Someone explain New Hampshire's politics to me.

[Drunken Irishman]

4. NH is definitely a swing state - but it used to be reliably GOP.

Like, extremely reliable.

From 1856 to 1992, it voted Republican in all but six elections. That's 28 times it voted for the Republican candidate.

Bill Clinton was the first Democrat to win the state since LBJ in '64.

It has gone Democratic every election since 1992, sans one, Bush's victory in 2000.

It's a lot like Maine in the sense it's very rural. Not like Vermont, though, which was also solidly GOP for a long, long time and also very rural but more associated with environmentalists.

Maine is more solidly Democratic at the national level, but they haven't elected a Democrat to the Senate since George Mitchell retired in 1995.