Nottingham & Northwood November 2022 Election Analysis
Why did Nottingham and Northwood vote so differently for State Legislature?
While many interpretations of the election results are possible, here are some observations I put forward for consideration. Normally I do not cover Northwood, but as Nottingham and Northwood form a legislative district, including Northwood in the analysis is informative.
Based on the results for this election, both towns seem to have larger Republican bases:
Nottingham
Democrats: about 1150, 39%
Republicans: about 1320, 44%
Northwood
Democrats: about 810, 36%
Republicans: about 990, 44%
Assuming both parties did all they could to get their bases out to vote, and that the bases were energized - which seems to have been the case - then what’s interesting are the split-ticket voters. These comprise at minimum:
Nottingham: 17%, about 500 voters
Northwood: 19%, about 420 voters
As these split-ticket voters seem to have decided the election, what seems to have driven their decisions?
They seem to like incumbents. (Sununu, Hassan, Pappas, Tudor, Gatsas)
They prefer Republicans who were denounced by Trump over ones endorsed by Trump (Sununu in comparison with Bolduc).
They lean to Democrats, (for example, they made the Tappan ( D ) vs. Pearl ( R ) race close) but they love Sununu.
In general Nottingham and Northwood voted similarly, except for the slight partisan difference between the two. The big exception to this was the race for State Representative. Nottingham strongly preferred Rafter ( D ) and preferred Bartlett ( R ). All other candidates were nearly tied. Northwood preferred Tudor ( R ) and disliked Rafter ( D ) and Tappan ( D ), leaving the remaining candidates nearly tied.
One interesting difference between the towns is that nearly 11% of the possible Northwood votes for State Representative were not cast whereas this was only 8.7% in Nottingham. There was not such a big difference in under-voting between the towns in other races. Perhaps this blog’s Nottingham voters guide decreased under-voting in Nottingham.
As a Northwood incumbent, Tudor seemed to have had an advantage. His more pro-choice position on abortion relative to the other Republicans may have also been a factor.
McGuigan ( D ) and Bartlett ( R ) seemed to benefit from being officeholders in Northwood and Nottingham, respectively.
On their own, each town would have chosen two Republicans and one Democrat to serve in the State Legislature. Combined they chose three Republicans, but by a margin of only 5 votes. Expect these State Legislature seats to be highly contested in the next election, as a change of just 20 votes could have produced a dramatically different outcome this year.
Election Observer
One thing few voters likely noticed was that the Democratic party sent a lawyer from Massachusetts to observe Nottingham’s election. She reported to Moderator Dawn Fernald, “How fantastic to get to be a voter in Nottingham, NH! Your team put together and ran a top-notch program.”