New Hampshire's electoral votes in U.S. presidential elections 1789-2020

The state of New Hampshire has taken part in every U.S. presidential election ever held, and has voted for the overall winning candidate on 44 occasions, giving a success rate of 75 percent. New Hampshire has awarded its allocation of electoral votes to major party candidates in every presidential election, voting for the Democratic nominee in 19 elections, and the Republican nominee in 29 elections. Although New Hampshire has voted blue in seven of the eight most recent elections, and most nearby states have been considered safely Democratic in these years; the Granite State is generally treated as a battleground state in each election cycle, and in the 2016 election, both major candidates were split by just 0.37 percent of the popular vote. In the 2020 election, however, New Hampshire was won relatively comfortably by Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, with a seven percent margin in the popular vote.

New Hampshirites in elections

As of 2020, Franklin Pierce is the only U.S. president to have been born in New Hampshire, also representing his home state in both houses of Congress before ascending to the presidency. Two other major party candidates have been born in New Hampshire, they were Lewis Cass (Democratic nominee in the 1848 election) and Horace Greeley (Liberal Republican nominee in the 1872 election); Cass carried his home state in the election, however Greeley was defeated in New Hampshire by the incumbent Ulysses S. Grant, whose running mate, Henry Wilson, was also a New Hampshire native.

Electoral votes

New Hampshire has been allocated just four electoral votes in each presidential election since 1884. Its number had been double this figure in the early nineteenth century, however changes in population distribution as the United States expanded westwards saw this number fall during the mid-1800s. Despite this relatively low number of votes, New Hampshire is given more attention than most other states during election cycles due to the competitiveness of previous elections, and the level of significance placed on the primary elections.