Author: Dean Barker

After taking a look (here and here, on SSP here and here) to see how our two re-elected reps grew in strength from ’06 to ’08, I thought it might be a good idea to see how they fared compared to Jeanne Shaheen, the next step up on the ticket (NH-Sen). It’s an especially interesting question with the first election behind us in many years without straight-ticket voting.

With very few exceptions (Danville, New Boston, and Rindge), both Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01) and Paul Hodes (NH-02) gained higher vote percentages than Jeanne Shaheen in towns big and small, liberal and conservative, rural and urban.

The following charts track the ten biggest percentage discrepancies between Shea-Porter/Hodes and Shaheen for all towns and cities with more than 2000 votes cast for the congressional race in 2008. For ease of use in plugging the numbers into a spreadsheet (full data available here), I chose the lists at NHPR rather than the SoS.  Any mistakes are my own.

Town	Shaheen %	CSP %	% Diff.	Votes Cast
Rye	44.2	51.4	7.2	3693
Moltnboro	36.2	41.9	5.7	2967
Greenland	50.9	54.9	4	2227
Conway	55.1	59	3.9	5020
Strafford	50.5	54.2	3.7	2310
Seabrook	45.7	49.2	3.5	3988
Portsmouth	64.7	68.1	3.4	12326
N.Hampton	46.9	49.9	3	2810
Lee	61	64	3	2486

And I’ll throw in number 11 on the list, because ManchVegas is where so many of the votes are to be found in CD1:

Town	Shaheen %	CSP %	% Diff.	Votes Cast
Manchester	52.3	55.1	2.8	46268

Now on to CD2 and Paul Hodes.  Even greater discrepancies are to be found in the western half of the state:

Town	Shaheen %	Hodes %	% Diff.	Votes Cast
Newport	50.7	59.4	8.7	2845
Littleton	49.9	57.8	7.9	2699
Claremont	56.8	64.2	7.4	5480
Henniker	52.9	59.8	6.9	2405
New London	47.3	54.2	6.9	2788
Pembroke	51.4	56.8	5.4	3580
Weare	43.4	48.7	5.3	4447
Plymouth	62.7	67.9	5.2	3457
Hanover	73.6	78.7	5.1	6912

I’m going to resist interpreting this data too closely, other than to say that it’s clear that Carol and Paul, despite being lower on the ballot, performed better than Shaheen.  There are so many ways to answer why – and some of them non-exclusionary to others – that I’m not sure what conclusions can be drawn fairly.

Factors to consider: John Sununu was arguably a tougher opponent than Jeb Bradley (NH-01), who in turn was tougher than Jennifer Horn (NH-02).  Sununu and Shea-Porter and Hodes were all incumbents.  Shaheen was on the receiving end of far the greatest deluge of negative ads, followed closely by Carol, and finally Paul.

While I have a hard time drawing conclusions about ’08 from these numbers, I will happily draw from them for 2010.  Carol and Paul, by their strong showing relative to a senate nominee with tremendous name recognition, can both point to their results as ammunition for re-election down he road or even a run at the senate.

(Crossposted from Blue Hampshire, because I like to send my geekier vote analysis posts over here to SSP.)

(From the diaries – promoted by James L.)

I confess it – this was more challenging for me to put together than my earlier piece on Carol Shea-Porter, because in comparing the Charlie Bass (R-inc) – Paul Hodes (D) race of 2006 to the Paul Hodes (D-inc) – Jennifer Horn (R) race of 2008, the numbers tell you over and over again that the two are not really comparable.  Very much apples and oranges.

There are a number of reasons for this.  For starters, Charlie Bass held on to a district for six terms that showed less and less opportunity for the GOP every year, especially given the radicalism of the Bush brand in the final six of them. So the absence of a Bass incumbency factor gave us he opportunity to see the district more as it may actually be. Secondly, freshman class president Paul Hodes has proven to be, unlike the BassMaster, something of a leader in Congress, and has paid excellent attention to the needs of his district.  Third, he’s a capable fundraiser.  And finally, in Jennifer S. Horn-Palin, the GOP chose a standard-bearer who could not be more out-of-touch with CD2.  But let’s listen to what the numbers are saying.

(More below the fold…)

First, the list of towns that flipped from Charlie Bass in ’06 to Paul Hodes in ’08 is – happily – so long it’s not useful even listing, imho.  But just for the record, the total number is forty-five.  And the most important ones, in voter-rich terms, are accounted for in the tables below.

Jennifer Horn, on the other hand, flipped one whole town:  Millsfield. Total votes cast? 15.

Due to the larger number of towns in CD2 v. CD1, and the convincing victory Hodes had (and leaving aside cities with wards for a moment), I thought it would be both more readable and more useful to focus first on those towns with greater than 2000 votes cast for the general election cycle. As in my earlier post on CSP, the following list represents those populous towns where Paul Hodes raised his vote percentage from ’06 to ’08 by three percentage points or more.  The table also lists total votes cast, and Hodes’ 2008 vote percentage, the color of which declares who won that town (blue for Hodes, red for Horn):

Town	’08 Hodes %	’06-’08 +/-% Diff.	Total Votes Cast
Littleton*	57.7%	+16.5%	2699
Newport	59.4%	+9.8%	2845
Plymouth	67.8%	+8.4%	3457
Northfield*	53.9%	+8.0%	2204
Hillsborough	56.9%	+7.5%	2743
Epsom*	51.3%	+7.1%	2397
Pembroke	56.7%	+7.0%	3580
Loudon*	51.8%	+6.2%	2742
Weare*	48.7%	+5.4%	4447
New Boston	45.04%	+5.2%	2982
Jaffrey	56.8%	+5.1%	2766
Charlestown	63.2%	+4.9%	2475
New London*	54.2%	+4.9%	2788
Bow*	53.4%	+4.9%	4645
Allenstown	57.3%	+4.8%	2064
Henniker	59.8%	+4.7%	2405
Enfield	64.6%	+4.6%	2333
Pelham	46.0%	+4.3%	6310
Walpole	61.0%	+4.3%	2143
Hopkinton	60.6%	+4.1%	3744
Litchfield	45.0%	+3.7%	4252
Hudson*	49.1%	+3.3%	11,332

* Flipped to Hodes in 2008.

Now, the next step would be to do the same for those towns of over 2000 votes cast where Paul’s vote percentage decreased by three points or more.  The (happy) problem with that?  There’s only one town that fits the bill, Brookline. With 2,706 votes cast, Hodes won 41.8% of the vote, a decrease of 4.5% from 2006.  And I’ll be generous: neighboring Boston-commute southern tier town Hollis gets honorary mention with a Hodes decrease of 2.9% from the last cycle.

Finally, let’s have a look at how Paul fared from 2006 to 2008 in the major cities of the second district:

City	’08 Hodes %	’06-’08 +/-% Diff.	Total Votes Cast
Berlin	73.0%	+13.0%	4179
Claremont	64.2%	+6.7%	5470
Concord	65.6%	+5.2%	21,128
Franklin	58.2%	+8.9%	3587
Keene	70.2%	+3.4%	12,263
Lebanon	68.1%	+3.4%	6455
Nashua	55.3%	+0.2%	37,995

So. What observations, if any, come from these numbers, aside from the obvious points above about the lopsided nature of this race compared to 2006?

* Check out Littleton, Plymouth, and Berlin on those charts.  Huge increases for all three. North Country Yankee natives are Democrats now.

* The Upper Valley continues to be a dominant – and growing – sector for Democrats.  Not on the chart, and populous enough to have its own wards, Hanover gave Hodes 78.7% of its vote with 6,912 votes cast.

* From the long litany and diverse nature of flipped towns such as Grafton, New London, Milford, Colebrook, and Boscawen, you can feel the grip of the GOP’s too-long grip on CD2 slipping away, perhaps for a good long time. The six term backbencher BassMaster really did hold on to half of New Hampshire longer than was ultimately viable.

* Here’s the biggest surprise of all for me from these numbers.  Take a look at the percent increases for the larger towns, and for all the cities.  What stands out? Nashua.  It didn’t budge.

But guess what else?  With all due respect to the good Granite Staters of Nashua, it didn’t much matter, either.  Despite being by far the most populous city in the district, it simply isn’t enough to focus on Nashua and hope it spreads outwards.  In this sense, NHGOP Chair Fergus Cullen, imho, made a critical tactical mistake in throwing his heft behind Horn (if the rumors and spin are to be believed).  A far-right, socially conservative talk radio show host from the southern tier was not going to cut it with the rest of the district’s demographics. Far better it would have been to have had Bob Clegg as the nominee, if of course Clegg showed himself to be a better candidate (he didn’t), or perhaps the more moderate, Concord area primary spoiler Jim Steiner, if he could have shown a better fundraising presence.

The long and the short of it, though, is that if the GOP ever wants a chance at CD2 again, they’re going to have to stop going to the Massachusetts tax refugee well like flies to honey. They will need to field someone much more moderate.  And someone who understands rural and agricultural issues, alternative energy concerns, the importance of the North Country, and the newly dominant progressive voter in the Upper Valley.

Too bad Paul owns all those areas.  It’s a good day to be a Democrat.

(From the diaries – promoted by DavidNYC)

Update (11/22): Inspired by this post, kite took a look at Senator-Elect Jeanne Shaheen’s numbers in the first district.  Turns out Carol Shea-Porter got higher vote totals than Shaheen in 52 out of 79 NH-01 towns. End Update



Carol Shea-Porter delivered a memorable line on election night, directly addressing the “fluke” meme we on Blue Hampshire have been pushing against for two years:

“How did that happen? It must have been a fluke. You didn’t mean to elect me to Congress,” she said to her exuberant supporters. “Well, the voters have spoken, and it turns out you did mean to send me to Congress.”

I’ve been spending the some time looking at two cycles worth of election returns in the Granite State (chiefly from these two sources at the SoS).  This is some of what I’ve found, with the reader caveat that I’m not a statistician or political scientist – just curious enough about Carol’s second win to poke my head under the hood to see what I can see about its nature.

My starting point was this: Shea-Porter reached a little over 51% of the vote in 2006, and a little under 52% this year. On the surface, it looked like not much had changed.

(more below the fold…)

But the devil is in the details.  This was a general election, not a mid-term. Carol had to earn the support of a whole lot more voters this time around – 176,461 now compared to 100,691 in ’06, to be exact. Moreover, there was a libertarian candidate in the race this cycle who, while not competitive to win, garnered enough of a vote percentage easily to turn this close race into plurality win instead of a majority one if it were truly a toss-up. Yet Congresswoman Shea-Porter actually gained a higher majority this time than the last, albeit narrowly, while Jeb Bradley fell a full three points down from 49% in ’06 to 46% two weeks ago.

So, what changed in two years?  First off, let’s have some fun and take a look at the towns and wards that switched winners from ’06 to ’08.  The mighty Jeb flipped two whole towns – Hart’s Location (29 votes cast) and Freedom (less than 900 votes cast).

The Congresswoman, on the other hand, flipped the following 2006 Bradley wins to her corner:

Barnstead

Laconia Ward 2

Laconia Ward 3

Laconia Ward 4 (was a tie in 2006)

Manchester Ward 6

Manchester Ward 8

Milton

North Hampton

(over 1000 total votes cast for each)

By far the most impressive swings from Jeb to Carol in terms of percentage points were in the voter-rich wards of Laconia and Manchester, as you will see below.

After the flips, I figured the best way to gauge the major shifts in the race would be to calculate all the town and ward percentages for Shea-Porter for both 2006 and 2008, subtract the former from the latter, and then take a look at those areas that were either a three percent or above gain or loss for her. I chose three as the cutoff number, figuring that anything less than that would be harder to argue against statistical noise, even in a well populated town.

First, the towns and wards where Carol Shea-Porter lost 3 or more percentage points from her 2006 totals, plus the added data of the ’08 vote percentage for her, and the sum of the total votes cast in 2008. I included that last figure so the percentages would have more context – big swings either way in sparsely populated rural towns, e.g., are likely  to be less meaningful as an indicator of anything than the same swings in the larger city wards. Finally, the color of “’08 CSP %” indicates who won that town or ward (blue for Shea-Porter, red for Bradley):

Town/Ward	’08 CSP %	’06-’08 +/-% Diff.	Total Votes Cast
South Hampton	50.00%	-12.58%	502
Hart’s Location*	44.83%	-9.72%	29
Effingham	50.00%	-5.14%	818
Deerfield	44.37%	-5.13%	2542
Portsmouth Wd.2	73.19%	-4.89%	502
Eaton	61.07%	-4.83%	280
Tamworth	55.65%	-4.77%	1567
Northwood	49.76%	-4.49%	2339
Albany	57.82%	-3.63%	422
Ossipee	45.04%	-3.41%	2136
Portsmouth Wd.5	69.02%	-3.39%	2877
Brentwood	45.71%	-3.03%	2179

* Flipped to Bradley in 2008.

Next, the towns and wards where Carol Shea-Porter exceeded her 2006 totals by three percent or more:

Town/Ward	’08 CSP %	’06-’08 +/-% Diff.	Total Votes Cast
Laconia Wd.2*	56.39%	+8.82%	1213
Manchester Wd.11	59.26%	+7.27%	2776
Somersworth Wd.1	61.04%	+6.61%	1286
Laconia Wd.3*	52.88%	+6.33%	1163
Laconia Wd.4*	55.32%	+5.32%	1184
Manchester Wd.9	56.51%	+4.46%	3911
Manchester Wd.3	62.68%	+4.22%	2886
Manchester Wd.8*	50.07%	+4.10%	4729
Manchester Wd.7	56.12%	+3.96%	3571
Somersworth Wd.5	65.01%	+3.85%	761
Manchester Wd.4	57.89%	+3.64%	3173
Rochester Wd.6	60.90%	+3.64%	1949
Manchester Wd.10	54.90%	+3.54%	3905
Center Harbor	46.87%	+3.27%	719
Milton*	52.45%	+3.13%	2227

* Flipped to Shea-Porter in 2008.

So, what broad observations can we come to based on the differences between the 2006 and 2008 Bradley – Shea-Porter races?

* Jeb’s successes were small in number, and unstrategic.  Looking at the first chart, you can throw away right off the bat the Portsmouth wards, Eaton, and Albany. They went from big landslides and wins for Carol to slightly less so. Moreover, a fair number of the others are sparsely populated and therefore less critical toward winning elections.

* Bradely, nonetheless, did score some areas that, if I were part of Team CSP, I would want to target for her next race: Effingham, Deerfield, Tamworth, Northwood, Ossipee, and Brentwood.

* The lion’s share of the larger gains made by Carol Shea-Porter from 2006 to 2008, whether resulting by design or not, were exactly where you would most want to have them to build a healthy win margin.  A look at voter-dense Manchester says it all.  Carol gained in eleven out of twelve of Manchester’s wards, in seven of them significantly so, and even stole two from Jeb’s 2006 totals. Wow!

* I don’t know what’s in Milton’s water but I want some of it.

* The breakout surprise of all this data? Without a doubt – Laconia.  Three flipped wards, and major gains made all around. Whoa! Could this have anything to do with Shea-Porter’s campaign manager, Pia Carusone, having once been an area organizer in Laconia for the Dean campaign?

* Look at the total votes cast in the second table.  Carol won a greater share of support from more densely populated areas of the state.  That is an enviable position to be in for someone who was supposed to be in the fight of her life.  In fact, I’ll go one further.  These kinds of ward to ward vote gains in voter rich zones, and in the less blue of the two districts, make me wonder whether Carol might be in one of the strongest structural positions of our incredible field of Democrats to run for even higher office.

Adding: please add what you know on the ground in your community that will help flesh out further how these numbers played out town by town.  I also plan at a later date to overlay these numbers with Obama’s and Shaheen’s to see what that might tell us too.

Crossposted with different title and a few clarifying edits from Blue Hampshire.

It appears that the GoOPers in high places have decided to put their heft behind Nashua right-wing radio talk show host Jennifer Horn to go against Paul Hodes in the second district of New Hampshire.  I say this because unlike earlier challenger, lawyer and veteran Jim Steiner, Horn’s candidacy has arrived with great fanfare, with the NRCC putting the Telegraph article on their site, an up-column mention from DiStaso in the Union Leader, and a feature from the Republico Politico, which, without any empirical evidence, declares her the “emerging as an early front-runner” and boasts:

National Republicans have been attempting to recruit her into the race for several months. She currently faces a nominal primary challenge from attorney Jim Steiner, though other candidates could emerge before the June filing deadline.

So, what’s Jennifer Horn’s candidacy in a nut-shell?

She said she entered the race because “it’s time we stop electing lawyers and politicians and people who have spent their entire lives setting themselves up for the next office.”

Yes, by all means, let’s not elect lawyers to the legislative branch of government.

And given the above statement, I’m somewhat amazed at the fawning eulogy she gave to career politician Charlie BassMaster at his defeat. Clearly what the law-making branch of our government needs is less experts on laws and public servants, and more right-wing talk show hosts.

What does she think of Paul Hodes?

“Paul Hodes is a do-nothing representative in a do-nothing Congress,” she said.

Quite a piece of shop-worn candidate rhetoric for someone framing herself as an ordinary person outside the beltway.  For those of you looking beyond the slogans of politicians, check out this graph of how the 2006-elected Blue Wave (of which Paul Hodes is frosh president, btw) stacks up against career politician Charlie Bass’ freshman year with the Gingrich-led Contract with America in 1994:

By all means, throw out the do-nothing lawyers and bring in the Gingrich-style ideologues.  That’ll drain the swamp and get things done.  And is back-bencher Bass available for an encore?