Why Dixville Notch matters

Dixville Notch has spoken and the answer is clear: Barack Obama.

The New Hampshire village known as the first in the country to tally the ballots on election day saw a heavy swing this morning to the Democrat who is bidding to be America's first black president.

A loud whoop accompanied the announcement, a few minutes after midnight, that the township had backed Mr Obama by 15 votes to 6 for the Republican John McCain.

Hart's Location, which vies with Dixville Notch for the first-voting honour, reported 17 votes for Mr Obama, 10 for Mr McCain and two for the write-in candidate Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination.

With 115 residents between them, Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location get every eligible voter to the polls beginning at midnight on election day. Between them, the towns have been enjoying their first-vote status since 1948.

But although pollsters would question the size of the sample, today's results suggest that Mr Obama could be set for a landslide. Dixville Notch has voted at the stroke of midnight since 1960 and has only once backed a Democrat - when Hubert Humphrey beat Richard Nixon by eight votes to four in 1968. Even Bill Clinton never managed to carry Dixville Notch.

Voting was carried out in a room in a local hotel festooned with political memorabilia from campaigns long past. Each voter gets an individual booth so there are no lines at the magic hour. The votes were quickly counted, announced and recorded on a posterboard that proclaims, “First in the Nation, Dixville Notch.”

Being first means something to residents of the Granite State, which is also home to the United States' earliest presidential primary.

“I’m not going to say I wasn’t surprised,” said Tanner Nelson Tillotson, an Obama supporter whose name was drawn from a bowl to make him Dixville Notch’s first voter of polling day.

Rick Erwin, the Dixville Notch Town Clerk, said it was proud of its tradition, but added, “The most important thing is that we exemplify a 100-per cent vote.”

Peter Johnson, a Dixville Notch resident, said that the the early bird electoral exercise “is fun.” A former naval aviator, Mr Johnson said he was voting for Mr McCain, but added, “I think both candidates are excellent people.”

Ed Butler, a Democratic state representative who runs the Notchland Inn in Hart’s Location, said, “Being this small and being able to be first just makes it that much more special.”

Although scores of states - and millions of citizens - have voted early, the two villages are the first to officially announce the results on election day. New Hampshire law requires polls to open by 11 am, but that does not stop towns from opening earlier. It also allows towns to close their polls once all registered and eligible voters have cast ballots.

Hart’s Location started opening its polls early in 1948, the year Harry S. Truman beat Thomas Dewey, to accommodate railroad workers who had to get to work early. But it got out of the early voting business in 1964 after some residents grew weary of all the publicity, but brought it back in 1996.

Dixville Notch, nestled in a mountain pass only 20 miles south of the Canadian border, followed suit in 1960, the year that John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon. Nixon, the Republican, swept all nine votes cast in Dixville that year.

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