As in Iowa, Sanders ran behind his total vote from four years earlier but had more than enough to get a plurality of the popular vote.
With 95 per cent of precincts reporting, Sanders was on track to get more than 75,000 votes, just about half of the 152,181 votes he won in 2016.
Put another way: Sanders now holds the record for the largest win number (60 per cent) in a competitive New Hampshire primary and the record for the lowest win number (26 per cent).
That slightly complicates one theory that nervous Democrats had about Sanders, that they would underrate him as Republicans once underrated Donald Trump.
Four years ago, Trump won 100,735 votes in New Hampshire and 35 per cent of the total electorate. Throughout the entire 2016 Republican primary, which like this race featured three more mainstream candidates divvying up that vote, neither Trump nor anyone else won with as small a share of the vote as Sanders did yesterday.
2) One looming question for Sanders is how much his 2016 coalition will scatter.
According to data compiled by the Washington Post's Scott Clement, Sanders won 56 per cent of his 2016 voters in Iowa and 57 per cent of them in New Hampshire. Just 5 per cent of those voters in New Hampshire went to Warren, while 28 per cent of them backed either Klobuchar, Buttigieg or former Vice-President Joe Biden.
We are getting a clearer picture of something important for 2020: how much of the original Sanders base was voting for him and how much was voting against Clinton.
3) The anti-establishment candidates ran their course.
Sanders entered the New Hampshire primary with another unprotected flank: Two other candidates were bidding for the burn-it-down vote he'd had all to himself four years ago.
Had businessman Andrew Yang and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, of Hawaii, run just a little stronger, they might have pulled enough votes from Sanders to throw the primary to Buttigieg. But neither candidate did so, combining for about 5 per cent of the vote, and Yang quit the race.
Even though Yang has said he is not going to make an endorsement soon, the end of his campaign is marginally helpful to Sanders. But how marginal?
In 2016, 40 per cent of Democratic primary voters told exit pollsters that they were independents and 73 per cent of this group voted for Sanders. Yesterday, independents jumped to 46 per cent of the electorate; Sanders won 29 per cent of them - more than anyone else but another sign of how his old voters have drifted.
4) Moderate voters can surge, too.
One reason that Klobuchar and Buttigieg ran ahead of the final polls and Sanders ran slightly behind was the higher turnout goosed by independent voters. Just 13 per cent of voters said they had never before voted in a Democratic primary, and those voters broke for Buttigieg over Sanders, 29 points to 25 points.
Take one example, to see how this worked.
Sanders ended his primary campaign in Durham, home to the University of New Hampshire, with a concert that blew away voter engagement records in the state. From 2016 to 2020, turnout jumped in Durham from 4047 to 4912, a rise of 21 per cent.
But turnout in some suburbs where Republicans have been walking away from their party jumped even higher. In Bow, a suburb of Concord, turnout jumped from 1766 to 2356, a rise of 33 per cent, and Sanders ran third behind Buttigieg and Klobuchar. They got a combined 1257 votes, while Hillary Clinton had come out of the town with just 851 votes.
Some crossover voters jumped into this primary with no plan to support a Democratic nominee, but many of them were the types of voters who powered the party's 2018 wins: active but not left-wing.
5) Voters can like and agree with these candidates, then reject them.
As in Iowa, voters who answered the network's poll said they agreed with Sanders on healthcare, with 61 per cent of voters ready to "replace private health insurance with a single government plan."
But 49 per cent of these voters backed a candidate who does not want to actually do that: everyone except Sanders and Warren. As in Iowa, the voters opposed to single-payer were more coherent, with 91 per cent of them backing a candidate opposed to the plan.
Warren's revised pitch to voters, positioning her as the "unity" candidate who could please everyone in the party, is based partly on her issue positioning and partly on her overall likability.
Biden's campaign and its boosters have repeatedly mistaken personal affection for the former vice-president, and the real emotional connections he makes with voters, as a readiness to vote for him.
Most primary voters like their top tier of candidates, and it's possible to pull high favourable ratings while watching voters race to other candidates.
