Obama landslide in Dixville Notch

SOURCE: CNN DIXVILLE NOTCH, New Hampshire (CNN) -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama emerged victorious in the first election returns of the 2008 presidential race, winning 15 of 21 votes cast in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.

People in the isolated village in New Hampshire's northeast corner voted just after midnight Tuesday. It was the first time since 1968 that the village leaned Democratic in an election.Obama's rival, Republican John McCain, won 6 votes.A full 100 percent of registered voters in the village cast ballots. And the votes didn't take long to tally. The town, home to around 75 residents, has opened its polls shortly after midnight each election day since 1960, drawing national media attention for being the first place in the country to make its presidential preferences known. However, since 1996, another small New Hampshire town -- Hart's Location -- reinstated its practice from the 1940s and also began opening its polls at midnight.

The result in Dixville Notch is hardly a reliable bellwether for the eventual winner of the White House or even the result statewide. Though New Hampshire is a perennial swing state, Dixville Notch -- until now -- had consistently leaned Republican. The last Democrat it picked was Hubert Humphrey over Richard Nixon in 1968.

President Bush won the town in a landslide in the last two elections: He captured 73 percent of the vote in 2004 (19 residents picked Bush while six preferred Sen. John Kerry), and secured 80 percent of the vote in 2000 (21 votes for Bush, five votes for Al Gore.)

But villagers expected the results to be close this year given Democrats now outnumber Republicans there.

The town picked both John McCain and Barack Obama for the New Hampshire Democratic and Republican primaries in January. McCain ultimately won the state of New Hampshire, while Sen. Hillary Clinton upset Obama there.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click 'Save settings' to activate your changes.

Quote

"Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once.

They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians,

'Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain. By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again.'"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1950), pp. 319.