MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Despite taking delight in a parade of presidential candidates descending on their state every four years, some Granite State voters question whether they should have an outsize role in choosing the Democratic presidential nominee.
“To be very honest, I don’t think New Hampshire should be the first in the nation,” said Sue Corby, a retired teacher in Manchester. “I don’t think anyone’s state should be the first one the nation’s primary. You should either rotate or have a small, rural state and an urban state together.”
Candidates who place well in the Iowa caucuses, followed by the New Hampshire primary, see a bump in attention and funding ahead of the next contests in Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Tuesday states. A poor showing in the states often forces candidates to drop out.
Historically, candidates have worked their way up in national prominence after grassroots campaigning and winning confidence from voters in small groups, progressing to larger events. But in a nationalized primary environment, that isn’t the case anymore, Corby argued.
“This whole idea of having small groups in living rooms has really changed,” she said. “There’s people in big houses, and they have people in the living room, in the dining room, throughout the house, and it’s not the same as 15 to 20 people sitting in a group together.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden, for instance, held a “house party” in Nashua during his first week on the campaign trail in 2019 that drew about 200 people in a backyard carefully staged with rented tents to shield attendees from the rain, press risers, and a rope line to protect the garden. Former Texas congressman and dropout 2020 hopeful Beto O’Rourke held a “house party” the same week in a Salem, New Hampshire, backyard with more than 100 attendees.
New Hampshire voters took a bit of delight in their first-in-the-nation rival state of Iowa being forced to delay reporting results due to malfunctions in an app, which fueled arguments that the state should no longer go first.
“Those caucuses are all awful,” said retired Nashua resident Tom Mandra on Tuesday as delayed Iowa results remained a mystery. “They take away people’s opportunity to vote. You have to go spend three or four hours at night, and it’s hard enough to get people to go two blocks to their polling place to stand in line a little bit to vote.”
But the most-heard argument against Iowa’s primary influence also applies to New Hampshire. The states have less demographic diversity than the rest of the country. White people who are not Hispanic or Latino make up about 60% of the United States as a whole but about 85% of Iowa’s population and 90% of New Hampshire’s, according to the Census Bureau.
That creates a problem for giving momentum to candidates who might not appeal to minority voters, a critical voting bloc for Democrats in the general election. Biden, for instance, polls well with minority voters, but former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has struggled to earn support from nonwhite voters.
Former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, who was the only Latino running for president before ending his bid last month, called for ending the first-in-the-nation status of both states based on the diversity issue.
New Hampshire voters agree that their state being so white is a problem.
“I feel like Iowa and New Hampshire a little too similar demographically speaking. I would like to see a different mix,” said Rachel Macintyre, 48, an analyst and Warren supporter in Nashua. “But I don’t understand why we don’t all vote on the same day.”
Steve Williams, who attended an event for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, was skeptical of New Hampshire having so much influence but was not sure what the best alternative would be.
“The diversity problem bothers me a little, but I don’t know what to do with the primary system,” said Williams, a retired Nashua resident. “It seems like a crazy system to me. I think the parties have too much control over how it works.”
Defenders of New Hampshire’s place in the primary calendar acknowledged a bit of selfish pleasure in having the opportunity to candidate-shop.
“I like being able to set the pace,” said retired Nashua resident Elizabeth Bailey. “We usually pick a winner.”
Others argue that people in the state are better conditioned to vet presidential hopefuls after decades of participating in the process.
“My family in Massachusetts, they really have no knowledge about the candidates,” said Kathy MacPhee, 58, a paralegal from Medford.
“It’s part of our DNA,” said Carol Gayman, 71, a YMCA fundraiser in Manchester.
