Abstract
Election Day was only minutes old, and the news from the Northeast was already bad for John McCain. In New Hampshire’s Dixville Notch, a little town in the far North of the state with the distinct tradition of being first in the nation to vote on Election Day, the tallies were announced. Barack Obama, 15; John McCain, 6. It was the first time in 40 years that the good voters of Dixville Notch had supported the Democratic ticket, which in 1968 included their popular neighbor Maine Senator Edmund Muskie as the vice presidential candidate. Indeed, in most of the elections since the town’s voters agreed to stay up late to vote together so that their ballots could be counted quickly, the race had not been close. And the Democratic nominee had not fared well. For example, in 1960, John F. Kennedy did not win a vote. Four years later, Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) won just one. But on this Election Day, Barack Obama sailed to an easy victory. And it was barely past midnight.
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Notes
On the politics of Northeastern states, see generally: Duane Lockard, New England State Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959)
Josephine F. Milburn and William Doyle, New England Political Parties (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1983)
Robert W. Speel, Changing Patterns of Voting in the Northern United States: Electoral Realignment, 1952–1996 (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998)
Jeffrey M. Stonecash, ed., Governing New York State (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001)
John Kenneth White, The Fractured Electorate: Political Parties and Social Change in Southern New England (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983).
John Leonard, ed., These United States (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003)
Alan Rosenthal and Maureen Moakley, eds., The Political Life of the American States (New York: Praeger, 1984).
Michael Barone and Richard E. Cohen, The Almanac of American Politics (Washington, DC: National Journal, 2004), p. 723.
Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1970
Goldwater quoted in Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising, Third Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 179.
Quoted in White, The Fractured Electorate, p. 72. For more on Cianci, see Mike Stanton, The Prince of Providence: The Rise and Fall of Buddy Cianci, America’s Most Notorious Mayor (New York: Random House, 2003, 2004).
Christie Todd Whitman, It’s My Party, Too: Taking Back the Republican Party and Bringing the Country Together Again (New York: Penguin, 2005, 2006), pp. xi
Lewis L. Gould, Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans (New York: Random House, 2003).
Nicol C. Rae, The Decline and Fall of Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
Rinker Buck, “Senior Tsunami,” Hartford Courant, November 9, 2007. See James M. Jeffords, My Declaration of Independence (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
Mark Silk and Andrew Walsh, One Nation, Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), pp. 52
Donald W. Beachler, “A New Democratic Era? Presidential Political in Pennsylvania, 1984–1996,” Commonwealth 9 (1997–1998): 57–71
For possible reasons for this Democratic decline, see John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority (New York: Scribner, 2002), pp. 94–95.
See James M. Jeffords, My Declaration of Independence (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
Lincoln Chafee, Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2008), p. 54.
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© 2009 Kevin J. McMahon, David M. Rankin, Donald W. Beachler, and John Kenneth White
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McMahon, K.J. (2009). The Northeast. In: Winning the White House 2008. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230100428_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230100428_5
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