Within the Margin

[note: due to my own buffoonery, I’ve had this one done for a while but forgot to schedule it. So it’s publishing out of order. Obviously, it was supposed to go between South Carolina and Virginia.]

This is the second state in our series that looms large in presidential primary contests – but unlike South Carolina, it has also spent time recently as a swing state. It’s worth remembering that for all the talk of Florida in 2000, Gore would have carried New Hampshire that year if a third of Nader’s voters opted for him instead, and its four electoral votes would have given him 271 and the presidency.

2004 marked something of a turning point. New Hampshire was the only state that swung from Gore to Kerry, beginning a streak of five Democratic wins in a row here. John Lynch won the first of four two-year terms as governor that year – the only Dem in the state’s history to do so. Democrats flipped one of the Senate seats in 2008 and the other in 2016. The two Congressional seats went back and forth for a few cycles before settling into a Democratic groove. Both houses of the state legislature are GOP-held but narrowly; the executive council remains swingy.