Dixville Notch, N.H., Has Its Say: All 6 Votes for Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley took all six votes in Dixville Notch, but it could be a different story in the rest of the state, as Donald J. Trump has a comfortable lead in the polls.

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Six residents of Dixville Notch, N.H., cast the first ballots of the New Hampshire primary shortly after midnight on Tuesday morning.Credit

The first votes in the New Hampshire primary have been cast in the township of Dixville Notch.

All six of them.

Nikki Haley took 100 percent of the vote, with 100 percent turnout. The polls — or poll, in this case — opened just after the clock struck midnight, as they have here for 64 years, to great fanfare. And 10 minutes later, the voting was done.

The event is as much a press spectacle as it is a serious exercise in democracy: There were more than 10 journalists for every voter, including representatives from major TV networks, newspapers, wire services and foreign press from over a dozen countries.

Ms. Haley’s unanimous victory came as something of a surprise to a first-time Dixville Notch voter, Valerie Maxwell, 54, who works for the resort where the voting was held.

“I wasn’t sure she would do it but I’m so excited,” Ms. Maxwell said. “We did not tell each other who we were voting for, so I wasn’t sure. But I’m really excited she did it.”

The township, just 20 miles from the Canadian border, was once heralded as a near-magic bellwether: The winner of its Republican primary went on to win the party’s nomination in every election cycle from 1968 to 2012. Whatever predictive powers it may have possessed were exposed by Donald J. Trump, who lost in Dixville Notch, 2 votes to 3, in 2016 to former Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio.

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