Andrew Smith: New Hampshire Voters Haven't Made Up Their Minds Yet

New Hampshire Primary — A voter walks over to machine to cast a ballot at a polling site in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016, in Nashua, N.H.

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

February 10, 2020

Updated August 07, 2023

Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, joined Boston Public Radio on Monday to speak about why most people have yet to make up their minds on who to vote for in the New Hampshire primary tomorrow.

"Most voters here don't make up their minds until the very end, there's no reason to," he said. "It's based on the idea in New Hampshire we have really high turnout ... close to 50 percent turnout, which means it's not activists that determine who wins New Hampshire, it's just regular folks who really don't care about politics that much."

New Hampshire voters are less focused on policy differences between the candidates and more interested in the character of each candidate, Smith said.

"[Most New Hampshire voters] can't tell you the difference between Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg's health care plans, or any of the other plans they have," he said. "They're going to go in and vote for someone they think can beat Trump, who their neighbor might like, who they think looks good on TV, the small things like that."