Even before Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders won their respective parties’ presidential primaries in New Hampshire Tuesday night, a lot of political analysts had spent a lot of time pondering the similarities between them. After their victories, there are likely to be even more.
The one word that sums up the New Hampshire primary results: yuuuge
But this clip from Sanders’ New Hampshire victory speech says it all.
Let’s start with the pronunciation: to both Trump and Sanders, it’s not pronounced “huge.” The internet spells their pronunciation “yuuuge;” personally, I think it’s more like “yoooge.”
The fact that only Sanders can authentically ape the GOP front-runner’s accent is a biographical quirk: they’re both from the outer boroughs of New York City, and they both carry pretty thick old-school outer-borough accents.
Frankly, the fact that the winners of the New Hampshire primaries are a couple of outer-borough New Yorkers is itself a reflection of just how flippin’ weird this election cycle has been. Weren’t Republicans supposed to hate “New York values?” Weren’t Democrats supposed to be done with old white guys?
Both candidates have won surprisingly impassioned bases of support
What’s really remarkable about Sanders’ use of “yoooge,” though, isn’t that he pronounces it correctly: it’s that the crowd enthusiastically shouts it back at him in a call-and-response. That’s a crowd that isn’t just fired up, it’s actively participating.
This has been the dynamic at the heart of both the Sanders and Trump campaigns: huge rallies full of extremely animated and passionate supporters.
It’s not a typical campaign strategy, especially in the small, politically spoiled states of Iowa and New Hampshire. (Sanders has complimented his rally-heavy strategy with a voter-mobilization “ground game”; Trump, less so.) And they’re not typical campaign rallies.
Both candidates’ supporters, like fans of any other entertainer, come to “hear the hits” of the candidates’ stump speeches — and to shout along with them. When Sanders asks rhetorically what his average campaign donation is, supporters know to respond, “TWENTY! SEVEN! DOLLARS!” When Trump asks “Who’s gonna pay for the wall?” his supporters know to respond, “MEXICO!”
On Tuesday night, that enormous enthusiasm for both candidates finally paid off in votes and convention delegates. It’s certainly a big moment for both parties. One might even call it...yooge.
By Libby Nelson and Dara Lind
