Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is not impressed with New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary status, because the Granite State has fewer residents than other states does not have many minorities living there.
“You go to New Hampshire, there are not any minorities there, and nobody lives there,” Reid told a Washington Post reporter at a Las Vegas event, according to The New York Times.
According to the U.S. census, only 1.5 percent of blacks and 3.3 percent of Latinos live in New Hampshire, a state of around 1.3 million people. This compares to 13.2 percent of blacks and 17.4 percent of Latinos who live in the in the United States. The last U.S. population estimate in 2014 showed almost 320 million people living in the country.
Next door to New Hampshire in the state of Vermont, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ home state, the numbers are similar. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is outpacing Sanders in attracting black voters to her campaign.
The Sanders campaign is attempting to makeup for the Vermont senator’s lack of minority campaign experience by working with Congressional Black Caucus members as well as Black Lives matters activists.