Editor’s note: This commentary is by Garrison Nelson, who is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont. His latest book is ‘John William McCormack: A Political Biography.:
The three states of northern New England – Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont — combine for a miniscule 11 electoral votes of the 538 in the Electoral College (.020%) and somewhat higher of the 270 needed for victory (.041%) yet they can be decisive.
That was certainly the case in the presidential election of 2000 when Texas Gov. George W. Bush won New Hampshire’s four electoral votes over Vice President Al Gore Jr. by 7,211 votes and a 1.27% margin of 48.07% to 46.80%. Those four electoral votes were the only ones captured by George W. Bush in the Northeast and they were the margin of victory for him as he won the Electoral College vote 271-266. With the national media fixated on the Florida results little notice was taken of New Hampshire’s vote for Bush. Had New Hampshire voted for Gore as its neighbors in Maine and Vermont did, Gore would have had a 270-267 vote victory and the nation’s history might have been dramatically different.
Speculation aside, northern New England has provided the nation with three presidents: New Hampshire native Franklin Pierce and Vermont natives Chester Arthur and Calvin Coolidge and four vice presidents: Maine-born Hannibal Hamlin and Nelson Rockefeller, New Hampshire’s Henry Wilson, and Vermont’s Levi Morton.
Twice in this century, Vermont has produced two presidential contenders – Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in 2004 and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020. Both natives of New York, each chose to launch Democratic presidential bids from the nation’s second smallest state and the one that ranks only ahead of Montana with its proportion of African American citizens (0.87%). This is a tall order given that the vast majority of Americans live elsewhere and the single largest and most reliable component of the Democratic Party is African American.
All three northern New England states have concluded their primaries and their results are instructive, particularly with regard to this second candidacy of Sanders, the only northern New Englander in the fray. New Hampshire and Vermont held preference primaries in 2016 and 2020 while Maine held a caucus in 2016 and a primary in 2020.
While Sanders won all three states decisively in the 2016 nomination fight with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his 2020 results have been far from favorable in this latest contest. While he carried New Hampshire and Vermont again, he lost Maine to former Vice President Joe Biden. His vote totals in both New Hampshire and Vermont were far less impressive than they were in 2016. Much of the decline can be explained due to the multiplicity of rival candidacies. However, drops of 75,829 votes in New Hampshire and 35,785 votes in his home state of Vermont may indicate some disillusionment with Sanders in his rematch with the Democratic “establishment.” Far more worrisome to the Sanders candidacy among those voters who know him best was a full one-third average percentage drop in these three states.
Insurgent candidacies often falter in their second challenges once the novelty wears off, a fact attested to by William Jennings Bryan’s second battle with William McKinley in 1900 when he lost five of the 22 states that he had won in 1896 and most recently, when H. Ross Perot’s second independent candidacy in 1996 against Bill Clinton dropped from 19% of the vote to 8%. The jury may be out in the rest of the nation but northern New England has already spoken.
