Dixville Notch, New Hampshire

Dixville Notch, New Hampshire
Unincorporated community
The Balsams, a resort hotel in Dixville Notch and the site of the famous "midnight vote"
Dixville Notch
Coordinates:
Country	United States
State	New Hampshire
County	Coos
Township	Dixville
Elevation	1,873 ft (571 m)
Population (2010)
• Total	12
Time zone	Eastern (EST) (UTC-5)
• Summer (DST)	EDT (UTC-4)
Area code(s)	603 Exchange: 255
GNIS feature ID	866591

Dixville Notch is an unincorporated community in Dixville township of Coos County, New Hampshire, United States. The population of the township, all of whom live in Dixville Notch, was 12 at the 2010 census. The village is known for being one of the first places to declare its results during United States presidential elections and the New Hampshire primary. It is located in the far north of the state, approximately from Canada.

The village is named for the Dixville Notch mountain pass (or "notch," in White Mountains terminology) about 0.5 miles (800 m) southeast of and 100 feet (30 m) uphill from it, that lies between Dixville Peak and Sanguinary Mountain, and separates the Connecticut River's watershed from that of the Androscoggin. The village, situated at about 1,800 feet (550 m) above sea level at the base of dramatic mountains, is the location of The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel; one of a handful of surviving New Hampshire grand hotels, it is situated on a 15,000-acre (61 km²) plot, accommodating golfing in the summer and skiing in the winter.

Dixville Notch is part of the Berlin, NH–VT Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Midnight voting tradition

Dixville Notch is best known in connection with its longstanding middle-of-the-night vote in the U.S. presidential election, including during the New Hampshire primary (the first primary election in the U.S. presidential nomination process). In a tradition that started in the 1960 election, all the eligible voters in Dixville Notch gather at midnight in the ballroom of The Balsams. The voters cast their ballots and the polls officially are closed when one-hundred percent of the registered voters have voted, sometimes one minute later. The results of the Dixville Notch vote in both the New Hampshire primary and the general election are traditionally broadcast around the country immediately afterwards.

A similar tradition in the community of Hart's Location, New Hampshire began in 1948; theirs was discontinued in the 1960s in light of the abundance of media attention, and revived only in 1996. Informal competition for the distinction of the first town to report election results has been ongoing for several election cycles, among a number of small communities, including:

• Coos County:
  • Dixville Notch
  • Millsfield (the township to the south of Dixville township)
• Carroll County (the next to the southeast):
  • Hart's Location
• Grafton County (the next to the southwest of Coos):
  • Ellsworth
  • Waterville Valley

Press accounts occasionally state, without qualification, that Dixville Notch "votes first". The village's authentic electoral distinctions include the following:

• Longest continuous record of midnight voting
• Highest count of midnight presidential primaries (13 as of 2008, vs. 5 to 9 for Hart's Location)
• At least one of the first handful of lawful votes (nationwide) in each presidential campaign's binding primaries
• Often first to report its returns

Dixville Notch was granted the authority to conduct its own elections in 1960 and chose to open its polls at midnight. In 1964, the primary election returns were the first in New Hampshire to be reported by UPI and the Associated Press. Since then, Dixville Notch has gained international media attention as the first community to vote in the presidential primary season (since New Hampshire's primary is required by state law to be scheduled earlier than any competitor). Dixville Notch also votes at midnight in the general presidential election in November, although this usually attracts less press attention than primary voting.

Although most New Hampshire polling stations open around sunrise and close in the early evening, Dixville Notch takes advantage of a state law that allows a precinct to close if all registered voters in that precinct have cast ballots. Consequently, all registered voters in Dixville Notch gather and are counted before the balloting takes place. The "Ballot Room" of the Balsams Hotel resort serves as the polling place; this room features separate voting booths for each citizen. The town residents also vote each cycle at a town meeting whether or not they will continue the tradition.

The tradition was first organized by prominent Dixville Notch resident Neil Tillotson (1898 – 17 October 2001), who was traditionally the first voter; he would reportedly hold his ballot over the ballot box while watching his wristwatch. At the moment of midnight, Tillotson would drop the ballot into the ballot box and the rest of the town's residents would follow suit. Since Tillotson's death from pneumonia in 2001 at the age of 102, the first voter has been chosen by random ballot beforehand.

In the presidential election of November 2, 2004, the village had 26 registered voters, roughly half of whom were registered Republican; the other half were registered "undeclared", i.e., unaffiliated with a party. New Hampshire law, though, allows a voter to declare or change a party affiliation upon arriving at the polling place, so a number of independent voters vote in the Democratic party primary.

The votes are counted immediately after all are received; the Dixville Notch results of the primary (and now the Hart's Location ones as well) often lead morning news programs on election day. During every election year since 1968, the candidate with the plurality of Dixville Notch's voters has been the eventual Republican nominee for president. On the Democratic side, however, the village's election results have less often predicted the nominee. In 2000, for example, Bill Bradley won the most votes among Dixville Notch's Democratic primary voters although Al Gore was the party's eventual nominee.

In 1992, the Libertarian Party unsuccessfully attempted to capitalize upon Andre Marrou's unexpectedly strong showing in Dixville Notch in the general election. In 2004, Democratic candidate Wesley Clark was the only contender to personally visit Dixville Notch; he was on hand when the votes were cast and counted, and he received the majority of Democratic votes cast. (Clark placed third and received only 13 percent of votes statewide.)

The community's voting tradition received a nod in the 2002 third season episode of US television program The West Wing, in an episode entitled "Hartsfield's Landing", named after a town clearly modeled on either Dixville Notch, or its companion, Hart's Location.

In 2008, Senator Barack Obama became the first Democrat to win the community's vote in a presidential election since 1968, by a margin of 15 to 6.

In 2012, the Dixville Notch result delivered a tie for the first time in its history, with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney receiving 5 votes each.

Federal election results

The eventual nationwide winners for each contest are indicated in bold.

Year	Votes & results, Democratic primary		Votes & results, Republican primary		Votes & results, General Election
1960					9	Richard M. Nixon – 9 John F. Kennedy – 0
1964			9	Richard M. Nixon – 3 Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. – 3 Nelson A. Rockefeller – 2 Barry M. Goldwater – 1	9	Barry M. Goldwater – 8 Lyndon B. Johnson – 1
1968	1	Richard M. Nixon – 1, write-in (Or possibly Hubert H. Humphrey II?)	6	Richard M. Nixon – 5 Wallace Johnson – 1, write-in	12	Hubert H. Humphrey II – 8 Richard M. Nixon – 4
1972	6	Edmund S. Muskie – 5 George S. McGovern – 1	11	Richard M. Nixon – 11	19	Richard M. Nixon – 16 George S. McGovern – 3
1976	6	James E. Carter Jr. – 6 Birch E. Bayh II – 1	18	Gerald R. Ford Jr. – 11 Ronald W. Reagan – 4 Nelson A. Rockefeller – 2 Barry M. Goldwater – 1	25	Gerald R. Ford Jr. – 13 James E. Carter Jr. – 11 Eugene J. McCarthy – 1
1980	6	James E. Carter Jr. – 3 Edward M. Kennedy – 2 Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr. – 1	17	Ronald W. Reagan – 5 George H.W. Bush – 5 Howard Baker – 4 John B. Anderson – 1 John Connally – 1 Philip Crane – 1	23	Ronald W. Reagan – 17 James E. Carter Jr. – 3 John B. Anderson – 2 Ed Clark – 1
1984	6	Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings – 3 Walter F. "Fritz" Mondale – 2 Gary W. Hart – 1	20	Ronald W. Reagan – 15 Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings – 5	30	Ronald W. Reagan – 29 Walter F. "Fritz" Mondale – 1
1988	7	Richard A. "Dick" Gephardt – 4 Paul M. Simon – 3	27	George H. W. Bush – 11 Robert J. Dole – 6 Jack Kemp – 5 Alexander Haig – 2 Pierre "Pete" DuPont – 2 Pat Robertson – 1	38	George H. W. Bush – 34 Michael S. Dukakis – 3 Jack Kemp – 1
1992	4	William J. Clinton – 3 Paul E. Tsongas – 1 Libertarian Primary: Andre Marrou – 10	14	George H. W. Bush – 9 Patrick J. Buchanan – 3 Paul E. Tsongas – 1, write-in Andre Marrou – 1, write-in	27	George H. W. Bush – 15 H. Ross Perot – 8 Andre Marrou – 5 William J. Clinton – 2
1996	12	William J. Clinton – 12	20	Robert J. Dole – 11 Lamar A. Alexander – 5 Patrick J. Buchanan – 2 Malcolm S. "Steve" Forbes Jr. – 1 Richard G. Lugar – 1	28	Robert J. Dole – 18 William J. Clinton – 8 H. Ross Perot – 1 Harry Browne – 1
2000	6	William W. Bradley – 4 Albert A. Gore Jr. – 2	23	George W. Bush – 12 John S. McCain III – 10 Malcolm S. "Steve" Forbes Jr. – 1	27	George W. Bush – 21 Albert A. Gore Jr. – 5 Ralph Nader – 1
2004	15	Wesley K. Clark – 8 John F. Kerry – 3 John R. Edwards – 2 Howard B. Dean III – 1 Joseph I. Lieberman – 1	11	George W. Bush – 11	26	George W. Bush – 19 John Kerry – 7
2008	10	Barack Obama – 7 John Edwards – 2 Bill Richardson – 1	7	John McCain – 4 Mitt Romney – 2 Rudy Giuliani – 1	21	Barack Obama – 15 John McCain – 6
2012	3	Barack Obama – 3	6	Jon Huntsman, Jr. – 2 Mitt Romney – 2 Ron Paul – 1 Newt Gingrich – 1	10	Barack Obama – 5 Mitt Romney – 5
2016	4	Bernie Sanders – 4	5	John Kasich – 3 Donald Trump – 2

See also

• Hart's Location, New Hampshire
• List of mountain passes in New Hampshire

External links

• The Balsams homepage