How Predictive are New Hampshire Primaries of Presidential Campaign Success?
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The first presidential contest of 2024 is in the books as Donald Trump wins the Iowa Republican Caucus by a wide margin. (The Democratic side is not having their Iowa Caucus until March.) Now both parties have their sights set on the New Hampshire primaries happening on January 23rd.
New Hampshire state law requires its primaries to be the first primaries in the nation. (Iowa’s competition was not actually a primary. Ballotpedia has more information on the differences between caucuses and primaries.) But does such an outsized role for one of the smallest states in the Union have a significant impact on who eventually wins their party’s nomination, or even the presidency?
Last week, I wrote about a similar question for the Iowa Caucus. In short, Iowa’s results weren’t very predictive. Is this also the case for New Hampshire? Here’s some more in-depth info, but the data suggests that New Hampshire’s results are much more important for the presidential election than Iowa’s, at least for one of the two major parties.
The Data
This article is, in large part, a comparison to the predictiveness of the Iowa Caucuses, so the data starts from 1972, when Iowa was cemented as the first presidential caucus. Thankfully, New Hampshire primary data was easy to find thanks to this database of election data in the state since 1970. I split up the statistics between the Democratic and Republican Parties into separate tables. All of the data for Democratic primaries from 1972 to 2020 can be found here. All of the data for Republican primaries from 1972 to 2020 can be found here.
The following is a description of data points in these tables that might merit further explanation for why I include them.
- # of Opponents indicates the total number of opponents (not including the winner) shown for the race in that aforementioned New Hampshire elections database.
- # Opponents w/ >1% vote indicates just the number of opponents (not including the winner) who earned at least 1% of the vote. It’s a somewhat arbitrary number, but it is meant to estimate the number of legitimate candidates in the race that had a discernible impact. You’ll find a lot of random names of people who filed for these kinds of elections who didn’t have even a remote chance of winning but still garnered a small portion of votes.
- Incumbent Running? shows whether an incumbent president was running in that party’s primary.
- Won Iowa Caucus? helps partially provide a comparison of the New Hampshire and Iowa contests’ predictiveness of the overall presidential election. If the Iowa Caucus was not held that year, the cell is colored grey and marked with a dash.
Now, what does the data tell us about New Hampshire and the overall presidential race?
The Democratic Side’s Stats
Perhaps surprisingly, the Democratic Primaries in New Hampshire show that while a win preceded the party’s eventual nomination more often than not, it’s not that predictive. It’s actually a slightly similar, but lower, rate to the Iowa Caucuses. Democratic winners of New Hampshire won the party nomination 7 of 13 times (53.85%), while in Iowa it was 7 of 11 times (64.64%).
It also appears a higher vote share for the winner is not that indicative of eventual campaign success either. Bernie Sanders in 2016, for example, won 60.98% of the New Hampshire vote but would lose out on the party nomination to Hillary Clinton (who herself won the state in 2008 but lost the party nomination to Barack Obama). Meanwhile, Paul Tsongas in 1992 only took 33.21% of the New Hampshire vote, and he faced much more competition (eight other candidates took at least 1% of the vote, including eventual presidential victor Bill Clinton at 24.79% of the vote) than Sanders did (whose only real competition was Clinton).
What’s also interesting to note is that the Democratic winner of New Hampshire wasn’t that often also the winner of the Iowa Caucus, happening only 5 of 11 times (45.45%). This number, however, would very likely be higher if Democrats had an Iowa Caucus in 1996 and 2012 — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama respectively dominated New Hampshire in those years in their successful reelection bids. Even so, Clinton and Obama would have made it 7 out of 11 times (63.64%), which would be far from a guarantee of winning both Iowa and New Hampshire.
However, should a Democrat take both the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary, it almost always led to the party’s nomination for that candidate. That happened four out of five times, the only exception being the 1972 campaign of Ed Muskie, a U.S. Senator and previous governor of Maine who later became secretary of state under Jimmy Carter. But oftentimes, the success of New Hampshire/Iowa Democratic winners stopped at their party’s nomination, because out of those four instances, only Jimmy Carter in 1976 won the presidency.
The Republican Side’s Stats
The Republican side, on the other hand, is much more predictable based on winning the New Hampshire primary. Eleven of thirteen Republican winners of New Hampshire won the party nomination, the only exceptions being Pat Buchanan in 1996 and John McCain in 2000. (McCain, however, would win the New Hampshire Primary and the Republican nomination in 2008, losing to Barack Obama in the general election.)
A higher vote share for Republican winners in New Hampshire often led to their party’s nomination. Winners who received a majority of the vote won the Republican Party nod all seven times, though it is important to note that four of those times were incumbents running for reelection (1972, 1984, 1992, and 2004). But a majority of the New Hampshire vote wasn’t always necessary for a Republican to win the party nomination: John McCain and Mitt Romney only won 37.00% and 39.28% of New Hampshire in their respective 2008 and 2012 campaigns, and they both faced several competitive opponents.
Now here’s where things get even more interesting: It’s quite rare for a Republican to have won both the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary in the same year. Only Gerald Ford in 1976 and Donald Trump in 2020 have done that. (Theoretically, though, this number would be higher if Iowa Caucuses were held in 1972, 1984, 1992, and 2004, when incumbent Republican presidents were running.)
Yet the success for Ford in 1976 and Trump in 2020 stopped in the Republican Primary, because neither one of them won the general election those years. Of course, that doesn’t mean that winning Iowa and New Hampshire directly causes a Republican to eventually lose to a Democrat in November, and elections are always more complicated than that. It’s also a very small set of data. But it is an interesting wrinkle nonetheless, as one might think that at least one Republican in this situation would have won the presidency.
The Democratic and Republican Stats Put Together
Let’s refer back to my Iowa Caucus post for some comparisons.
For the Democrats, the Iowa Caucus were actually a little more predictive of who won the party nomination than the New Hampshire Primary (7 of 11 times for the former, 7 of 13 for the latter). But Democratic New Hampshire Primary victors were a little bit more successful than Iowa Caucus victors in winning the presidency (three compared to two).
The contrast between Iowa and New Hampshire success is much more pronounced for Republicans. Republican winners of the Iowa Caucus only won their party’s nomination four out of nine times, less than half. But for New Hampshire Republican winners, the party nomination is pretty close to a given (11 of 13 times) for them.
Republicans are, therefore, more likely to win the presidency if they win their New Hampshire Primary than Democrats who win their side of the state’s primary. Five Republicans (Ronald Reagan twice) have done this compared to four Democrats.
There is also a Republican advantage when the Republican and Democratic nominees in the same year both won that year’s New Hampshire Primary, which has happened five times. In those matchups, Republican nominees won the presidency in 1980, 1988, and 2004, while Democratic nominees won the presidency in 1976 and 2012. Even when that didn’t happen, at least the Democratic or the Republican Party nominee in the general election won that year’s New Hampshire Primary.
But for both parties, general election nominees who won the New Hampshire Primary with a substantial proportion of the vote didn’t always translate that success to a term in the White House. Four New Hampshire victors with a majority of the vote didn’t always win the general election. One was a Democrat: Bernie Sanders in 2016 (60.98%). The three Republicans were Gerald Ford in 1976 (50.06%), George H.W. Bush in 1992 (53.10%), and Donald Trump in 2020 (84.40%).
Lastly, the Democratic side as more competitive on average than the Republican side. The average number of opponents that also took home more than one percent of the New Hampshire Primary vote was five for Democrats and four for Republicans.
What Does the History of the New Hampshire Primary Mean for 2024?
The history of an election is one of the best predictors of how future iterations of that same election will go. But of course, correlation does not imply causation, and we must also account for aspects specific to 2024.
Is it something endemic to New Hampshire that often translates into party nomination and general election success? There may be something to that, much more so for Republicans than Democrats. Even though it is one of the smallest states by population, New Hampshire’s whiter, older electorate and overall population are more representative of the Republican Party’s demographics nationally, but less so for Democrats. White and older voters tend to vote Republican. But one must also factor in campaign spending, voter outreach strategies, and other aspects of elections that require more scrutiny to see how much of a role they play, too.
There is also a partial bandwagon effect at play here. Some voters can be influenced to pick a trendy candidate if that campaign picks up steam. With New Hampshire’s outsized role as the first primary in the nation, its results can impact some voters’ choices in later states’ primaries. The 2016 election cycle, when Trump first won the New Hampshire Primary is an example.
Let’s peer deeper into the parties’ respective situations.
Democrats and New Hampshire in 2024
Assumedly, Joe Biden is going to win the Democratic nomination again in his reelection bid this year. Every incumbent since 1972 has won the party’s nomination when running for a second term.
But how well Biden performs in New Hampshire may foreshadow his eventual general election showing. Will his state primary vote share look more like Bill Clinton’s in 1996 (84.37%) and Barack Obama’s in 2012 (80.78%)? Or will it look more like Jimmy Carter’s in 1980 (48.79%)? If it’s closer to the latter, Biden might be in for trouble in the general election, as Carter lost his chance at a second term to Ronald Reagan while Clinton and Obama won theirs by comfortable margins. At the moment, it looks like Biden’s margin of victory will more closely resemble that of Clinton and Obama.
Republicans and New Hampshire in 2024
Donald Trump has a chance to become the only candidate from the Democratic or Republican Party (at least in the era we are looking at) to win the New Hampshire Primary three times. With his polling numbers, previous experience in the primary, and the fact he has already served a term as president, among other things, Trump has several advantages over his main opposition, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.
But history would not bode well for Trump in one regard, should he win New Hampshire, that was mentioned already: Two Republican nominees from 1972 to the present won both the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary in the same year but lost the general election. One of those was Trump already in 2020.
Trump also does not have an incumbency advantage this time, but this is the first time in this Iowa-to-New Hampshire era that a president who lost his reelection campaign tried his hand at a second term again. For the New Hampshire Primary, one might argue that he might as well have an incumbency advantage again. But just like with Iowa, New Hampshire in 2024 is going to be much more competitive than it was in 2020.
Concluding Thoughts
As I noted in my post about Iowa Caucus predictiveness, the last time we had a presidential rematch was between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai E. Stevenson in 1956, and Eisenhower won both that and the 1952 elections. Yet while New Hampshire had already been well-established as the first primary in the nation at that point, it was before the Iowa Caucus became the first overall presidential contest, and this post has mostly been a comparison of those two states. But the further you go back in time, the less comparable elections generally become, so 1972 serves as a solid starting point for the data anyway.
From a historical perspective, if Donald Trump wins the New Hampshire Primary again, it becomes much more likely that the general election becomes Biden vs. Trump Round Two. But if DeSantis or Haley have a stronger-than-expected showing for 2nd place, it could still become more competitive than many analysts anticipate. This happened with Bill Clinton in 1992, and he would win that presidential election. But if DeSantis and Haley both get blown out by Trump, the hole might be too deep for them to climb out of.
