New Hampshire Election Results Analysis

By Jim on November 13th, 2008

Some interesting stuff in this column by Arlinghaus.

For the first time in many decades, the party that won the presidential ballot lost seats in the Legislature. When Presidents Reagan and Bush won in the 1980s, Republicans picked up legislative seats. Both Clinton victories in the 1990s saw Democratic gains. President George W. Bush’s elections were both close here, but when he won in 2000 the Republicans gained and when Kerry won in 2004 the Democrats gained.

This year, Barack Obama won big, but the Democrats lost 17 seats in the House. This is only a marginally hopeful sign for the GOP. Eliminating straight tickets probably helped a little here, and Democrats were coming off two elections in which they had picked up a total of 120 House seats. A little slippage was to be expected.

On the state Senate side, the future looks mixed. Despite their huge financial advantage and a top of the ticket landslide, the Democratic majority stayed at 14-10. However, that majority is not nearly as precarious as some thought.

I actually voted mostly straight ticket (with one exception for a local office) as I did not like the idea of the Democrats keeping control over the state government. I have never lived anywhere where you could do the straight ticket voting by checking off one box. So it didn’t matter to me anyway.

I disagree with Arlinghaus about the state senate and house. I think – given the overwhelming Democratic tide in the election – that losing 17 seats was a harsh rebuke by the voters to the Democratic party. And I think it’s a harbinger of things to come once Bush is finally gone and Republicans in New Hampshire move out from under his shadow.

Edit: There’s another analysis from the Union Leader in an editorial today.

As sharp-eyed political observers have pointed out repeatedly, Massachusetts expatriates are not the reason for such big Democratic victories of late. In fact, many former Bay Staters who move here say they do so because Massachusetts is too liberal. Those tax refugees, strung along our southern border, make New Hampshire’s congressional 1st District competitive for Republicans and send more anti-tax legislators to Concord than any other demographic.

The blue voters come from mid-Atlantic and other states, and from right here in New Hampshire (hello, Berlin and Keene). They tend not to have suffered the extreme liberalism of Massachusetts, and so they are more likely to vote for bigger government and higher taxes, thinking they are doing New Hampshire a favor. The Taxachusetts refugees know better.

The good news for advocates of limited government is that fiscal conservatism remains vibrant in New Hampshire. That’s why John Lynch, Jeanne Shaheen, Carol Shea-Porter, Paul Hodes and most Democrats running for state office continue to talk like fiscal conservatives even if they don’t act like them.

More than in any other state, our citizens still support, as Jefferson put it in his first inaugural address, “a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”