What Makes New Hampshire A Swing State?

[BamaLefty]

You guys are smack in the middle of the bluest area in America, but yet the New Englander John Kerry won your state by a measley 1%. And Al Gore lost by about 4%.

The Granite State has a Republican legislation as well.

I just can't understand it... c'mon and paint your state dark blue! :)

[whistle]

1. All of the maple trees with their strong branches, rope and....

...their old tires?

[Cha]

2. I'm not from New Hampshire but

I went to New Hampshire from New York for the last Kerry/Edwards rally before the election..in Manchester.

There were about 15,000 people there and they were so enthusiastic for Kerry..that my impression of New Hampshire is Blue!

[BamaLefty]

6. NH

Well, it isn't that blue Zidzi. In fact, it is only 9K votes blue.

John Kerry- 340,511 50.25%
George W. Bush- 331,237 48.88%

I understand that you guys are rivals with Massachusetts, but what about surrounding Vermont and Maine. These are two rural states in which Kerry did very well. In Vermont, he won by 20%. And he carried Maine by about 10%.

What I am worried about is the fact that Republicans will be spending time in the state for their primaries, this time they did not. I am scared that this may swing our mere 9,000 vote cushion.

[freethought]

9. Maine is kind of mix.

We have two Republican senators (Collins and Snowe), and our democratic rep (Allen). Snowe I can live with. She is one the last few real republican moderates. I wish they would dump Collins, she seems more interested in her status with the party and not with the state she represents.
Our governor is a Democrat, Baldacci, a good guy, but has some real problems to fix.
One reason I'll bet we keep Collins or Snowe is the impression that democrats are 'weak on defence'. The states biggest empoyer is Bath Iron Works. They build destroyers for the navy and nothing else. So for that reason Mainers tend to send the republicans back to Washington, they are trying to keep those shipyards running.
Personally, I believe Bath Iron Work's days are numbered and the number of those days are not as many as the people would like to think. There is still military consolidation going on. Our neghbor to the south, New Hampshire just lost Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, this time it looks like for good.

[TayTay]

3. New Hampshire is the Anti-Massachusetts

The two states have always been mirror images of each other. If New Hampshire were to go completely blue it would lose it's identity. Massachusetts is urban and densely populated. New Hampshire was (and to a large extent still is) rural and the whole setup of these states is different.

It will be difficult to keep New Hampshire blue. Granite Staters like their independence and they have a tradition of conservatism. Kerry did not win southern New Hampshire by much (he carried vote-rich Nasuha but lost a lot of the surrounding suburbs.) Kerry, or any other Dem, would have to again carry mid-state and the upper state in order to keep it blue. Not easy. (And you misunderstand New England. While it is blue for now, there is always the possibility that the wide conservative areas from Vermont to Maine can be carried by the right Republicans. There is no such thing as blue forever. You have to work at it.)

[Cha]

10. But bushism isn't "conservative"..

it's FASCISM! So, in my mind..all bets are off.

Do conservatives like being in debt past their eyeballs?

Pouring money down a bottomless pit?

Screwing with our Social Security to feed Wall Street?

One of the more vocal groups for Kerry in NH was the Republican Women for Kerry/Edwards headed by Hilary Cleveland.

[FightinNewDem]

13. The "Cow Hampsha" Myth

Contrary to popular misconception, New Hampshire is not a particularly rural state. It is actually heavily suburban.

Yes, a large geographical swath of NH is still rural. Much of Carroll, Coos, Grafton, Belknap and Sullivan Counties is still rustic countryside. However, the votes aren't found in those places.

Elections in New Hampshire are now won and lost in the high-growth, suburbanized communities within 50 or so miles of Boston. Basically, if you draw a line from Amherst to North Hampton, you have the commuter belt that decides who wins and who loses. A Democrat who can do reasonably well in these places (Jeanne Shaheen, Dick Swett, Jim Normand) will win; a candidate who gets smoked there (Paul Hodes, Justin Nadeau) will go home empty handed.

[Davis_X_Machina]

4. Long history of Republicans up heah...

...as the 'Good Government' party, in distinction to the perceived corruption of the machine politics of the Dems.

Republicans were also the Protestant party, Dems the Catholic party.

Republicans were rural, Democrats urban.

Repblicans were dries -- Prohibition started in Maine -- and Democrats were wet.

While all of this has been changing in the last five or six decades, things don't change that fast.

Many of the Repugs up here are legacy Republicans, like the legacy Dems of the South.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. al gore lost by ralph nader, not by 4%

and Kerry won by more than 1% if I recall correctly.

NH was solidly republican when I moved here back in the mid-80s. There is a new england republican tradition that goes back to the abolitionist era. In modern times it was the moderate wing of the republican party, back when the republican party had a moderate wing. That wing is gone, but there are still a few stragglers hanging out in new england - rhode island and maine for example, vermont until jeffords quit.

Anyhow, NH yankee republicanism got comingled with anti-tax small government sort of libertarianism and that kept NH solidly republican for 30 or 40 years. All politicians here have to 'take the pledge' that they will not impose a state income or sales tax. If they don't it appears that hellfire and damnation will descend on them.

That said, in the early 90's the Dominionist fruitcake fundies started pushing their noxious crap from the far right of the rethuglican party and the traditional democratic millworker strongholds of manchester and nashua got augmented by brie and wine liberals (like me) moving ever further away from the insane boston real estate market and by the mid 90's we had a democratic governor and NH was a swing state.

We are making slow progress. With a good candidate and/or a serious misstep we could knock out a senator or a rep.

[BamaLefty]

8. Thanks

Well, even a small majority has got to be better than what I live in. ;(

Covington County, AL

Bush- 76%
Kerry- 23%

[FightinNewDem]

14. With A Good Candidate

As you said it takes a good candidate; unfortunately, what the Democratic old guard considers "good" is probably not the same as what I would consider "electable". Look at the Nadeau and Hodes fiascos. The hacks plucked a couple of guys with some personal wealth but no political seasoning and tried to pass them off as political saviors. Well, perhaps they were saviors for 36% of the electorate, but that's not going to get the job done.

To win back either of the congressional seats, the Democrats need a candidate who can make inroads with two groups that have been drifting in the wrong direction: first, urban Irish, French-Canadians and Greeks; and second, the suburbanites along the southern tier who are more attuned to the Boston media market than to the anything originating out of Manchester or Concord. A candidate who can reassure Manchester-style Dems that he or she is not out in left field on defense and social issues, and who can present a positive, creative economic message (think Tsongas '92) in the commuter zone could have a fighting shot against Bass or Bradley.

[freethought]

7. I can shed a little light on that.

Just south of New Hampshire there is the state of Massachusetts! Yes, that bastion of liberalism! That politically demented state where gay marriage is legal!
During the 90's New Hampshire saw certain types of industry move into their state. High tech, biotech, professional services etc... Following those jobs were workers, students, professionals from Massachusetts. Also, some of them were people working in Mass but were looking for cheaper homes in N.H. Alot of these people are democrats and thus the political landscape in NH changed somewhat but not entirely. It is still not solid democratic but there were gains made. Give it time. Native republican granite staters aren't just going to step aside. Hey, former Gov. Gene Shaheen was a democrat. That is saying something! Some people would have never thought you would ever see a democratic governor in NH!

[Ray Buckley]

11. Only DC is true Blue

Last week in my opening statement as the Chair of the DNC Eastern Region Caucus at the final DNC Chair Forum in NYC which I moderated, I addressed the issue of the fallacy of the "blue state" region.

Only DC is a reliable "blue state". Only since 1992 has the eastern region become blue in presidential campaigns, in fact prior to that only the 1964 landslide had the region blue. Ever.

If you look under the presidential blue "frosting" you will see lots of red in the cake that makes up the east.

Governors - There are Republican governors in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Maryland. Democrats are governors only in Maine, New Hampshire, Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

US Senate - Maine - 2 Republican senators, NH 2 Republican senators, Rhode Island has 1 Republican, Pennsylvania as 2 Republican senators. As you can see the Democratic majority would be real if we got rid of those seven senators. Democrats have 2 senators in Mass., Conn., NY, Delaware and Maryland. 1 Democrat in Vermont and Rhode Island. With an Independent in Vermont.

US Congress - 31 Republicans, 60 Democrats and 1 Independent. Republicans have the majority in NH, Conn., Penn. and Delaware.

And it goes on with the state legislatures as well.

Much work has to be done even in the so-called blue state region. WE do not have an Idaho or the other many pure red states that exist today.

So as we fret over the red states, we must keep working to make the states in the east true-blue.

[BamaLefty]

17. I Am Aware Of That

First of all, I'd like to welcome you to Democratic Underground. Why you haven't been on earlier I'll never know. ;)

Your argument is presented in the facts that you posted as well as in the county map. There are many counties in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. But I do disagree with you in that there is only one "true" blue state in DC. Massachusetts is solid, even with their GOP Governor and Lt. Governor. Rhode Island went to John Kerry by 21% and this was not a surprise. Vermont was also a 20% victory for Kerry. In reality, we have 4 dark blue states including Washington D.C.

Where we get beat is when the solid Republican states add up. Sure, they may only have 3 or 4 electoral votes, but when you get beat by 30% in about 15 states, that hurts severely. It makes up for our 10% point cushion in California and 18% in New York.

That is why we lose. We must broaden our support... in New Hampshire and in the rest of America.

[Redneck Socialist]

12. Stubborn yankee independence

"No god damn flatlanda's gonna tell me whut ta do!"

NH's republicanism tends to have a pretty wide libertarian steak. The Dems can steal a march from the pubs from time to time by playing to that sense of independence. Nutso fundie, god in the bedroom type of conservatism doesn't fly too well up here.

[maxanne]

15. there are a lot of conspiring factors

The NH House has 400 members that are paid $100 a year. This means the majority who serve are either independantly wealthy, or retired. The very system conspires to keep Republicans in power, because most Democrats need to work.

We have a weak state party that tends to forget that elections are held every 2 and 4 years. Every cycle the wheel is reinvented. There is little thought given to establishing a pool of candidates, and helping to bring them along. In NH "you can't say that" and win an election" is a common phrase. As long as we succumb to that sort of logic, we've lost already.

[FightinNewDem]

16. I would add 2 categories

"the majority who serve are either independantly wealthy, or retired".

I would add two additional categories:

1. On the take;
2. Dead-ass broke.

I'll let you figure out who fits into each category!

Oh, and you are absolutely right on the "you can't say that" phenomenon. When I first ran for the House, I was tolds by a notable member of the NH legislature that "nobody can run and win in Manchester if you talk about environmental issues". Well, I beat his choice in the primary and have been in the House for three terms. Run on the issues you believe in, be true to your self, and the rest will take care of itself.

[Hippo_Tron]

20. Do you get an office and staff?

Or is it really kinda just like an assembly of unorganized delegates.

[FightinNewDem]

21. Staff? Office? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

No staff, no office space for the rank and file. Never mind herding cats; this is herding feral ferrets.

The House Democratic Caucus has a small office on the third floor of the State House with four staffers. In addition, there is a small office in the Legislative Office Building. It formerly belonged to Ray Buckley, but it is now open for the use of all Democratic members during "committee days".

We do have a mail slot, though!

[Hippo_Tron]

22. What about the Senators?

Do they get more perks?

[dnbmathguy]

23. At least

Most senators do get their own office, either in the State House or the LOB.

[Squeech]

18. The Manchester Union Leader

Not as powerful as it used to be, this wingnut-founded newspaper is nevertheless a force to be reckoned with. It propagates the "pledge" that every gubernatorial candidate was pretty much required to sign off on, that there will never be a state income or sales tax. It runs the sort of "news" we recognize from FAUX, and continual hostility toward anything smacking of liberalism.

This is in addition to every other rationale in this thread; they all go into the mix. There are a lot of people living in and around Salem, Manchester, Nashua etc. who work in Boston or the tech firms around routes 128 and 495, who moved there for the elbow room or the tax break, and then there are the real Yankee independents who live up north (from whom Mrs. Squeech is descended), and they all seem to like the self-reliant image the Repukes purport to stand for. But (at least in the case of my in-laws) once they understand that the Repukes are actually the enforcement arm for the corporate abuse of power, they start to vote blue.

[Bluebear]

19. Agreed.

[MAlibdem]

24. We hate Massholes

Haha. I'm from Massachusetts but I live in Hanover (Dartmouth). It's hard to live my double life with my double allegiances. Uh, yeah, I think the Dartmouth-Harvard hockey game illustrated it last night, sort of. NH resents MA, MA looks down on NH. Both are great.