Dante Scala's Blog

The “down time” after an election is a good time to take the long view of things. “How the pendulum swung,” starting today, is an extended look at how the Granite State has changed politically over the last half-century.

Our “units of analysis,” to use the jargon of the political scientists, are the 10 counties of New Hampshire. We will take a look at how these counties have voted during the past thirteen presidential elections, from 1960 to 2008.

Some more back-of-the-envelope analysis of the 2008 results:

What’s especially striking about Barack Obama’s 68,000-vote margin of victory is how much of it came from outside Hillsborough and Rockingham counties.

The six smallest counties in the state – Belknap, Carroll, Cheshire, Grafton, Coos and Sullivan – together cast some 191,000 votes for Obama or John McCain, or 28 percent of the major-party vote. But they provided Obama with a 35,000-vote margin, or more than half of his total margin of victory. Indeed, Obama emerged with a 26,000-vote lead from Grafton and Cheshire alone.

Move over, Cheshire County. Your neighbor to the north, Grafton County, has staked a claim to be the most Democratic county in the state.

Barack Obama won exactly 64 percent of the two-party vote in Grafton, home of Hanover and Dartmouth College. He fell just shy of that in Cheshire, carrying 63.95 percent.

Four decades ago, Grafton County was rock-solid Republican.  It voted some 20 percent more GOP than the rest of the Granite State throughout the 1960s.

Here is the list of Obama’s top five New Hampshire counties – the President-elect carried all 10:

1.      Grafton, 64 percent

2.      Cheshire, 63.9 percent

3.      Strafford, 60.3 percent

4.      Coos, 59.2 percent

5.      Sullivan, 59.1 percent

Note also that four of the five counties sit in the Second Congressional District, a fact that lets Paul Hodes sleep a little more soundly.

Former Gov. John Sununu was right Tuesday night when he said that the political pendulum has a way of swinging back and forth.

The question, though, is how long the pendulum takes to swing.

Keep in mind that the last year New Hampshire was a reliably Republican state, the elder Sununu was about to become the President’s chief of staff, and Michael Dukakis was riding around in a tank. 1988 was the last time a Republican presidential candidate won a majority of the popular vote in New Hampshire.

Check out the above graph of the Republican presidential nominee’s share of the vote in presidential elections, both in New Hampshire and the nation. (Blue line is the nation, red line is New Hampshire.)

Whew, lots to consider in Tuesday’s results .

First, the Google view, courtesy of my UNH colleague Mica Stark.

Just click on NH and you’ll get a town-by-town overhead view of the presidential results.

Move your arrow over the town, and you’ll see the results for that town.

http://www.google.com/2008election/

A New York Times article suggests that New Hampshire voters are capricious types who really make their choice in the last few days. Any evidence to support this in a recent general election?

Let's take a stroll through the archives of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which displays polls for the last four elections.

For John McCain in New Hampshire, it’s the worst of both worlds: He was supposed to be the Republican standard-bearer who could attract independents.  But according to the latest WMUR/UNH New Hampshire Tracking Poll, he’s been unable to succeed in either of these roles.

Set aside, for the moment, that McCain is losing independents by more than 2-1 to Barack Obama.

With five days until the election, McCain only has the support of three out of four New Hampshire Republicans.

His 74 percent support among self-identified GOPers is four points less than the support he had three months ago. 

And it’s 16 points below George W. Bush’s support among New Hampshire Republicans at roughly the same point in 2004.           

Currently the “partisan gap” between McCain and Barack Obama stands at 18 points; Obama currently enjoys the support of 92 percent of self-identified Democrats.

The only Republicans on the ticket doing worse?

Jennifer Horn, whose 57 percent support among Republicans trails Congressman Paul Hodes’s 80 percent support among Democrats by 23 points.

And Joe Kenney, whose 37 percent support among GOPers trails Governor John Lynch’s 89 percent support among Democrats by 52 points.

With terrible numbers like these dogging him in New Hampshire, is John McCain’s plan to return to the Granite State Sunday simply a sentimental journey?

Not necessarily.

Now that my colleague Andy Smith has the WMUR / UNH New Hampshire Tracking Poll fired up, there are lots of new numbers to digest.

For instance, who would have bet five months ago that Barack Obama would lead Jeanne Shaheen among women voters?

Obama/McCain among males: 53-41 (Obama + 12)

Among females: 57-36 (Obama + 21)

Shaheen / Sununu among males: 47-41 (Shaheen + 6)

Among females: 50-34 (Shaheen + 16)

Obama's "gender gap": 9 percentage points.

Shaheen's "gender gap": 10 percentage points.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is currently running this ad in North Carolina against Elizabeth Dole’s opponent Kay Hagan.

It implicitly assumes that Barack Obama will win the White House, stating that if Hagan wins the Senate seat, there will be “no checks & balances” and “complete liberal control of government.”