Electability has long been a factor in the nomination battles of both parties, its significance varying from election to election. But the still-fresh shock of Trump’s 2016 victory and the desperation that many Democrats feel to get him out of office has elevated the concern to a higher priority than ever before , as I saw in interviews across New Hampshire. Electability has turned citizens such as Keniston, a 77-year-old nurse from nearby Stratham, New Hampshire, into amateur pundits themselves: They are basing their choice less on which candidate appeals the most to them than on which one they believe will appeal the most to others.

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“I am definitely looking at those swing states and trying to think of it from their perspective. Because in hindsight, that’s where I think we failed,” explained Denise Day, a 60-year-old social worker from Durham, New Hampshire. “Now electability is huge. It’s at the forefront.”

Still, electability isn’t an easily definable trait in politics. It’s a reflection of the commentary people read online or see on cable TV, and it can be a stand-in for racist or sexist assumptions. And as a predictor of results, perceived electability is unreliable—just ask Presidents John Kerry, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton.

But its prominence may also be a manifestation of a more troubling trend in American civic life: the deepening distrust in one’s fellow citizens. The rise in electability voters coincides with a decades-long decline in interpersonal trust, as well as data indicating that most Americans lack confidence in others to cast an informed vote. In New Hampshire, voters seem to take seriously their role as the great winnowers in presidential politics, performing a service on behalf of their fellow Americans; after the caucus-goers in Iowa make their pick, New Hampshire gets to sort—and sometimes scramble—the large field of contenders and send a smaller, more viable group to South Carolina, Nevada, and beyond.

Biden was the 11th candidate Day had seen this year, and by the end of the weekend, she was due to see two more. She told me that friends of hers had voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, over Clinton in 2016. Although Clinton carried New Hampshire by about 3,000 votes, Stein’s haul exceeded the margin between Clinton and Trump in each of the three states that decided the last election: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Day told me she planned to quiz those friends about the Democratic candidates before she decided whom to vote for herself: “I’m definitely turning to them and saying, ‘What’s it going to take to win your vote?’”

There’s good reason electability has always been more of a feature than a bug in American politics: A party has to win before it can govern, and a major goal of any presidential-nomination fight is to find the strongest candidate to carry the party banner in a general election.