before the primary in a New Hampshire city that sits near the Massachusetts border. A quick survey of attendees sitting patiently in the bleachers before Mr. Buttigieg’s arrival revealed a number of those in the audience were from out of state, many of them from the Democratic hub just south of Nashua. Not that there’s anything wrong with drawing a crowd heavy on Massachusetts voters — their primary is on Super Tuesday, in less than a month, and many of them wouldn’t have made the trek for a candidate lagging in the polls. But the spot survey illustrated one of the rules of New Hampshire politics: the closer the event is to the state’s southern border and to the day of the primary, the bigger the crowd of political tourists. Read more

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Feb. 9, 2020, 2:43 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 2:43 p.m. ET By Cheers for Mitt Romney in New Hampshire. Image Amy Klobuchar at a “Get Out The Vote” event at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester on Sunday. Credit... Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times HOOKSETT, N.H. — Eight years and a month after Mitt Romney won a commanding victory in New Hampshire’s Republican primary, voters in the state are cheering for him again — at Democratic campaign events. At Amy Klobuchar’s rally on the campus of Southern New Hampshire University on Sunday, a mention of Mr. Romney’s name drew a roar of approval from the crowd. Ms. Klobuchar invoked Mr. Romney as an example of statesmanship for crossing party lines to vote to convict President Trump in the impeachment trial that ended last week. Ms. Klobuchar took note of the irony, telling her supporters it was clear “all of our worlds are kind of upside down when we have our crowd here at a Democratic rally cheering for the former Republican nominee for president.” But Ms. Klobuchar, who has been campaigning as a moderate capable of winning crossover support from independent voters and disaffected Republicans, also had a broader point to make. “To me, leadership right now is not whether you’re willing to just stand in the corner, throwing a bunch of punches, giving a speech by yourself,” Ms. Klobuchar said, seemingly drawing a contrast with the leading candidate in New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders. “Courage,” she said, “is whether or not you’re willing to stand next to someone you don’t always agree with, for the betterment of this country.” Ms. Klobuchar is one of several candidates who have been appealing, explicitly or by implication, to center-right independents and Republican voters who are permitted to vote in New Hampshire’s open Democratic primary. Pete Buttigieg has been running commercials touting his determination to win Republican votes against Mr. Trump, but that ambition could apply just as easily to the primary on Tuesday. And Joseph R. Biden Jr. has long put his perceived appeal to conservative voters at the center of his electability pitch. Read more

Feb. 9, 2020, 2:33 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 2:33 p.m. ET By In exchange over Iowa results, Biden calls voter ‘a lying dog-faced pony soldier.’ Image Mr. Biden at a campaign event in Hampton on Sunday. Credit... Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times HAMPTON — Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s disastrous fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses occurred just under a week ago, and on Sunday, he was still facing scrutiny over his performance there. A student asked how he explained his loss and what that meant for his national prospects. “No. 1, Iowa is a Democratic caucus,” he said. “You ever been to a caucus?” “No you haven’t. You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier,” he told her, using an unusual phrase that he has deployed before on occasion, and that he has attributed to a John Wayne movie. There was some laughter. After a New Hampshire voter asks @JoeBiden why they should trust he can turn his campaign around, he asks if she’s ever been to a caucus before; when she says yes, Biden snaps: "No you haven’t. You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier." pic.twitter.com/3uxOAu0Ues — Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 9, 2020 “Now you’ve got to be honest. I’m going to be honest with you. It was a little bit confusing in Iowa.” He later told the woman she had asked “an honest question,” and he argued that the results in Iowa, a heavily white state, did not necessarily shed light on what will happen in bigger battleground states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. “I congratulate, I congratulate Pete,” he said. “I congratulate Bernie. They did a great job. And they were really well-organized, better organized than we were in Iowa.” Mr. Biden went on to suggest that candidates should be judged by the outcomes in the first four early-nominating states, including the more diverse South Carolina and Nevada. He again downplayed his chances in New Hampshire, noting that historically the state has favored candidates who hailed from neighboring states, and he pledged to “keep moving” whatever the outcome in Tuesday’s primary. Read more

Feb. 9, 2020, 2:23 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 2:23 p.m. ET By Iowa Democrats won’t correct errors on caucus tally sheets, emails show. Image Officials counting caucus results at a precinct at Johnston Middle School in Iowa. Credit... Pete Marovich for The New York Times DES MOINES — With the results of the Iowa caucuses still unclear after nearly a week, the state Democratic Party this weekend was furiously re-examining results from 95 precincts, about 5 percent of the total. But when the party delivers its updated results, which it has promised to do on Monday, they may hardly reassure candidates and voters, after internal emails from Saturday night revealed that the party would not correct even blatant errors in the official handwritten tally sheets from individual precincts. Those records, known as “caucus math worksheets,” cannot be changed even if they contain mistakes, according to the lawyer for the Iowa Democratic Party, because they are a legal record and altering them would be a crime. “The incorrect math on the Caucus Math Worksheets must not be changed to ensure the integrity of the process,” wrote the party lawyer, Shayla McCormally, according to an email sent by Troy Price, the chairman of the party, to its central committee members. The lawyer said correcting the math would introduce “personal opinion” into the official record of results. The sharing of the contents of the party email by this reporter (New York Times-speak for me) on Twitter created a minor furor, with readers astonished that bad math might not be fixed, further tarnishing the Iowa caucuses after the debacle last Monday, when the party failed to report results from the 1,700-plus precincts. Read more here. Read more

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Feb. 9, 2020, 1:39 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 1:39 p.m. ET By Biden pulls some punches. HAMPTON — In recent days, often speaking from a teleprompter or grilled by reporters, Joseph R. Biden Jr. lit in to Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg over ideology and experience, respectively. But asked during a question-and-answer session at a campaign stop Sunday about what made him a better candidate than his rivals, Mr. Biden, who paced the room with a microphone, was far more measured. As he often does, he argued that he was the candidate in the strongest position to help candidates running in tough down-ballot races, noting endorsements he has received from embattled Democrats and describing his work to aid candidates in the midterm elections. But there was no mention, in contrast to previous appearances, of how Mr. Sanders’s democratic socialist label might damage the rest of the party. Mr. Biden, a former vice president and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was the most experienced in international affairs out of the contenders. “It’s not that others don’t have the capacity to do it, it’s that they don’t have experience to do it,” he said, speaking about how he would seek to restore American leadership abroad. But he didn’t lace into Mr. Buttigieg’s mayoral resume as he and his team did Saturday. He also asserted that he was the candidate who was “far ahead of everyone” among black voters — “guess what, it’s the base of the Democratic Party” — but he didn’t directly note Mr. Buttigieg’s struggles to connect with voters of color, something he had recently observed more pointedly. And he noted an area of common ground with a rival. “One of the things that Andrew Yang and I agree on,” he said, is the idea that “we are in a fourth Industrial Revolution. Where the question is, who is going to have jobs? Will there be a middle class” amid technological changes? Toward the end of the event, Mr. Biden did engage in a more direct contrast with Mr. Sanders over one of their biggest areas of disagreement: “Medicare for all.” He suggested, as he has before, that Mr. Sanders was not being straightforward about the costs of the far-reaching proposal. “The one thing the public is looking for is authenticity,” he said. “Just tell me the truth.” He said that one would not “find a single economist” who would suggest the program would “cost anything less than $35 trillion, closer to $40 trillion for Medicare for all.” “They say well, it’s going to take at least four years to pass it,” he continued, appearing to add sarcastically, “Inshallah.” “Four years. You’re not going to pass it.” Read more

Feb. 9, 2020, 1:16 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2020, 1:16 p.m. ET By Polling shows a tight race between Sanders and Buttigieg in New Hampshire. Image Bernie Sanders made a campaign stop in Plymouth on Sunday. Credit... Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are the clear Democratic front-runners in New Hampshire, but they command two very different coalitions entering the primary on Tuesday, according to polling released over the last few days. As the impact of Iowa’s disorganized Democratic caucuses has slowly come into focus, Mr. Buttigieg’s strong showing there has helped lift him into second place behind Mr. Sanders in polling averages of New Hampshire. Meanwhile, Joseph R. Biden Jr. — long seen as the moderate candidate to beat — has faded into a virtual tie for third place with Elizabeth Warren, whose attempts to build a coalition centered on liberal, college-educated voters appear to have stalled. Compared to Mr. Sanders’s coalition, Mr. Buttigieg’s is much more evenly spread out across demographics — but it’s also less committed. Among no group, for instance, does he command the outsize support that Mr. Sanders enjoys among liberals and young people. But Mr. Buttigieg’s backing also does not drop off as dramatically as Mr. Sanders’s does with his weakest demographics. Mr. Sanders is supported by roughly half of likely primary voters under 35, but he has the support of only about one-tenth of those 65 and older, according to the latest results of a CNN/University of New Hampshire tracking poll. He has 46 percent of liberals in the poll, but does not reach even one-third of that level among moderates. Mr. Buttigieg, by contrast, polls in the low-to-mid-20s among all age groups 35 and over, the CNN poll found. He gets 15 percent of those under 35. Mr. Sanders won the New Hampshire primary decisively in 2016, when he was effectively in a two-person race against Hillary Clinton. This year he is hoping to hold onto enough backers to win in a far more crowded field. Mr. Buttigieg’s support has doubled since the fall, and polling suggests it is still cohering on the eve of the New Hampshire election. He had tentative support from a quarter of voters who said they were still trying to decide on a candidate, according to the CNN poll. Mr. Sanders had just 8 percent of those voters. The CNN poll has Mr. Sanders with a seven-point lead over Mr. Buttigieg, 28 to 21 percent, with Joe Biden at 12 percent and Elizabeth Warren at 9 percent. A Boston Globe/Suffolk University tracking poll shows the two leading candidates bunched closer together — on Sunday, it had Mr. Sanders at 24 percent and Mr. Buttigieg at 22 percent — but it reflects the same general picture of the race. In that poll, Ms. Warren was at 13 percent, Mr. Biden at 10 percent and Amy Klobuchar at 9 percent. According to the Globe/Suffolk poll, Mr. Buttigieg’s support has doubled over the past week. Both an NBC News/Marist College poll published on Friday and a Monmouth University poll out Thursday showed Mr. Sanders four points ahead of Mr. Buttigieg; in both cases, those leads were within the margin of error. A Boston Herald/Franklin Pierce University poll released Sunday also found them in a statistical tie, with Mr. Sanders at 23 percent and Mr. Buttigieg at 20 percent. Ms. Warren was at 16 percent and Mr. Biden was at 14 percent. Read more