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.)