Did some driving through NH in the last week and looked at a few polling places today.
Signs: Jeb has the most signs but they’re ALL on public land, by highway onramps, median strips and at the side of the road. Absolutely no large Jeb signs in real people’s yards. His campaign is pure astroturf but it’s huge. The low information voters might flock to him thinking he’s surging, so he could do better than expected.
Real yard signs are 90% Trump and Sanders. Hillary has her own astroturf campaign going but it’s dwarfed by Jeb’s. For every one Hillary sign there are ten Jebs, and both superpacs and Jeb’s campaign are placing them. Trump has the biggest yard signs, some of the are yuuuge. A few Carly, Kasich and Christie supporters have placed signs here and there.
Signage in general is down from 2012, but that could be due to the storm burying a lot of them.
At the polling places Sanders had the strongest presence with guys holding signs at all of them. Trump didn’t have people at some. Bad sign. Also, in an informal survey Jeb was sending out the most mailings, followed by Sanders and Hillary. Trump isn’t spending much on paid advertising.
As for Cruz - he might as well not be running. No one at the polls. Not a single yard sign. I glimpsed one sign by the side of a highway. One. Some of the kook candidates who didn’t make the kiddie debate have a stronger presence.
From all of this I conclude that Trump’s NH ground game is weak, as Cruz supporters have warned. However Cruz’s is even worse.
In terms of combined strength - boots on the ground, signs, mailers - Sanders is running the strongest NH campaign. Trump is second.