How is that different from other foods? I have a slight onion allergy that I didn't realize until recently.

My point is that meeting the candidate is ultimately meaningless. <1% of voters live in NH most of them will not even meet a candidate. A vanishingly small percentage of national voters ever get the opportunity. It's at best a neat story.

If meeting a candidate is important (which I contend it is not), it shouldn't be reserved for just NH. More people should have the opportunity (regardless of proportion) because it's important. If proportion of the state is the key, why not Wyoming first?

I haven't seen any evidence of any special insights from retail politics. Seems like we're about 50/50 choosing the actual nominees.

I guess I don't see how that's relevant. The rest of the country doesn't really care if people in NH met candidates or not and NH voters don't have any special insights into politics (as much as they may claim otherwise). I can't recall an underfunded candidate that did well in NH and went on to win the nomination. Bernie hung on for a while and managed to shift the conversation of the (ultimately unsuccessful) democratic campaign, but that's the most I can think of.

Are you arguing that NH should continue to be first or go later? I've seen that statement used both ways; some like that NH is the weed out state, some want their vote to matter more.

I find it weird that people in NH put so much stock into meeting the candidates. The majority of US voters don't have this opportunity, yet they still have to decide who to vote for. If one-on-one time is that important, we should have the first primary in NY or CA that way more people get to be in the same room and see a speech in person.

Especially with the internet, every speech and rally is recorded and available to watch for free. There's less need to visit every district and no need at all to rely on TV for information about candidates.

I see what you mean, but in that regard they never mattered (i.e. nothing changed in 2020). Parties could always pressure candidates to drop out of the race before it was decided.

In 2020 there was a lot of pressure for the Dems to pick a candidate early to beat Trump. It was a strategic decision to solidify the base and give the impression of party unity. The bickering between Hilary and Bernie camps in 2016 was thought to be a major reason Trump won so they wanted to avoid that.

That would be true no matter which state was first, and seems to reinforce the idea that NH is a throwaway primary for the serious candidates. Small enough that the lost delegates don't matter and early so it weeds out the nonviable candidates. If that's what people want here, I'm fine with that.

From a campaign strategy viewpoint it makes no sense. NH is too different in too many ways to be a reliable gauge of national voting trends. It might make sense as part of a group of states to hold primaries at the same time, but not by itself. I can totally see why both parties want to go somewhere else first.

I understand the argument that candidates wouldn't come to NH if we weren't first, but that applies to most places in the country (including two of our neighbors). I understand that VT and MA tried to organize a single primary day for all of new england to combat that problem, but NH wouldn't participate. With the internet we can see every speech a candidate makes so the need for a personal visit is diminished. Again, that's something that most voters don't have or need to make a decision.

Others will say that it makes NH an important trial and they point to successful campaigns that did badly in NH and then recovered later. To me that says NH isn't important and candidates know that. They can safely bomb this state and still win the nomination in the rest of the country.

I don't really care that much, I just don't follow the logic that NH has to be first.

I thought the results were binding in NH. It used to be the case the the parties picked candidates, but that changed after the 1968 riots at the DNC.

Doesn't this sub use Mass as a downvote button? Seems just as petty.

I've seen this type of graph before (but done well) and it works for what they want to show. It needs a central axis and more distinct colors. The bars are centered for the total population, so the line separating male and female shows how much it goes to one side or the other. Without the axis and having such close colors it doesn't work.

That would be my guess. It's probably two different sources, which means you can't just do X/Y and call it good.