Another Crushing Defeat for Ron Paul

Well, the results for New Hampshire are out. Ron Paul once again takes 5th place, and falls back into single digits. This defeat is even more crushing when you consider the fact that New Hampshire is generally considered to be the most libertarian state in the nation, home of the failed Free State Project. This proves what we knew all along: A small group of dedicated spammers and trolls do not speak for the entire nation.

Exit polls provide further data on Ron Paul's loss. Some basic findings:

• Ron Paul receives votes from 11% of men, but only 4% of women.
  
• Most Ron Paul voters are young.
  
• Republicans are generally split on whether they approve of Bush.
• Ron Paul voters are less likely to have a college degree than the average republican.
• Ron Paul has the highest unfavorable rating of any other republican (57%). Second place goes to Mike Huckabee (44%). This refutes the argument of "The more people hear about Ron Paul, the more they like him."
• Only 24% of republicans who believe that Iraq is most important issue. Of those, McCain supporters outnumber Paul supporters 6:1. Romney supporters outnumber Paul supporters 3:1. That's bad, since this is Ron Paul's main selling point.
  
• In general, republicans favor reducing the deficit over cutting taxes by a margin of 54% to 44%.
• 81% of republicans are worried about terrorism, the remaining 18% are not.
• Generally, the more recently the voter made up their mind, the less likely they will have voted for Ron Paul. This, again, suggests that Ron Paul has tapped out most of his available base.
  

Pretty enlightening.