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Once again, Ted Cruz has an under-appreciated strength in New Hampshire

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3394923/posts

They might not make national headlines, but local endorsements in presidential primaries matter. According to the influential book “The Party Decides,” such endorsements reveal party elites trying to come to a decision about which candidate they should mutually support. They are leading indicators of vote - and delegate - outcomes. In many ways, they are better at predicting how the race will turn out than opinion polls.

As we’ll explain below, in New Hampshire, Ted Cruz has built up a commanding lead of these endorsements - especially compared with Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, which indicates a reservoir of strength that current polling might be missing.

This echoes our post from a week ago (before the caucus), in which we argued that Ted Cruz’s underappreciated strength in Iowa endorsements - he led the field with more than a quarter of the sitting legislators’ endorsements - could help him outperform the polling average. And indeed, he did.

On the other hand, there are many endorsements for candidates like Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie. The message is that of a Republican party in New Hampshire deeply divided between a more moderate wing supporting Fiorina and Christie, and a more libertarian wing that now is owned by Cruz (and was for Paul, when he was running).