Ryan: Loss of less than 20 points is win for Hillary in N.H.

YOUNGSTOWN

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, who spent Friday campaigning on behalf of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, said the Democratic presidential candidate should consider it a success if she loses the Granite State’s Tuesday primary by less than 20 percentage points.

“New Hampshire is going to be tough because they’ll vote for the regional candidate” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Ryan said. “The map for her after New Hampshire is favorable. You get into South Carolina and Nevada, and she’ll do well there. Then as the campaign moves on, she’ll continue to do well.”

RealClearPolitics.com, a website that aggregates polling data, shows that four recent polls of New Hampshire Democrats have Sanders ahead of Clinton by 20.5 percentage points.

The website has Clinton with a 29.5 percentage point lead over Sanders based on two polls in South Carolina. There haven’t been recent polls taken of Democrats in Nevada, but older ones give Clinton a large lead. She also has a 13.3 percentage point lead on Sanders in recent national polls.

Ryan of Howland, D-13th, is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire School of Law and campaigned on Clinton’s behalf in that state late last year.

He was the first U.S. House member to publicly support Clinton in November 2013.

Read more about the situation in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.