It’s election day in the Granite State, the first state in the nomination process that uses a primary election instead of the Byzantine and anti-democratic caucus system. So, that means we’ll see live results tonight presented in an easy-to-understand format, showing actual raw votes. (That contrasts with Iowa, where some outlets would simply report the actual number of delegates awarded in each county, and others would try to extrapolate the number of delegates into approximate raw votes—either way, no one still knows, and probably will ever know, the true raw vote totals from Iowa.)
As a bonus, New Hampshire also has a much more transparent delegate allocation system than Iowa. On the Democratic side, there are 24 delegates up for grabs tonight (for a total of 32; New Hampshire also has eight unpledged PLEOs, which you probably know as “superdelegates"). 16 of those pledged delegates are allocated at the congressional district level, with the remainder allocated statewide; with only two congressional districts, that's eight per district. The delegates in each district are allocated proportionately, so, if, say, Bernie Sanders gets 58 percent of the vote in NH-01 and Hillary Clinton gets the other 42 percent, that’d round up to 5 Sanders delegates and 3 Clinton delegates. If it's closer, say, 54 percent Sanders and 42 percent Clinton, that'd round to 4 for each of them. There's a required 15 percent threshold to get delegates, but with only two candidates really fighting this out, that's not an issue. (Okay, there are actually 28 candidates fighting it out, but c’mon: Vermin Supreme isn’t getting any delegates today.)
On the Republican side, the process is very similar, though the formula is tipped a little more toward statewide results. The GOP has 20 delegates at stake tonight (along with three "party" delegates, for a total of 23), but only six are allocated at the congressional district level, along with 10 "state" delegates and four "bonus" delegates. Believe it or not, they have even more candidates on the ballot: 30 in all.
The good news is: We'll know tonight exactly how that corresponds with national delegates, without having to go through the process of multiple conventions. Contrast that with Iowa, which funnels its county delegates into several levels of meetings, first for congressional district-level delegates and then delegates to the national convention (and where, because delegates can do what they want, the Rick Santorum victory on the Republican side in 2012 in Iowa turned into a Ron Paul victory by the time the national delegates were assigned).
So, what’s the deal with the state's two congressional districts, and should we expect different results in them? Let’s look a bit more at the demographics of the different parts of the state.
New Hampshire’s two districts, NH-01 and NH-02 are, in fact, very similar, both politically and demographically. They’re both fairly close to the national median in terms of their presidential vote, though NH-02 is generally considered a bit more liberal (NH-01 gave Barack Obama 50 percent of the vote and Mitt Romney 49 percent of the vote in 2012, while NH-02 broke 54/45 in 2012). They’re both extremely white: In 2014, NH-01 was 91.0 percent non-Hispanic white (along with 1.2 percent black, 2.5 percent Asian, and 3.2 percent Hispanic), while NH-02 was 91.3 percent non-Hispanic white (along with 1.1 percent black, 2.6 percent Asian, and 3.2 percent Hispanic). They both have a similar age composition as well: The median age in NH-01 is 42.3 and, in NH-02, it’s 42.6 (which is considerably older than the country as a whole, where the median age is 37.7).
Still, there may be some cultural differences between the two districts that show up a little more distinctly when you look at the Democratic results. NH-01 is a fairly dense district concentrated in the southeast part of the state, where the major cities like Manchester are, as well as the Boston-area exurbs that line the border, where a number of people who work in Boston who want a bigger house in more rural settings have moved to (people often assume those people are tax refugees because of New Hampshire’s no-income-tax and no-sales-tax reputation, but “Massholes" still wind up paying income tax on their Massachusetts earnings and then pay higher New Hampshire property taxes on their land).
Meanwhile, NH-02 covers the whole rest of the state. Some of the district, like Nashua and Concord, is more culturally linked with the dense area around Manchester, but much of the rest of it is rural. NH-02 is, generally, considered the more Vermont-like part of the state, while NH-01 is the more Massachusetts-like part. Reinforcing that difference is the line between media markets that runs through the state; NH-01 is solidly part of Boston’s sprawling media market, while the parts of NH-02 that face the border along the Connecticut River are watching Burlington, Vermont, television, while the furthest north parts of the state are in the Portland, Maine, market.
In other words, many people in NH-02 have been seeing news about Bernie Sanders for decades, so while he doesn’t actually represent them, there may be something of a “favorite son” effect here. In addition, that part of NH-02 has several college towns, like Hanover and Keene, where you'd expect Sanders to do well even without the media market overlap … though bear in mind that the state's largest university, University of New Hampshire, is in Durham in the 1st district. (Keene also has a long-standing countercultural reputation, on top of all that.) So, my guess would be that if one assumes, based on the aggregated polls, that Sanders has a 10-15 point lead overall, NH-01 may turn out to be fairly close (within single digits) while Sanders may truly clean up in NH-02 (with a 20-point edge or more).
You can sort of see those dynamics in the maps of the 2008 primary at the top of the story, if you stretch and assume that Obama = Sanders and well, Clinton = Clinton. Obama did better in the Vermont-like, rural western portions of the state, while Clinton did better in the Massachusetts-like, denser southeastern portions of the state (as well as the French-Canadian-influenced far north part of the state). You can also see a similar dynamic in the map of the 2012 Republican primary, which is just above: Mitt Romney fared well in the Massachusetts-facing parts of the state, while the more rural parts liked Ron Paul and Jon Hunstman more. (As far as how that predicts today’s GOP primary, my best guess is that the cluster of establishment-flavored governors will do better in the more Romney-friendly parts of the state, while the rural parts will turn more toward Donald Trump.)
So, let’s turn to what to actually watch for tonight. Live election results in New Hampshire, along with the other states in New England, look a little different than in the rest of the country because they’re reported at the town level, rather than the county level. (Counties have little administrative relevance in New England, usually only providing services at the judicial level; instead, each town has its own elections office.) So, instead of a tidy list of 10 counties, you’ll be looking at a list of 234 municipalities, most of which only have a few thousand people in them. Which ones should we focus on?
Let’s pull out the state’s six most populous municipalities: Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Derry, Dover, and Rochester. We’ll also include six other, slightly smaller places, but ones that have a somewhat atypical character that make them interesting to watch. For each one, I’m including age data, so you can see whether they’re especially young or old; as we saw in Iowa, younger places (especially college towns) were Sanders strongholds, while older, more suburban places went for Clinton. I’m also including median household income; while age wasn’t as strong a predictor as income, we also saw in Iowa that more affluent places were more Clinton-friendly, and less affluent places were more Sanders-friendly. (In fact, the only thing that surprised me in Iowa was that more blue-collar places like Council Bluffs and Sioux City that went strongly for Clinton in the 2008 caucus went narrowly for Sanders this year, suggesting that he’s making some inroads with white blue-collar voters as well.)
NH-01
Manchester: 24.3 percent 20-34 years old, 12.6 percent 65+ years old, median age 36.8; MHI $55,306
Derry: 20.7 percent 20-34 y.o., 10.4 percent 65+, median age 38.5; MHI $65,637
Dover: 25.2 percent 20-34 y.o., 13.5 percent 65+, median age 36.6; MHI $60,038
Rochester: 21.2 percent 20-34 y.o., 16.1 percent 65+, median age 41.5; MHI $48,114
Portsmouth: 23.8 percent 20-34 y.o., 16.6 percent 65+, median age 41.5; MHI $67,679
Durham: 33.8 percent 20-34 y.o.; 7.0 percent 65+, median age 20.7; MHI $67,758
NH-02
Nashua: 21.1 percent 20-34 y.o., 13.0 percent 65+, median age 38.3; MHI $66,818
Concord: 22.0 percent 20-34 y.o.; 13.8 percent 65+; median age 39.5; MHI $54,182
Keene: 24.3 percent 20-34 y.o.; 15.0 percent 65+; median age 34.5; MHI $52,327
Lebanon: 21.5 percent 20-34 y.o.; 15.5 percent 65+; median age 39.4; MHI $52,825
Hanover: 34.9 percent 20-34 y.o.; 11.0 percent 65+; median age 23.2; MHI $94,063
Berlin: 18.2 percent 20-34 y.o.; 20.6 percent 65+; median age 44.1; MHI $36,358
In terms of age, the likeliest Sanders strongholds are the previously-mentioned college towns of Durham and Hanover (where Dartmouth College is), where the median age is college-age. Look for Clinton to do better in the older locales, such as Rochester and especially Berlin, which is an unusual case: It's an old mill town located in the state’s northern woods. It’s much more heavily French-Canadian and Catholic than the rest of the state, and generally more traditional and union-oriented, so it may be one of Clinton’s better spots … but on the other hand, note that Berlin is also much more blue-collar than the rest of the state. (New Hampshire is, on average, one of the most affluent states in the nation, and each of these places other than Rochester and Berlin are above the national average for household income.) Given the surprising strength that Sanders showed in aging, blue-collar parts of Iowa, it’s possible he’ll do well even in Berlin and Rochester.
The state’s largest cities, like Manchester, Nashua, and Concord (the state capitol) are pretty demographically average compared to the state as a whole, so I would expect them to closely mirror the statewide averages. Two other cities worth a mention are Lebanon, which is near to Hanover but more blue-collar (it’s the “town” to Hanover’s “gown”). It’s a little older and stodgier than the state average, but it’s also one of the towns facing the Vermont border so it may work out well for Sanders anyway. And finally there’s Portsmouth, which is hard to figure out: It’s an old school blue collar port town, but it has developed a hip, regentrifying reputation lately, which you can see with its above-average income. It’s still one of the state’s older cities, though (probably thanks to blue collar retirees who haven’t moved out), so it’s unclear which way Portsmouth will point.
Daily Kos Elections will be liveblogging the results tonight on both the Republican and Democratic sides, in great detail. Polls close at 7 pm ET in most parts of the state (but may stay open until 8 in the major cities).