New Hampshire Primaries

New Hampshire – located in the far north eastern corner of the USA, had its primary round of voting in the Presidential election today.

Remember that there are two rounds of voting for the president. The first round is generally amongst voters who are registered to vote for the two main parties, and is a vote of deciding which republican and which democratic candidate will get endorsed by their party as the presidential candidate (and go through to the secondary round, when all the independent candidates and voters can participate). So at the  moment, the party candidates are still fighting each other, as well as the opposition.

I think it is officially called a primary because each candidate receives the votes directly, rather than on a precinct level like in the Iowa caucuses. The Iowa caucuses are organized by the political parties, and are a closed vote (you have to be registered with either of the two main parties) whereas New Hampshire is a sort of closed vote – ‘undeclared’ voters can register with either party, vote for whatever party they registered with, then change their affiliation back to undeclared. If you’re already registered as affiliated with a specific party, you have to vote for that party. In New Hampshire this year, about 40% of voters are registered as undeclared. The New Hampshire Primaries are organized by the state.

New Hampshire primaries are important because they’re the first in the country, and people are obsessed with trying to predict outcomes based on one small state. New Hampshire does not have a typical diversity representative of the rest of the USA. But winning New Hampshire, or even, upsetting media predictions, can give huge momentum to a candidate’s campaign. It is state law that New Hampshire hold the first primaries in the election, so they have even moved the date to make sure that they’re first.