It’s that time again! Daily Kos Elections is once again calculating presidential election results by congressional district in all 50 states, and we’re out with our first set of data from New Hampshire. We’ll be pushing out new data on a rolling basis as the results are officially certified and the precinct-level election results we need for our calculations to become available. (Ballotpedia has a list of state certification deadlines.) We have a chart of all 435 congressional districts here, which also includes results from 2012. That’s the page you’ll want to bookmark, since we’ll be updating it continuously.
Now, to the numbers! The Granite State backed Hillary Clinton by a narrow 48-47 margin, 4 points tighter Obama’s 52-47 win here four years ago. The 1st District, which includes Manchester, was very close in both presidential years and didn’t move that much: Donald Trump took it 48-47, while Obama narrowly carried the seat 50-49. The 2nd, which includes Nashua and Concord, was a bit more volatile: The seat supported Clinton 49-46, a considerable drop from Obama’s 54-45 performance.
Despite this split, both seats will be represented by Democrats. In the 1st, ex-Rep. Carol Shea-Porter unseated scandal-tarred GOP Rep. Frank Guinta 44-43. Both parties stopped spending here late in the race, which seemed like a strong sign that they agreed Shea-Porter was in a dominant position. However, Trump’s tight win helps explain why this contest was so close in the end, and Shea-Porter may also have been hurt by wealthy Democrat-turned-independent Shawn O’Connor, who took 9 percent.
While the 1st District was always going to be a battleground, national organizations ignored the 2nd District entirely. However, Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster beat underfunded ex-state Rep. Jim Lawrence only 50-46, tracking very closely with Clinton. It’s a good reminder that, despite Obama’s decisive win here in 2012 and Kuster’s 55-45 victory during the 2014 GOP wave, it’s tough to become entrenched in a state as volatile New Hampshire.
P.S. After we’ve released the presidential results for all 435 seats, Daily Kos Elections will circle back and continue our president-by-legislative project. We’ll be crunching not only the presidential races by state legislative district, but we’ll also calculate partisan statewide contents like Senate, governor, and attorney general by congressional and legislative district. We’ll also fill in a few remaining blanks from some 2014 and 2015 statewide elections as well.