Dixville Notch is an
unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...
in
Dixville township,
Coos County,
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...
, United States. The population of the township, all of whom live in Dixville Notch, was 4 as of the 2020 census.
The village is known for being one of the first places to declare its results during
United States presidential election
The election of the president and the vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty U.S. states or in Washington, D.C., cast ballots not dir ...
s and the
New Hampshire presidential primary
The New Hampshire presidential primary is the first in a series of nationwide party primary elections and the second party contest (the first being the Iowa caucuses) held in the United States every four years as part of the process of choos ...
. It is located in the northern part of the state, approximately south of the Canadian province of
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
. The village is situated at about above sea level at the base of mountains.
The village shares its name with
Dixville Notch Dixville may refer to:
*Dixville, New Hampshire
Dixville is a township in Coös County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 4 as of the 2020 census, down from 12 at the 2010 census. In New Hampshire, locations, grants, townships ( ...
, a mountain pass that lies about southeast of and uphill from the town itself, located between Dixville Peak and Sanguinary Mountain, separating the
Connecticut River's
watershed from that of the
Androscoggin River
The Androscoggin River ( Abenaki: ''Aləssíkαntekʷ'') is a river in the U.S. states of Maine and New Hampshire, in northern New England. It is U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, ...
. The village is the location of
The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel
The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel is a grand hotel and ski resort located in Dixville Notch in New Hampshire, United States. The resort grounds cover and feature of cross-country ski trails, an alpine ski area with 16 trails, five glade areas and ...
, one of a handful of surviving New Hampshire grand hotels, situated on a plot, accommodating golfing in the summer and skiing in the winter.
Dixville Notch is part of the
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
, NH–VT
Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Midnight voting tradition
Dixville Notch is best known in connection with its longstanding midnight vote in the U.S. presidential election, including during the
New Hampshire primary (the first primary election in the U.S. presidential nomination process). In a tradition that started in the
1960 election, all the eligible voters in Dixville Notch gather at midnight in the ballroom of The Balsams. The voters cast their ballots and the polls are officially closed when all of the registered voters have voted – sometimes merely one minute later. The results of the Dixville Notch vote in both the New Hampshire primary and the general election are traditionally broadcast around the country immediately afterwards.
A similar tradition in the town of
Hart's Location in adjacent
Carroll County began in 1948; theirs was discontinued in the 1960s in light of the abundance of media attention, and revived only in 1996. Informal competition for the distinction of the first town to report election results has been ongoing for several election cycles, among a number of small communities, including:
* Coos County:
** Dixville Notch
**
Millsfield (the township to the south of Dixville township)
* Carroll County (the next to the southeast):
** Hart's Location
*
Grafton County (the next to the southwest of Coos):
**
Ellsworth
**
Waterville Valley
Press accounts occasionally falsely state that Dixville Notch "votes first" in U.S. presidential elections. However, the village does hold a number of voting records within the United States:
* Longest continuous record of midnight voting
* Highest count of midnight presidential primaries (13 as of 2008, vs. 5 to 9 for Hart's Location)
* At least one of the first handful of lawful votes (nationwide) in each presidential campaign's binding primaries
* Often first to report its returns
Dixville Notch was granted the authority to conduct its own elections in 1960 and chose to open its polls at midnight. In 1964, the primary election returns were the first in New Hampshire to be reported by
UPI
United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th c ...
and the
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
. Since then, Dixville Notch has gained international media attention as the first community to vote in the presidential primary season (since New Hampshire's primary is required by state law to be scheduled earlier than any competitor). Dixville Notch also votes at midnight in the general presidential election in November, although this usually attracts less press attention than primary voting.
Although most New Hampshire polling stations open around sunrise and close in the early evening, Dixville Notch takes advantage of a state law that allows a precinct to close if all registered voters in that precinct have cast ballots. Consequently, all registered voters in Dixville Notch gather and are counted before the balloting takes place. The "Ballot Room" of the Balsams Hotel resort served as the polling place until a recent fire; this room featured separate voting booths for each citizen.
The tradition was first organized by prominent Dixville Notch resident
Neil Tillotson (1898 – October 17, 2001), who was traditionally the first voter; he would reportedly hold his ballot over the ballot box while watching his wristwatch. At the moment of midnight, Tillotson would drop the ballot into the ballot box and the rest of the town's residents would follow suit. Since Tillotson's death from pneumonia in 2001 at the age of 102, the first voter has been chosen by random ballot beforehand.
In the presidential election of November 2, 2004, the village had 26 registered voters, roughly half of whom were registered as Republican; the other half were registered "undeclared" or unaffiliated with a party. New Hampshire law, however, allows a voter to declare or change a party affiliation upon arriving at the polling place, meaning that a number of the town's independent voters vote in the Democratic party primary.
The votes are counted immediately after all are received; the Dixville Notch results of the primary (and now the Hart's Location ones as well) often lead morning news programs on election day. During every election year between 1968 and 2012, the candidate with the
plurality of Dixville Notch's voters has been the eventual Republican nominee for president. On the Democratic side, however, the village's election results have less often predicted the nominee. In 2000, for example,
Bill Bradley won the most votes among Dixville Notch's Democratic primary voters, although
Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic no ...
was the party's eventual nominee.
In 1992, the
Libertarian Party
Active parties by country
Defunct parties by country
Organizations associated with Libertarian parties
See also
* Liberal parties by country
* List of libertarian organizations
* Lists of political parties
Lists of political part ...
unsuccessfully attempted to capitalize upon
Andre Marrou
Andre Verne Marrou (; born December 4, 1938) is an American politician who was the third Libertarian elected to a state legislature with his election to the Alaska House of Representatives in 1984. He later served as the Libertarian Party's vic ...
's unexpectedly strong showing in Dixville Notch in the general election. In 2004,
Democratic candidate
Wesley Clark
Wesley Kanne Clark (born December 23, 1944) is a retired United States Army officer. He graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1966 at West Point and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he obtained a degree ...
was the only contender to personally visit Dixville Notch; he was on hand when the votes were cast and counted, and he received the majority of Democratic votes cast. (Clark placed third and received only 13 percent of votes statewide.)
The community's voting tradition received a nod in the 2002 third-season episode of US television program ''
The West Wing
''The West Wing'' is an American serial political drama television series created by Aaron Sorkin that was originally broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1999, to May 14, 2006. The series is set primarily in the West Wing of the White Hous ...
'', in an episode entitled "
Hartsfield's Landing", named after a town clearly modeled on either Dixville Notch, or its companion, Hart's Location.
In 2008, Senator
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
became the first Democrat to win the community's vote in a presidential election since 1968, by a margin of 15 to 6.
In 2012, the Dixville Notch result delivered a tie for the first time in its history, with Barack Obama and
Mitt Romney receiving five votes each.
In 2016, Democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
won the community's vote, beating Republican candidate
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
, 4 to 2, with Libertarian candidate
Gary Johnson
Gary Earl Johnson (born January 1, 1953) is an American businessman, author, and politician. He served as the 29th governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003 as a member of the Republican Party. He was the Libertarian Party nominee for Presid ...
receiving one vote, and Mitt Romney receiving a single write-in vote. Eight people voted in total.
In 2019, the community was at risk of losing its ability to conduct its own election and having to combine with another municipality for voting, as its population had been reduced to four people, one too few to hold all the positions needed to conduct an election in New Hampshire. However, Dixville Notch received a reprieve before the primary when a fifth person (
Les Otten
Leslie B. "Les" Otten (born 1949) is the former CEO of the American Skiing Company. Since resigning as its chief executive officer in 2001, Otten has been involved in numerous other businesses and industries, including the Major League Baseball ...
, developer of
The Balsams) agreed to move there in time for the election.
When the community's five residents convened for the 2020 primary, New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg received three votes as a write-in candidate. The other two votes went to Democrats
Pete Buttigieg and
Bernie Sanders.
In 2020, former Vice President
Joe Biden won over incumbent Republican
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
, winning the votes of all five of the community's voting residents.
Federal election results
The eventual nationwide winners for each contest are indicated in bold.
In popular culture
The community's voting tradition received a nod in the 2002 third-season episode of US television program ''
The West Wing
''The West Wing'' is an American serial political drama television series created by Aaron Sorkin that was originally broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1999, to May 14, 2006. The series is set primarily in the West Wing of the White Hous ...
'', in an episode entitled "
Hartsfield's Landing", named after a town modeled on either Dixville Notch, or its companion,
Hart's Location.
See also
*
Hart's Location, New Hampshire
Hart's Location is a town in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. Since 1948, the town has been one of the first places to declare its results for the New Hampshire presidential primary and U.S. presidential elections.
The population wa ...
*
List of mountain passes in New Hampshire This is a list of mountain passes — generally called notches — in New Hampshire in the United States.
White Mountains
Northern New Hampshire
Southern New Hampshire
References
{{Lists of mountain passes by U.S. state
...
*
New Hampshire Historical Marker No. 171: Dixville Notch – "First in the Nation"
References
{{authority control
Berlin, New Hampshire micropolitan area
New Hampshire presidential primaries
Unincorporated communities in Coös County, New Hampshire
Unincorporated communities in New Hampshire