Waiting on Dixville Notch
I've never quite accepted Iowa's role as the first occasion for casting votes for the eventual nominees for President. To me, because I grew up in the 1960s, the real first-in-the-nation voting occurs in Dixville Notch, N.H., a tiny village about 20 miles south of the Canadian border. The primary there usually draws 15-20 voters at most. They gather a minute after midnight to vote, with reporters waiting on the results of this odd tradition. Ever since 1968 and Richard M. Nixon, the Republican winner in Dixville Notch has been the eventual Republican nominee for President.
So will it be John McCain, Mike Huckabee, or Mitt Romney? We'll know in a little over two hours. From the latest polls, McCain, who won in 2000, seems to be ahead statewide. But who knows what that will mean in the Notch. For the Democrats--again statewide--Barack Obama is pulling away from Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. The Democratic primary in the Notch is more of a curiosity. The village didn't even have any Democratic voters to speak of until the late 1960s, when the composition of the New Hampshire electorate began to change as hippies and other liberal types began to move to the Granite State.
That change has continued. Once reliably, solidly Republican along with Vermont and Maine, New Hampshire is now a toss-up state, though still barely in the Republican column. Vermont now elects Socialists, and Maine's two Republican women senators are quaking at the prospect of their next re-election campaigns. New England Republicans are an endangered species in the era of George W. Bush and the Southern dominance of the Grand Old Party. And Iraq. And Katrina. And everything else.
So if you're up after midnight and are tired of recaps of the Ohio State-L.S.U. football game, look for coverage of that less-heralded, but just as traditional contest in Dixville Notch, N.H. You just might learn something.
12:06 a.m. updzte: The results are in! John McCain received four votes in Dixville Notch to 2 for Mitt Romney and one for former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani. On the Democratic side, Obama led with seven votes to two for John Edwards and one for Bill Richardson. Could be a bad day for Clinton and Huckabee.