Thing I was most surprised about in 2016 was not Trump's big swing of the rust belt, I saw that coming for months.
What I was most surprised about was how he won one of Maine's electoral votes, but not New Hampshire. It just seems so odd, against what was common belief for years before that if a republican got an EV out of Maine, he would have to have won New Hampshire.
Can anyone explain this?
NE expert here! I think I may be of assistance.
So NH is a weird state, similar to that of AK. The rural areas in the North and West constitute the D base, along with the cities of Portsmouth and Dover. You can see this in the D primary, where most voters in 2008 went for the more populist John Edwards and Obama than Hillary, though she won the state, and Bernie won the state easily. The Boston exurbs located in the south east are the R base.
What occurred in NE in 2016, from ME, to CT, was a rather large shift in rural voters. Obama had been able to keep these working class, rather progressive economically, but a bit conservative socially, members in the party, and won commanding leads in all 5 states.
But Hillary's focus on the suburbs combined with Trump's rather economically progressive campaign caused many of these votes to defect, in every state. The only state that was able to resist this was MA, who had voted considerably right in 2012 due to Mitt Romney. She would have lost the state if the NH suburbs didnt give her the votes needed to win.
So, to some it up, NE has rural areas that are not at all like the ones in GA, or KS, but rather are extensions of the Rustbelt. Trump's message to the RB didnt effect just the RB, but upstate NY, and the NE rurals. A candidate with an economically Leftist agenda, such as Sanders, would easily be able to keep these states in the D column.
