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Posted: 2016-02-10T20:04:41Z | Updated: 2016-02-10T20:04:41Z

New Hampshires famously independent voters on Tuesday embraced presidential candidates in both parties with antagonistic views toward international trade agreements, social insurance cuts and money in politics, dealing a blow to the traditional preferences of the bipartisan donor class.

To be clear, Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the respective Republican and Democratic winners in the nations first presidential primary, are very different candidates. Trump is a xenophobic, race-baiting blowhard with vague policy prescriptions and no governing experience, while Sanders is an elected official with a stellar civil rights record and a detailed, if extremely ambitious, legislative agenda. Sanders explicitly critiques unfettered capitalism, arguing for higher taxes on the wealthy and a tax on Wall Street speculation; Trump merely claims that he as a businessman knows how to reorient the economy so that the broader public once again benefits from it.

But Trump and Sanders ran on economic populist platforms with some common features that clearly struck a chord with rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats in the Granite State. They both oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and virtually all other trade deals in recent decades (a similarity even Trump acknowledged on Wednesday).

In addition, they are both staunchly opposed to cutting Social Security and Medicare, the popular middle-class social insurance programs that are a favorite target of respectable Beltway think tanks .