The Feb. 9 New Hampshire primaries saw Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump claim decisive victories in their respective Democratic and Republican contests. However, the statewide results were not reflected in Hanover. In Hanover and surrounding towns, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich received the most votes in the Republican primary. At the same time, in the Democratic primary, Sanders’ margin of victory over Hillary Clinton was smaller in Hanover than it was statewide. Sanders won with 2,286 votes to Clinton’s 2,005 in Hanover. Statewide, Sanders swept Clinton with 60.4 percent to her 38 percent.
In Hanover, Kasich had his largest lead of any New Hampshire town, taking 688 votes. Sen. Marco Rubio followed with 296 votes, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush took third with 211, while Trump trailed in fourth with 175. Hanover was the only town in the state where Trump did not finish in first or second place.
Government professor Joseph Bafumi noted that less-educated, blue-collar voters favored Trump while more educated Republicans and moderate Republicans favored Kasich. Bafumi described Hanover Republicans as more moderate and more educated that the rest of the state, pushing them towards Kasich.
“They’re Ivy League students, Ivy League faculty and Ivy League alumni,” Bafumi said.
Bafumi linked Trump’s lack of support in Hanover to the lack of blue collar voters in Hanover concerned about issues that Trump frequently talks about, such as the trade deficit and illegal immigration. He added that Hanover’s economy and job market has never been rooted in manufacturing, in contrast to places with large amounts of blue-collar, lower-educated Republicans whose livelihoods are deeply connected to the industry.
“They’ve seen jobs go abroad, they feel it personally in their lives, they hear Donald Trump telling them about it and they like what they hear,” Bafumi said.
Government professor Brendan Nyhan attributed Kasich’s relative success to his appeal to independents and moderate Republicans in Hanover.
“Hanover skews liberal so its not surprising that Kasich would do better here,” Nyhan said.
Bafumi said that for moderate Republicans the choice was “almost a process of elimination.”
“No, not Christie because of Bridgegate. No, not Jeb Bush because he hasn’t gained any traction, people are tired of the Bush dynasty and he doesn’t have the communication skills. Not Rubio because he faltered in the debate. So who’s left?” Bafumi said. “Well, here’s this guys who’s electable, he’s the governor of Ohio and he’s got more moderate positions.”
Kasich also invested more resources in New Hampshire, and Hanover specifically, than other candidates. Kasich spoke at the Dartmouth campus twice and held 106 town hall campaign events in the state. The Kasich campaign additionally had the largest student presence of any Republican candidate whereas Trump neither had a Dartmouth student group’s endorsement nor visited the Hanover area during the campaign.
The closer margin in the Democratic contest was attributed potentially to Hanover’s “unusually wealthy” demographic makeup, Nyhan said. Those with an annual income of $200,000 were one of the few demographic groups statewide who favored Clinton over Sanders in the New Hampshire primary, according to CNN exit polls. Nyhan offered a potential explanation for Clinton’s support among the wealthy.
“Sanders is saying the American economy isn’t working very well for people, and that’s true on average, but it’s less true for high-income Americans,” Nyhan said.
Nyhan also offered alternative explanations for why Clinton might do well in a college town while at the same time noting that exact data was unavailable regarding student turnout in Hanover.
“It might suggest the rest of Hanover [aside from the College] is even more pro-Hillary or it might suggest Dartmouth students were more divided than other people their age on the Bernie versus Hillary question,” Nyhan said.
In the primary, Sanders generally benefitted from very strong support from young voters, winning 82 percent of voters ages 18 to 24, according to a CNN exit poll. However, despite the fact that the Sanders student campaign group had the greatest number of volunteers and the largest presence on Dartmouth’s campus, not all Dartmouth students ultimately vote in New Hampshire.
Andrew Smith, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire who focuses on the New Hampshire primary, said that since most Dartmouth students are not from New Hampshire, they were more likely to be voting out-of-state. However, Dartmouth students were able to register as a New Hampshire voter on the day of the election with any piece of photo identification — including a Dartmouth ID. Smith added that the relatively small student population in Hanover also served to mitigate the effect of potential student support for Sanders.
In contrast, Smith noted how student support for Sanders had a much greater impact in the University of New Hampshire’s town of Durham. The University has a much larger population of 15,000 students and a much greater proportion of students residents in New Hampshire who can vote in the primary. The town of Durham saw record primary turnout, with 2,100 same-day registrants who were primarily college students. Sanders won 70 percent of the vote.
In recent history, Hanover has backed more moderate candidates in the Republican primary. In both the 2000 and 2008 Republican primaries, Hanover voters overwhelmingly supported the relatively moderate John McCain, giving him a larger margin of victory than he had in the rest of the state.
Kasich’s success in Hanover also had more direct links to the success of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman in Hanover in the 2012 primary, who garnered the most votes in the town despite coming in third statewide.
“Jon Huntsman was the John Kasich of 2012,” Smith said. “He ran the same kind of campaign and had the same people running his campaign. Same strategy, same people, same organizational [methods], same result.”
Kasich employed multiple Huntsman advisors in his own campaign, including John Weaver, who served as a senior campaign advisor to both campaigns.
However, there is not a recent historical pattern of Hanover supporting the leading moderate Democratic candidate to a greater degree than the rest of the state. In the previous three contested Democratic primaries in 2000, 2004 and 2008, Hanover overwhelmingly gave the most votes to the relatively liberal candidates even though their more moderate opponents won the state as a whole.
