WASHINGTON, January 9, 2012 — Tomorrow New Hampshire will hold the first primary of the season. This will be the first vote to actually select delegates; the Iowa Caucuses were a non-binding straw poll.
Monday morning will dawn with Mitt Romney vying the party nomination, but with Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich on attack, nothing is decided and tomorrow is going to be exciting. We hope you will plan to join the Communities as we watch, and discuss, everything happening as it happens.
New Hampshire is just the first political party primary elections whose purpose is to choose who will be the Republican or Democratic nominees for the upcoming presidential elections. As President Obama is an incumbent, the Republican National Committee and the candidates, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich are charging the state with fervor.
And while the purpose of the primary is to select delegates, the media exposure and the possible winnowing of the field is as important.
New Hampshire would have been selecting 23 GOP delegates, but because the primary was pushed into January, the state was penalized by the RNC: Only 12 delegates will be selected. (Other states, including South Carolina and Florida, will also be penalized.) They'll be allocated to the various candidates according to the percentage of the vote they receive.
New Hampshire's primaries are semi-closed. Registered Democrats and registered Republicans must vote in their own parties' primaries, but non-affiliated voters may vote in any primary they please. In order to win the GOP nomination, a candidate must receive 1,144 delegates out of 2,286.
Political tourists from all over America have gathered in New Hampshire to experience and enjoy the first primary of 2012. New Hampshire is unfortunately a long way away from most Americans, and cold and snowy at this time of year.
Helping politiphiles around the nation together to watch the New Hampshire Primary and chat with Jim Picht, Terry Ponick, Conor Murphy, Catherine Poe and Gayle Falkenthal, political columnists for Communities @WashingtonTimes.com lively, friendly discussion as we wait for the results to come in together?
Participants will be encouraged to make a case for their candidate, tell us why the results are meaningless or important. Tell us whom you think will drop out and what you think is next for the different candidates.
All we ask is that you keep on point and keep this PG-rated. The discussion will be moderated, the environment kept family-friendly, so be assured that you'll be made welcome, whether you favor Gingrich, Huntsman, Paul, Perry, Romney, Santorum, or even if you'll be voting for someone else in November.
Visit back to Communities @WashingtonTimes.com and click the banner to access the chat room starting at 7:00pm tomorrow evening and ending when the final vote comes in.
We hope you will join us; Iowa was an exciting night, and at the Communities, we brought you an exclusive interview with Edith and Carolyn, the Clinton County, Iowa, the ladies who solved the mystery of who won Iowa. Who knows what we will bring you from New Hampshire, but you can be assured it will be interesting.
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