Changes in New Hampshire’s republican party: evolving footprint in presidential politics, 1960-2008

This brief describes a series of dramatic changes in New Hampshire\u27s political landscape over the past four decades. Examining presidential elections from 1960 to 2008, author Dante Scala uncovers a series of significant shifts in New Hampshire\u27s political geography at the county level. He reports that historically Republican counties Grafton and Merrimack have both tilted Democratic consistently in recent decades and that New Hampshire has become less Republican overall. All of these changes have impacted not just general elections in New Hampshire, but the Republican presidential primary as well

Red Rural, Blue Rural; Rural Does Not Always Equal Republican

In this fact sheet, authors Dante Scala and Kenneth Johnson examine voting data for nearly 9,000 rural residents to identify how voting patterns differ across rural areas comparing farm and recreational counties to those elsewhere in rural America. They also examine voting data from the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections for each rural county. Scala and Johnson report that rural America is not the undifferentiated Republican bastion depicted by commentators. While Republican presidential candidates do best in rural counties dominated by farming, Democratic presidential candidates do well in rural counties dominated by recreation. In “battleground” states, these rural differences may impact tightly contested elections

Beyond Urban Versus Rural:

In this brief, authors Dante Scala and Kenneth Johnson examine voting patterns over the last five presidential elections. They report that although rural voters and urban voters are often portrayed as polar opposites, their differences are best understood as a continuum, not a dichotomy. From the largest urban cores to the most remote rural counties, they found significant variations in voting. Hillary Clinton nearly matched Barack Obama’s 2012 performance in most urban areas. Clinton’s defeat was due, in part, to her failure to match the performance of recent Democratic Presidential nominees in less populated areas. Though many commentators argued that the faster population growth and growing diversity on the urban side of the rural–urban continuum would give Democrats a significant advantage in 2016, the election demonstrated that what happens at the rural end of the continuum remains important

Many new voters make the Granite State one to watch in November

A third of potential voters in New Hampshire during the fall of 2008 have become eligible to vote in the state. Further, these potential new voters are more likely to identify with the Democratic Party and less likely to identify as Republicans than are established New Hampshire voters, contributing to the state\u27s purple status

All Politics, No Longer Local? A Study of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, 2001-2021

New Hampshire’s state legislature is at the heart of its political culture. The Granite State prides itself on the legislature’s intensely local brand of politics, in which representatives remain highly attuned and accountable to their constituents. In this article, we explore whether state representatives still possess strong local ties. We use biographical data to examine whether legislators build robust local public service experience before joining the legislature. We conclude that the latest generations of New Hampshire state legislators were less likely over the past decade to bring significant local experience with them to the legislature. This decline occurred among both women and men, and Democrats and Republicans

Demographic and economic change is helping to grow supportfor the Democratic Party in rural America

It is a common conceit in American politics that urban voters tend to vote for the Democratic Party, while those in rural areas vote for Republicans. In new research, Dante J. Scala and Kenneth M. Johnson find that the truth is not nearly so simple – changes in population and the rural economy have led to the growth of democratic enclaves in ‘recreational counties’ which are dominated by the new rural service and amenity economy. They argue that while at the county level, the ‘big sort’ may be true, if we widen our view, rural America is increasingly looking more politically and demographically diverse

Red Rural, Blue Rural

Political commentators routinely treat rural America as an undifferentiated bastion of strength for Republicans. In fact, rural America is a deceptively simple term describing a diverse collection of places encompassing nearly 75 percent of the U.S. land area and 50 million people. Voting trends in this vast area are far from monolithic. Republican presidential candidates have generally done well in rural America, but there are important enclaves of Democratic strength there as well. In "battleground" states, these rural differences may have a significant impact on tightly contested elections.