By Ruth Ward
The 2024 First in the Nation New Hampshire Primary has now come and gone, and once again, New Hampshire has shown the nation how to do elections right. With more than 300,000 votes cast, a record was set for highest turnout ever in the Republican Primary. Best of all, Election Day went off without any major hiccups. Several towns required the Secretary of State to provide them with more ballots midday, but this is always a good problem to have, as it means higher turnout.
At the end of the night, former President Donald Trump won the Republican Primary for the third straight time. His closest rival, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, finished about 35,000 votes behind him in second place. While President Trump and his allies have declared that this victory essentially locks up the nomination process for him, Haley also declared that her second-place result put her in a strong position to proceed onto the next primary state, South Carolina. We will need to wait to see which candidate has the momentum coming out of the Granite State.
Breaking the votes down by municipality, President Trump did far better than Haley in many of the smaller, more rural towns, where Haley won in more populated centers. Locally, the towns in our area of the state largely followed this trend. For example, in my hometown of Stoddard, President Trump edged Haley with 256 votes to her 155. As my Senate District trends rural, this was the case throughout.
On the Democratic side, the situation was a little more complicated. President Joe Biden’s name did not appear on the ballot. The official reason from the Democratic National Committee was that New Hampshire is “too white” to host the first primary, but more likely it was due to the fact that President Biden has never done especially well in the FITN. In 2020, he finished 5th and left the state before the votes were even counted knowing that he was not going to finish highly. As such, the DNC declared that our primary is non-binding, and the Democratic delegates will not count toward their party’s nomination later this year at their convention.
The DNC put the NH Democratic Party in a difficult position. They could not submit to the DNC’s demands to host the primary later since state law requires the New Hampshire to host the first primary.
Instead, they welcomed any candidates seeking to challenge President Biden, while at the same time launching a “Write-in Biden” campaign to ensure that he still came out on top.
Ironically, after decades of not being fully embraced by NH primary Democratic voters, this year President Biden finally got his win. Perhaps he should have tried not placing his name on the ballot in previous years?
All of this is very important for 2028. The Republicans will of course continue to keep New Hampshire first.
However, regardless of the outcome of the general election in November, it is highly likely that we will see an open primary for the Democrats. Will candidates ignore New Hampshire due to the fact that the DNC may still consider New Hampshire a “non-binding primary.”
I doubt it. The important momentum that candidates, such Carter, Clinton and McCain, enjoyed out of New Hampshire will always be too important to pass up.
— Ruth Ward (R-Stoddard) represents District 8 in the New Hampshire Senate.
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