The First-in-the-Nation Primary, Every Four Years, a Small State Decides

Every four years, roughly a million registered voters in a state the size of a large county in Texas get to be the first Americans to vote in a presidential primary. Candidates who have raised tens of millions of dollars, who have appeared on every national television program, who have the backing of governors and senators and celebrities, come to New Hampshire and stand in diner parking lots in January cold to shake the hands of dairy farmers and retired teachers. The state has insisted on this ritual for over a century, and the nation has not yet found a convincing argument to stop it.

New Hampshire first held a presidential primary in nineteen sixteen, and by nineteen twenty it was already going first among all the states. For thirty years it was a curiosity, a small event in a small state with a modest number of delegates. Then came nineteen fifty-two.

A New Hampshire congressman named Richard Upton had rewritten the state's primary law in nineteen forty-nine to allow voters to choose directly for presidential candidates rather than simply for delegates. In March of nineteen fifty-two, two write-in campaigns produced results that shook national politics to its foundations. On the Republican side, Dwight Eisenhower, who was still in Europe commanding NATO and had not officially declared his candidacy, defeated Robert Taft, the conservative frontrunner, and demonstrated that he had genuine popular appeal.

On the Democratic side, Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee defeated the sitting president, Harry Truman, so badly that Truman withdrew from the race entirely a few weeks later. Two write-in campaigns, one small state, and the architecture of both parties' nominating contests shifted permanently. New Hampshire would carry this power carefully and jealously.

The legislature has passed laws requiring the state to hold its primary before any other state's. The tradition survives every reform effort. The diners are full.

The candidates keep coming.