This week saw the nation’s first Presidential primary of the 2024 presidential election taking place in the state of New Hampshire. Over the next few months, votes will be counted and delegates allocated to candidates hoping to win their party’s spot on the presidential ticket. The Republican primary has narrowed down to just two candidates: former President Donald Trump and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is almost certain to win the nomination for the Democratic Party.
This time around, the Democratic primary in New Hampshire was a little unusual: due to the Democratic National Convention wishing to move the first-in-the-nation primary to South Carolina, party bosses fell out with the New Hampshire Democratic Party, and so the DNC has not authenticated the primary, and Joe Biden did not appear on the ticket in line with the DNC’s rules. Biden still won the primary through a write-in vote, however the Democrats will not be awarding any delegates from New Hampshire.
However, rather than look into this year’s unusual Democratic primary, today I want to look at a more unique tradition of New Hampshire’s voting system, one that takes place in the remote community of Dixville Notch.
Tucked away in the north of the state, around 20 miles south of the Canadian border is the unincorporated community of Dixville Notch. The location gained popularity in the later half of the 20th century as a skiing and resort town. However, today it is better known for its primary voting tradition: voters in Dixville Notch all cast their votes at midnight on the day of the primary.
In New Hampshire, a handful of communities practice midnight voting. The tradition dates back to 1948, when voting was opened up at midnight to allow railroad workers who otherwise would not be able to get to the polling stations during voting hours to cast their votes. These days, the tradition is kept alive when Dixville Notch residents gather at The Balsams resort hotel to cast their votes at midnight.
While Dixville Notch is the community that is most associated with this particular quirk, it is not just Dixville Notch which takes part in the tradition of midnight voting: other nearby towns including Hart’s Location and Millsfield all open for voting at midnight. However, Dixville Notch has become the best-known for its longevity of keeping to the tradition, as well as the number of votes that are cast: this week – as well as in 2020 – just six votes were cast in Dixville Notch. Voters are able to cast their vote in either party’s primary, regardless of their registration. This week, all six votes were cast in the Republican primary for Nikki Haley: this represents the first time in the history of this tradition that a candidate has won a clean sweep of the community’s votes.
So while this is a unique voting procedure in the United States, how good of an indicator has the Dixville Notch vote historically been of the overall outcome of the primary? In short, there isn’t a huge amount of correlation: from 1960 until 2012, the winner of the Dixville Notch Republican Primary ultimately went on to win the national Republican primary; this streak broke in 2016 with John Kasich bested Donald Trump in Dixville Notch by a single vote. It’s highly unlikely that the streak will return this year: despite Haley’s clean sweep, Donald Trump is almost certain to win the Republican nomination for a third election in a row. Meanwhile, there has been little correlation between votes for Democratic candidates and overall results. Therefore, there is very little analysis that can be drawn from a handful of votes in New Hampshire, but that doesn’t make this tradition any less interesting and fun.
Dixville Notch, New Hampshire may only be home to a handful of voters, but it is unique traditions like this which help make local elections more interesting. For now, the primary candidates will head to South Carolina, where Trump will hope to wrap the nomination up.
Hugh Evans 