hillsborough county nh

[ChipGardnerNH]

This county is definitely not the reason the state is trending Democratic.  Hillsborough and Rockingham are the two largest counties.  Over half the population lives in one of these two counties.  These two counties are staying stagnant, but other counties in the state such as Cheshire, Sullivan, and Coos are taking hard turns to the left.  Carroll County is still Republican, but it is moving leftward.  No Democrat has ever carried Carroll County in a Presidential race (even LBJ), but George Bush only defeated Kerry 52-47 there.  The reason for NH trending Democratic is because of the other 8 counties in the state.  NOT because of Hillsborough and Rockingham

[ChipGardnerNH]

I did a little study to show the demographics of the different counties in the state.  NH as a whole went for Bush by 1 point in 2000 and Kerry by 2 in 2004.  The country was tied up between Bush and Gore in 2000 and went for Bush by 3 in 2004.  So while the country shifted 3 points right, NH shifted 3 points left, making it trend 6 points to the left in 4 years.  I did the same thing with the counties in NH.  The only two where Bush actually increased his margin of victory were Hillsborough and Rockingham.  Even there he won Hillsborough by 2 in 2000 and by 3 in 2004.  In Rockingham he won by 3 in 2000 and by 4 in 2004.  The country as a whole shifted 3 points right while these counties shifted 1 point right, therefore they shifted 2 points to the left compared to the nation as a whole.  In the 8 other counties Bush did worse in 2004 than he did in 2000.  I gave Hillsborough and Rockingham a score of negative 2 since they shifted 2 points to the left of the country as a whole.  I used the same formula for other counties comparing the Bush-Gore and Bush-Kerry margins to the national margins.  Belknap, which is a Republican upscale county with a lot of lakefront property shifted 7 points left with respect to the national average.  It still went Republican, but Kerry didn't get spanked as hard as Gore.  Merrimack which is where Concord is and surrounding suburbs has a lot of state employees.  This county went strong against Governor Benson.  Kerry increased the margin Gore had gotten in 2000, but it was still only a negative 7.  Strafford county which is the home of the university and a traditionally Democratic county also got a negative 7.  This county is geographically closer to Maine than Vermont.  Next is Carroll County, a very poor county where people don't want to take anything free from the government but don't want to give anything either.  This is a Northern county settled by WASPs.  There is an influx of new voters, but Bush still carried the county by 5 points.  He had defeated Gore there by 12 points, making it score a negative 10.  This was one of only 2 New England counties (the other being Belknap, NH) to opt for Bob Dole in 1996.  Carroll has never voted Democratic in a Presidential race and only twice in Gubernatorial races.  The remaining 4 counties are the 4 touching the Vermont border, and they are getting more liberal by the day.  Cheshire in the Southeast and Coos in the North scored negative 11, Sullivan negative 14, and Grafton, home of Dartmouth College, negative 16.  It doesn't speak well of John Kerry though that the section of the state where Kerry either did worse than Gore or barely better is the part closest to Massachusetts.