With Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump coming out on top in Tuesday's first-in-the-nation New Hampshire presidential primary, Delaware's Republican party is feeling optimistic.
"It's awesome," says state GOP chair Charlie Copeland. "I'm having a great time, and I'm really looking forward to the election."
Trump took a solid third of New Hampshire's record turnout Tuesday night, while Sanders topped Clinton with around 60 percent of the vote.
Copeland says it all bodes well for a competitive race ahead of Delaware's own primary election on April 26.
"We have an active debate over what the future of the country's going to be by very smart, talented people from Donald Trump to Kasich to Rubio and Bush and Cruz," Copeland says. "So I think we're having just an awesome time."
Kasich took a distant second to Trump Tuesday night with 16 percent of the vote, with Cruz, Bush and then Rubio filling out the top five at around 11 percent each.
"If you look at the New Hampshire numbers -- are we probably similar to that right now? Yeah, probably," Copeland says of Delaware's electorate. "But there's a long way to go ... as to what actual policies the Republican party is going to start promulgating as we get through the election."
Copeland expects the Republican field could still have three or four candidates come April -- and he says such an open race means Delaware's electoral votes could still matter to the GOP by then.
But he thinks that field looks good compared to what he called the big-government messaging of both Sanders and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side.
That's especially true of Donald Trump, he says:
"What I think Trump stands for is, 'Look. I'm a successful guy, I know how to get things done, and I'm gonna get things done, and I'm not gonna make a bunch of promises as to what specifically those are going to be, but they're going to be conservative and conservative-related solutions,'" Copeland says. "And I think that resonates with a lot of people."
He notes that his party will endorse whoever Delaware voters choose in their primary.
