Every four years, for the past five decades, New Hampshire has found itself the center of both the media’s and would-be presidents’ attention.
Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are among the Democrats who have committed weeks to campaigning in the state, which has long held the country’s first presidential primary. Over the years, national and international media have spent tens of millions of dollars on hotel rooms, rental cars, food and booze.
But this year, Democrats have stripped New Hampshire of its proud first-in the-nation status, potentially jeopardizing its outsized influence over American politics. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has instead decided the first place to vote will be South Carolina, a state with a more diverse population and perhaps not coincidentally, a place where Joe Biden performed well in 2020.
“A terrible decision,” Maggie Hassan, one of New Hampshire’s two Democratic senators, told NBC on Sunday.
“Tremendously disappointing,” Jeanne Shaheen, Hassan’s Senate colleague, said when the move was first proposed.
Republicans have stood by the traditional nominating calendar, which since the 1970s has seen both parties hold caucuses in Iowa and then a primary in New Hampshire, while under Democrats’ plan, New Hampshire would retain plenty of clout – voting second, on the same day as Nevada.
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But the Granite state hasn’t taken the DNC’s proposals lying down. The state Democratic party here is plowing ahead with a primary regardless, even though the national party has said it will not honor the results. There is a sense that politicians, journalists and voters could be witnessing the end of an era.
“New Hampshire is a very white area with an average age that’s a bit on the older side, so I do understand that it’s maybe not the best group of voters to represent the entire country,” said Jamie Setzler, 20, from New Boston, New Hampshire.
“But from a selfish standpoint it is disappointing. I used to be able to look forward, every four years, to something interesting.”
Holding the first primary has long given the state an outsized influence in national politics. Hundreds of journalists essentially move here for an entire week every four years as they’re able to cover both Republican and Democratic campaigns: in recent days, TV satellite trucks have almost outnumbered the amount of political yard signs in Manchester.
But if Democrats persist with their plan, the state could lose some of its importance, said Chris Galdieri, a politics professor at Saint Anselm college in New Hampshire.
“That’s a concern. I think that’s a lot of what worries state Democrats. It’s not just that the new calendar would have pushed New Hampshire to second place, it would have been second place shared with Nevada, all the way on the other side of the country,” he said.
The change to the calendar came after Joe Biden, who came fifth in the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic primary before reviving his campaign with a win in South Carolina, wrote to the DNC in 2022.
“For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process,” Biden wrote.
“We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.”
Both Iowa and New Hampshire have predominantly white populations, which would appear to be out of sync with the Democratic party – in the 2020 presidential election about 40% of Biden voters were Black, Hispanic, Asian or of other non-white races.
The plan hit a snag, however, when New Hampshire Democrats said they would hold their primary on 23 January, the same day as the Republican party. They cited a state law which says the New Hampshire primary shall be held “on a date selected by the secretary of state which is seven days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election”.
It’s led to a quasi-primary in New Hampshire, where Joe Biden hasn’t even applied to have his name on the ballot but two long-shot challengers, Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, and Marianne Williamson, an author and self-help guru who ran for president in 2020, are crisscrossing the state holding campaign events.
The DNC has said any votes from Tuesday’s primary will not count towards the nomination, but in a sign that the Biden campaign sees the potential for embarrassment, a movement has emerged encouraging people to write his name on voting slips.
The resistance by New Hampshire Democrats, which perhaps should have been expected in a state which has the word “die” in its official motto, has some people skeptical that the calendar change will persist in 2028, when the Democratic party will not have an incumbent president and the primary field is expected to be a lot wider.
“It would be a disappointment. But I don’t think it will happen. We have it in our [state] charter that if another state changes its date, we change the date,” said Amanda Whiby, a co-owner of the Red Arrow Diner, tucked away on a side street in the center of Manchester.
The 100-year-old diner has benefitted from the first-in-the-nation primary more than most. It has become a must-visit stop for both Republican and Democratic candidates, and behind its long, red-topped dining counter, the walls are plastered with framed photos of famous, and not-so-famous, politicians.
“The Democrats tried to make a change, and we’ve dug our heels in,” Whiby said. “We feel very strongly that we do a great job of vetting the candidates here for the rest of the country, and I don’t think that tradition is going to change.”
While it remains to be seen what happens in 2028, there is an argument that New Hampshire has already lost some of its influence, said Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire.
“I actually think the order of states on the calendar now matters less than it did two, three decades ago,” Scala said.
“The whole nomination process has become much more national in scale and scope. Nowadays, I think candidates feel this pressure to build a national name ID, a national brand within their party months ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire.”
Scala pointed to Biden’s poor performance in New Hampshire in 2020, when he won just 8.4% of the vote, as evidence that results here don’t necessarily dictate who will become a party’s nominee.
Added to the sense that New Hampshire’s influence could be on the wane is the way the media has changed. The days of a candidate literally having to introduce themselves to voters in New Hampshire bars, and to give speeches in person, are largely gone.
“Iowa and New Hampshire voters get a lot of their news, not from local outlets, but from national ones. You’ve got New Hampshire conservatives, watching Fox News, and seeing Ron DeSantis and saying to themselves: ‘Oh, Ron DeSantis, okay,’ and then then maybe seeing him in person in New Hampshire.
“Now partisans in every state can have a front-row seat. They can see a televised town hall meeting with Anderson Cooper on CNN, they don’t have to live in Manchester, New Hampshire to go see a candidate. They can watch on TV. And so as a result of all that, I do think it’s a little less important who goes first, who goes second.”
