MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Granite Staters are heading to the polls for the first-in-the-nation primary, keeping up a 104-year-old tradition.
But this time, the landscape is dramatically different from past elections. The Democratic primary results are poised to be rejected by the national party — while on the Republican side, the field has been winnowed down to just two main contenders.
Here is everything you need to know about the New Hampshire primary.
It’s the law. No, really.
New Hampshire has held the first primary of every election cycle since 1920. (Iowa, which held its Republican nominating vote last week, operates a caucus system.)
For decades, the Granite State enjoyed that status by unwritten custom, but after two straight contentious Democratic primaries in 1968 and 1972, followed by the national trauma of the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s resignation, there was talk of New Hampshire giving up its premier status in favor of a regional primary involving all six New England states.
That idea did not sit well with either Republican Gov. Meldrim Thomson or Democratic state Rep. Jim Splaine, who first pitched legislation enshrining New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status in 1975, and gained a powerful ally in the GOP chief executive.
“Thomson had a sincere interest in preserving New Hampshire’s unique contribution to American democracy,” Splaine wrote in 2021. “He had run for governor on the slogan, ‘People above Politics,’ and the state’s First-in-the-Nation Primary was a way to continue pursuit of that ideal.”
Splaine’s bill passed shortly before the 1976 primaries and stipulates that the New Hampshire contest must be held at least one week before any other state primary — and can be held in the calendar year before a general election if any other state tries to cut the line.
The rest is political history.
President Biden is not on the ballot in Tuesday’s primary.
Following the 2020 election, national Democrats decided to make South Carolina the first primary to be held Feb. 3, on the grounds that it had a more diverse and representative population than either Iowa or New Hampshire.
But you know that law that New Hampshire passed back in the mid-1970s that says they have to go first? They mean it.
Back in November, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Scanlan stuck two fingers up to the Democratic National Committee, setting both party primaries for Jan. 23.
“Using racial diversity as a cudgel in an attempt to rearrange the presidential nominating calendar is an ugly precedent,” Scanlan told reporters at the time. “At what point does a state become too old or too wealthy, or too educated or too religious to hold an early primary?”
In response, the DNC announced it would award New Hampshire no delegates to this summer’s national convention in Chicago.
In deference to party bosses, the Biden campaign did not register for the ballot, leaving New Hampshire’s Democratic establishment to wage a write-in campaign in the hope of securing victory over challengers Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) and self-help author Marianne Williamson
There are three types of voters in New Hampshire: Republican, Democrat and undeclared.
That last group — what most people call “independents” — is by far the largest and can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary under state law.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has actively courted those “undeclared” voters in the Republican contest, to the chagrin of former President Donald Trump.
“Independents and Democrats are allowed to vote, so in order to try and stop Trump, they go out and they sign up and they can sign up very easily,” the 77-year-old complained last week to Fox News host Sean Hannity.
That’s not entirely true, however.
While participating in the Republican primary as an undeclared voter is as easy as asking for a GOP ballot at your local polling place, New Hampshire law does not permit so-called “crossover voting.”
Any Democrat who wanted to vote in a GOP primary would have had to register as a Republican or undeclared, and the last day to do that was Oct. 6.
So registered Democrats can no longer vote for Haley, if they even wanted to.
Given its early position, New Hampshire can grant its primary winners critical momentum.
In 2016, for example, it helped Trump shrug off his narrow Iowa caucus loss by handing him a blowout win and a springboard to the Republican nomination. In 2008, Republican voters helped resurrect then-Sen. John McCain’s flailing campaign with a big win over, among others, Mitt Romney — the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts.
This time around, Haley needs to win — or come close — to prove that she is a viable contender and that Trump can be beaten.
On the other side, New Hampshire is Trump’s prime opportunity to snuff out the last remnant of resistance to the GOP nomination.
On the Democrat side, the main question is how much support Biden will receive as a write-in candidate against two heavy underdogs.
As in Iowa, it would be a shock if Trump does not emerge as the GOP victor.
The 45th president touts a double-digit lead over Haley in the most recent RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, though the spread is not as large as in the Hawkeye State.
On the Democrat side, Biden is the clear favorite with his incumbency advantage likely to overcome the traditional difficulty of pulling off write-in campaigns.
For Democrats, the race heads to South Carolina and the controversial Feb. 3 primary.
On the Republican side, both Nevada and the Virgin Islands are scheduled to hold caucuses on Feb. 8.
Haley is competing in Nevada’s Feb. 6 primary, in lieu of the caucus where the actual delegates are allocated.
Therefore, the next big contest on the Republican side is really South Carolina on Feb. 24. That gives Haley and Trump about a month of campaigning before their next hotly-watched showdown — assuming Haley makes it that far.
New Hampshire has not backed a Republican for president in the general election since 2000, when it narrowly went for George W. Bush over Al Gore.
In 2020, Trump lost the state to Biden by seven percentage points.