DERRY, N.H. — As the presidential candidate commanded the stage, cheers and shouts erupted from the standing room-only crowd in a high school amphitheater, and a man in the audience called out: “We love you!”
The scene wasn’t from President Obama’s historic run in 2008 but from billionaire businessman Donald Trump’s town hall meeting last week in Derry, New Hampshire, where the large and diverse crowd reflected Mr. Trump’s broad appeal among Republican voters — young and old, men and women, rich and poor.
“He seems like a brutally honest, maybe too-honest guy,” said Ben Greene, 23, a waiter from nearby Goffstown, who came to the town hall meeting with his girlfriend to see if Mr. Trump could live up to the hype. “He’s a little too honest to be a slimy politician. He’s authentic.”
Elsewhere in New Hampshire, the crowds that gathered to see Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush told a strikingly different story. Not only were the crowds significantly smaller and less enthusiastic, they consisted mostly of senior citizens.
At a recent town hall meeting in the college town of Keene, few, if any, young voters were among the less than 200 people who showed up to hear from the former Florida governor.
That probably wouldn’t be a problem if Mr. Trump wasn’t in the race. But he is in the race, and he’s attracting support from a cross-section of the electorate that are rallying to Mr. Trump’s promise to make America a winner rather than a loser in international deals, as well as his pledge to build a wall across the southern border and deport every illegal immigrant.
The Bush campaign has taken note of the breadth of Mr. Trump’s popularity and begun to treat him as a serious threat. Mr. Bush has attempted to draw comparisons between himself and Mr. Trump and differentiate himself as the serious and reliably conservative leader.
“I’m not a big personality. That’s not me,” Mr. Bush said at a campaign stop at a restaurant in New London. “I’m not a talker, I’m a doer.”
Still, he attempted to tap into some of the dissatisfaction that has fueled Mr. Trump’s rise, saying that the United States is “possibly in decline.”
“We can gage against it, or we can fix it,” said Mr. Bush.
The message appeared to resonate with attendees at Mr. Bush’s events, though so far the message hasn’t caught on with a larger audience or pulled support away from Mr. Trump, who remains the front-runner for the GOP nomination.
Roy Raven, 75, said he came away from a Bush campaign event in New London convinced that the former governor was “a man of substance,” though he said he had been supporting Mr. Bush from the start.
“He’s not out there like Donald Trump is, for the headlines,” said the retired business executive. “But he can resolve the issues in D.C.”
Still, he credited Mr. Trump with pushing forward “significant issues that politicians won’t bring up,” but said that he had “served his purpose” and should get out of the race.
“He doesn’t have the maturity or the ability to work with other countries and Congress,” he said.
Mr. Raven said he was a longtime Bush family supporter, having backed Mr. Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, and his brother, former President George W. Bush.
At the Trump events, people fiercely defended their champion.
“He’s smarter than all these people who are attacking him,” said jewelry boutique owner Susan Tanguay, 53, who attended a town hall meeting with Mr. Trump. “He could make good deals for America.”
Many at Mr. Trump’s events remarked on his ability to give a speech and engage the audience without the use of a teleprompter or written notes.
“We’ve been listening to a president who reads from a teleprompter for so long — it’s refreshing,” said Ms. Tanguay.
The huge rallies for Mr. Trump confirm polling that shows his support is not limited to angry white men, as some of his detractors contend. He leads in the GOP race among men and women; wealthy and poor, college-educated and people who didn’t attend college; independents, moderates and conservatives; and urban, suburban and rural voters.
A recent CNN/ORC poll showed Mr. Trump leading the GOP field with 24 percent of the vote, followed by Mr. Bush with 13 percent and retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson with 9 percent.
Mr. Trump also led by similar margins for every demographic tested by the pollsters.
He topped Mr. Bush among women 20 percent to 16 percent, among independents 22 percent to 12 percent and among conservatives 25 percent to 14 percent, according to the poll.
“We need a change,” said Marisa Galinski, 50, a restaurant manager who drove 30 minutes from her home in Massachusetts to see Mr. Trump at the town hall meeting. “We need someone who will get the job done [and] make us strong again.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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