Happy Primary Day, New Hampshire

In case you somehow missed it, last Monday Iowa kicked off the 2016 Caucuses with our first in the nation caucus. Today, New Hampshire takes their first in the nation crown and kicks off the primary races. If you’re still a little confused about the difference between a caucus and a primary, no worries theSkimm breaks it down here.

If you’re even interested in politics in the slightest (or you completely hate them), it’s hard to ignore that 2016 is going to be the craziest election year in history. There is the potential for a lot of firsts by the time Election Day 2016 rolls around.

This time last year if someone had told me that a self described socialist would be doing this well in a presidential race against Hillary Clinton I would have laughed in their face. By all intents and purposes 2016 was suppose to be Hillary’s year, but I can say that I’m impressed by the campaign that Sanders has. They’re smart and drawing huge crowds of people who #FeelTheBern and they’ve completely caught Hillary’s campaign off guard.

Right now, the current RealClearPolitics poll has Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders leading former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 13.3 points. Honestly, as a Hillary supporter my thoughts on New Hampshire are not will Bernie win, their how much will he win by? New Hampshire is where Bernie’s ground game is succeeding the best. Is it because Sanders is from the area or because Clinton focused so much time on Iowa? We might not ever know the answer, but I think it has something to do with it.

Once the polls close tonight, we’ll have our first caucus and first primary in the books and if the closeness of Iowa’s Democratic Caucus was any indicator, no one knows what’s going to happen. My only prediction is, while New Hampshire has been a lot more accurate at painting a picture of who the nominee is going to be in past cycles, I don’t think that’s going to be the case this year. Bernie is great at drawing progressives and independents together, but Hillary still speaks to a good amount of progressives and the moderate democrats. As far as I’m concerned, on the democratic side the nomination is still completely up for grabs.

What I do know is, I’m going to be closely watching the New Hampshire results roll in and I’m excited to see what the results show.