- The six residents of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire cast ballots at midnight
- Nikki Haley won with all six votes going for them on Tuesday morning
- The town historically produces the first results of the New Hampshire primary
Nikki Haley emerged the victor among the six historic first votes cast in the tiny town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire minutes after midnight on Tuesday morning.
Earning all six of the town’s electorate, Haley bested former President Donald Trump in the blue state where the GOP electorate is more moderate than the deep-red Iowa. Four of the voters are registered Republican and two are independent.
Dixville Notch historically produces the first results of the first-in-the-nation primary with its midnight vote on Election Day.
Polls for the first vote closed at 12:07 a.m. ET on Tuesday, January 23 – and other locations in the state won’t open next until 6 a.m.
Trump and Haley are the only Republican candidates on the ballot after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race on Sunday – just two days before the primary. Democrat Rep. Dean Phillips is also on the ballot for the Democratic primary, which did not include President Joe Biden.
But voters in New Hampshire are also able to write-in whichever candidate they want in the primary. There has been a huge write-in campaign by Democrats urging left-leaning voters to write in President Biden’s name on Tuesday.
Many Granite State voters will wake up Tuesday morning to the results of Dixville Notch’s election at The Balsams ski resort in northern New Hampshire as other polling places begin opening as residents head to work.
Before voting commenced, an empty ballot box was shown to the journalists, then the National Anthem was played by world famous accordion player Cory Pesaturo from Rhode Island.
Also in the room with the voters and the reporters and cameras were two dogs: Max and Lucy.
The town’s clerk Tom Tillotson moderated the polls on Tuesday by announcing to press gathered in his living room that the voters would also be wearing the hat of election officials and trading off posts so they could cast their ballots.
Each of the six went behind a wall of draped American flags to vote in secret before dropping their ballot in the ballot box, which Tilloston then emptied at 12:07 a.m. to begin counting the votes.
In 2020’s general election there were five voters, and they all cast their ballot for President Joe Biden over Trump.
Just 20 miles from the Canadian border, The Balsams opened its closely-watched polling place in the living room at the Tillotson House to a room full of journalists who documented the votes of the town’s handful of voters.
Hart’s Location and Millsfield also historically open voting at midnight on Tuesday and were among the first to declare results of the primary election in New Hampshire. Hart’s Location, a small town in the middle of the state with 68 residents, and Millsfield, just 10 miles south of Dixville Notch with 21 registered voters have decided to ditch their midnight voting this year.
Hart’s Location, which markets itself as the smallest town in New Hampshire, has polls opening at 11 a.m. on January 23.
Meanwhile, Millsfield election official Shawn Cote told WMUR of the change in time: ‘Our population is getting older in Millsfield, and getting up at midnight to go vote is getting harder and harder for our population.
But Dixville Notch continued the 64-year-old tradition in the wee-morning hours of Tuesday, January 23.
Dixville Notch only has six voters this year. In 2020, five people voted in the primary and general elections in the town.
Prior to the pandemic, the small New Hampshire town had double the residents it has now, with a dozen casting ballots back to 2010 and even more in years prior.
In the 2020 primary election, three candidates in the town voted for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders and one voted for Pete Buttigieg.
Then in the general election, all five candidates voted for President Joe Biden over Trump.
‘As Dixville goes, so goes the country,’ Dixville Notch voter Les Otten told WMUR or the results that are watched by dozens of camera and immediately reported.
‘Even if the spotlight wasn’t there, we would be doing the same thing,’ he added. ‘It’s sort of become a tradition where we understand the importance of voting.’
The Balsams resort where the Dixville Notch voting takes place is undergoing a $300 million restoration and revitalization project.
Otten says the hope is that the voting bloc in the New Hampshire town that produced the first results of the first-in-the-nation primary election will grow.
‘Our six will grow to 16 and 26 and 60 and so forth this week as we grow, and it will be more difficult to get everybody in,’ he said. ‘But the idea will remain the same.’