2008 New Hampshire Primary Results Map

This map is more instructive if you look at a small thumbnail, or look at a full-sized image (click the image for a larger view) from four or five feet away, than it is if you look at the full-sized image from normal viewing distance. Note the following:

• Clinton (green) won the Boston-Nashua-Manchester media markets in the Southeast corner of the state, except for Portsmouth and nearby surrounding areas.
• Obama (purple) won the rest of the state, except for the Northern-most reaches of the state where very few people live.
• Obama ran strongest in the college towns of Hanover, Keene, and Durham. He also won Portsmouth and Concord by smaller margins.
• Clinton won Manchester, Nashua, and the Boston exurbs by larger margins.

When combined with the exit polls, my read of the situation is that Obama formed the "Bill Bradley Plus Coalition": wealthy liberals, young voters, people of color, and as many middle class ($50,000-$100,000) voters as you can get. He came up a little bit short, primarily among working-class and middle-class urban voters, and didn't have enough people of color in New Hampshire to give him one last little boost.

Update: I filled in the towns that didn't report until this morning, and tweaked the colors a bit. The one yellow town was an Edwards win—I guess a mill closed there recently. The uncolored towns in the North Country are unpopulated and don't report any results. Ezra observes that neither Clinton nor Obama can really claim to have a big advantage among any one New Hampshire Demographic aside from Clinton's margin among women. True, but I still think it's notable that Obama's coalition starts from the wealthiest and well-educated and works down, while Clinton's coalition starts from the working class and works up. But the margins are very close. Both teams played hard!

Comments

[litbrit]

This is excellent work, Nick--it really lays it out clearly for visual brains like mine (as opposed to the math-y sort). Bravo.

Damn, that was an exciting evening.

[ikl]

High quality work! I was looking for this on various "news" sites. Guess that I should have just come here first!

This map shows real problems for Obama - there is a lot more of the country that is sort of like Manchester and Nashua than is sort of like rural NH let alone Hanover, Durham, or Keene.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

But wasn't the wisdom after 1992 that Clinton won everything more than 10 miles north of the MA border, and therefore Tsongas was toast?

I think part of Obama's problem is that Manchester and Nashua aren't really large enough to be considered "urban".

[ikl]

Manchester and Nashua have a lot of middle income, white voters. They are not big cities, but they probably are similar in some ways to small cities or suburbs in other parts of the country. Notice Clinton's big win among Catholic voters in the exit polls - I suspect that this is driven by Southern NH rather than French Canadians in the rural areas. This trend could be a problem for Obama in the midwest and northeast. I spent the day in Nashua - my first time there, so I got a little bit of a feel for the place.

[Tom0063]

Dear Nick,

This is an exceedingly professional and helpful graphic.

Despite living in Boston for 7 years, I don't know New Hampshire that well, and one thing puzzles me quite a bit.

How can you explain the shift from urban for Obama rural for Clinton in Iowa to rural for Obama and urban for Clinton in NH?

Any insight you could provide my baffled mind would be immensely appreciated.

Thanks,

Tom