Why is New Hampshire going first?

The Democratic Party is embroiled in a heated debate over the order of its presidential primaries explains a Times Magazine story by Ross Barkan.

President Biden and other top Democrats want South Carolina to go first next year. State officials in New Hampshire insist on retaining their status as first in the nation and say they will simply move their primaries to take place before South Carolina’s. The outcome remains unclear.

Holding the nation’s first primaries certainly brings great benefits to a state. Presidential candidates make repeated visits. So do political organizers and members of the media, who fill hotels and restaurants. The voters of a single state are allowed to shape the national discourse. No wonder New Hampshire is fighting so hard to maintain a privilege it has had since the 1950s.

But there’s also an uncomfortable question that New Hampshire officials haven’t given a convincing answer to: How has the rest of the country benefited from the state’s special status?

Bias in New England

Critics of New Hampshire often point out the many ways it is unlike the rest of America. It is one of the whitest, highest-income and most educated states in the country. It’s home to ski resorts, lakeside retreats, and boarding schools – but no city has more than 125,000 residents.

New Hampshire’s defenders respond that intimacy allows for a purer version of politics. Candidates talk directly to voters in restaurants and at city rallies, rather than competing primarily through advertisements. As in ancient Greece or the early United States, citizens can take the measure of the people who want to represent them. I’ve covered the New Hampshire primary, and I too found it charming.

However, the results are less impressive. There is no evidence that New Hampshire voters have a knack for electing presidents that other Americans lack. If anything, the state’s record is worse than average, at least on the Democratic side:

• New Hampshire voted against each of the three past Democratic presidents in their ultimately victorious nomination campaigns: Biden (who finished fifth!) in 2020, Barack Obama in 2008, and Bill Clinton in 1992. Not since Jimmy Carter nearly 50 years ago has an eventual Democratic president won the state.

• No two-term Democratic presidency has begun with a win in New Hampshire. In 1992, Clinton turned his second-place finish as a win, called himself ‘the comeback kid’, but he received less than 25 percent of the vote.

• The clearest pattern is that New Hampshire favors close-minded Democrats, regardless of their ideology or national appeal. Every time a major candidate from neighboring Massachusetts or Vermont has run in the past 35 years, that candidate has won New Hampshire: Bernie Sanders in 2020 and 2016John Kerry in 2004, Paul Tsongas in 1992 and Michael Dukakis in 1988.

The closest I’ve come to a substantive counterargument from New Hampshire officials is that their state is a swing state, unlike South Carolina, which is firmly Republican. If New Hampshire still goes first (as state law dictates) and Biden skips the state primary (as his aides have said he would), the primary campaign would be filled with criticism of him from both Republican candidates running for the 2024 nomination and fringe candidates. Democrats challenge Biden like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson.

“The reality is that New Hampshire will hold the nation’s first primary,” said Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, “and the only question is whether or not the president puts his name on the ballot.”

If he’s not on the ballot, the criticism of Biden could, in theory, damage his image in the state and hurt his chances when the New Hampshirites vote in November’s general election. In very close national elections, New Hampshire could even determine the outcome of the Electoral College. But that scenario seems far away. An incumbent president is always subject to harsh criticism during the opposing party’s open primaries, and most incumbent presidents nevertheless win re-election.

Ultimately, the main beneficiary of New Hampshire’s privileged primary status is New Hampshire, which explains why the state fights so hard to keep it. As Ross Barkan, the author of the Times Magazine article, writes, “Democrats out there insist it’s their right to go first.”

Related: Biden has his own motives for aiming for South Carolina, Ross explains. The state — home to many working-class black voters — propelled Biden to the front of the Democratic field in 2020 following his losses in New Hampshire and Iowa.

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