New Hampshire displays its split personality once again
Some people would call New Hampshire a purple state. But I think that’s misleading. New Hampshire is blue at the national level and red at the state level. In recent years, its senators and House members are all Democrats. But its governors and legislature are Republican, and not just by a small margin.
Now, with Tuesday’s election providing stronger majorities in the State House and Republican Kelly Ayotte’s victory in the race for governor, Republican lawmakers have the opportunity to pass bolder legislation.
Barring any changes from recounts, the House is expected to have 222 Republicans and 178 Democrats, according to the House Clerk’s Office; the Senate is projected to have 16 Republicans and eight Democrats.
The article has a list of legislative goals for the state Republicans, such as banning sanctuary cities in the state and having a parental rights bill. And of course there is New Hampshire’s well-known tax conservatism.
A person could be forgiven for thinking that New Hampshire is a red state. But at the national level, the state went for Harris – granted, by a narrow margin of 50.7 to 47.9, but in line with the fact that Clinton won there in 2016 and Biden in 2020. This year, there were no senators in New Hampshire up for election, but New Hampshire’s two current members of the US House are both Democrats. One was incumbent Pappas, who won easily: by eight points. The other seat was open but the Democrat won by six points.
So, what gives in New Hampshire? I think the state’s tax tradition is one of the reasons it remains Republican at the local level. It is also commonly thought that the trend at the national level has to do with new residents from Massachusetts, but I’ve read several analyses that say the new arrivals haven’t tended to vote consistently for Democrats. So the mystery remains.
400 reps and 24 senators is that right? That’s a huge size difference.
Here in WA we have 98 reps and 49 senators.
Griffin:
I think NH has something like the third largest legislative body in the world. And it’s a very small state.
I think Assistant Village Idiot (a NH native, IIRC) has written about their legislature. As I recall the state constitution fixed the number of citizens per district at a pretty absurdly small number for the current size of the population, the salary for legislators may also be fixed at a pretty small amount so there’s little fiscal pressure to cut the size and it’s not uncommon to actually personally know a legislator.
I have the answer:
“Barring any changes from recounts, the House is expected to have 222 Republicans and 178 Democrats, according to the House Clerk’s Office; the Senate is projected to have 16 Republicans and eight Democrats.”
So, NH has like 800 people and 424 are in their legislature.
I mean the US Congress has 535 for 350,000,000 people, right?
Problem solved.
The state’s voters are like functional alcoholics- going crazy on the weekend benders (national elections) but getting into the office on Monday hung-over but on time to grind out the work-week (state elections).
In the week before Election Day, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire endorsed Trump for President in a two page missive. LPNH is often thought to be the largest state LP organization, especially per capita of a states total population.
Folks from NH are not stupid. They elect the best for home and send the worst to DC for us to deal with.
The conventional wisdom is that it was the new arrivals from Massachusetts that turned New Hampshire Democrat in national elections, but people from Lowell and Lawrence who cross the line are trying to get away from Massachusetts and don’t want its taxes and problems. Rather, it’s more the native population that’s leaned towards the Democrats in the last 30 years or so, as has happened all over the Northeast. It’s surprising to me that even many rural towns voted for Biden and then Harris. They aren’t so different from Massachusetts or even Vermont.
According to Wikipedia, the balance of Republicans and Democrats in the state legislature going into the election was quite close, 5 votes out of 400. It would be interesting to know how many of those legislators on both sides were new style ideologically committed politicians and how many were less strident old style politicos.
New Hampshire doesn’t pay its legislators very much. Can it really be only $100 a year? They aren’t full time legislators. My guess is that makes them less ideological and more in touch with their constituents. Massachusetts had a 240 member lower house and cut the number back to 160, increasing salaries along the way, so now they are permanent nuisances, rather than merely seasonal ones.
The libertarian Free State movement was going to turn New Hampshire into a libertarian state the way that flatlanders moving into Vermont in the 70s and 80s turned that state into a socialist paradise. It doesn’t appear to have happened so far.
New Hampshire is strange indeed. Looking at their state wide offices all are either Republican or Nonpartisan (i.e. no stated party) The big exception is the Executive council District 2. I expectd this to include Nashua or Manchester or perhaps Durham (Home of UNH). But those all have Republican Councillors. District 2 is a gangling gerrymander of a region running up along the Vermont border on the Connecticut River way up to Littleton NH (about 2/3’s of the way to Canada). I suspect this is because the district contains Concord (small city home to much of New Hampshire’s swamp denizens) and Hanover home to Dartmouth and surrounding towns favored by the assorted Professors of that Ivy League school. The presidential elections are likely driven by UNH and Dartmouth students registering through same day registration at the polls. That may also skew Presidential year federal offices like House seats. The two universities each fall into separate districts (NH has only 2).
I was willing to think the cities (such as they are, Nashua, Manchester, Concord and the two university towns) dominated the federal state races with small towns (excepting some ex hippie outposts near Vermont) having stayed old New England Republican (Fiscal Conservative, non-interventionist/isolationist international, relatively liberal socially, think Calvin Coolidge) but my theory has a plethora of holes if there aren’t any Dems at the statewide level. Beats the heck out of me.
And then there are those Out of State (determined by cost of tuition) students who get to vote here and maybe even at their real home… for the double whammy. This should not be allowed, but any R that I speak with gives me a majorly limp explanation as to why it’s this way and whine that they can’t do anything about it.
Fully red NH legislature and governor should fix this.
Then there is the matter of the 3,000+ NH folks who moved out of state and yet are still on the voter roles here (and who voted in 2020/2024).
Not in my town, I checked. A family sold their house here and within a week they were removed from our roles. Odd, we are quite blue in this little burg.
The Red at Home aspect might result from wanting to keep the government locally out of their hair, and paying as little as possible for it.
The Blue Nationally might be because they can count on their state and local governments to keep the Feds off their back.