Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezes, head of Public Policy Research and Municipal Strategy for Morgan Stanley.

Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the intersection between US public

policy and financial markets it's Wednesday February 12th at 11 a.m. Eastern as we

discussed last week the Iowa caucuses didn't give investors much to work with.

It didn't tell us much about who the Democratic nominee would be,

what their chances to win the White House were,

and whether or not they'd be able to deliver on their transformative policy proposals

but also leading the party to Senate control.

So what about yesterday's New Hampshire primary?

Did that give us good info?

Unfortunately not.

First, the race for the nomination remains open,

while the top two vote-getters, Sanders and Budajeg, were the same as in Iowa, the rest of the

field again picked up about half the vote. And polling suggests that different candidates

may, as more states vote in the coming weeks, have more success than they've had so far.

Second, even when we get clarity on who the nominee will be, we don't yet know if they'll have

the type of broad voter support within the Democratic Party that in the event they win the presidential election

would also translate to Senate control by winning seats in places like Maine, Arizona,

Colorado, North Carolina, and Alabama.

There's simply not yet enough votes or polling data to make the case one way or another.

Said differently, we just don't know yet if investors should start to price in a higher probability

that a real shift towards a set of democratic policies could become reality.

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