When Will We Know Who Won New Hampshire?
As with any election night, one common question is when viewers can expect the race to be called. I took a look at past New Hampshire primaries to see what time we could expect things to become clear enough for the media to call the Democratic primary winner tonight.
Most New Hampshire polling locations end voting at 7 p.m. Eastern, but a fair number of towns or cities don’t close their precincts until 8 p.m., so the earliest time to expect a call is just a little after that time. (News organizations won’t project a winner while people are still voting.) Many recent New Hampshire primaries have been called just after 8 p.m. because the results have been pretty open and shut.
That’s what happened four years ago, when both the Democratic and Republican primaries were called within 15 minutes of the polls closing. Trump and Sanders both went on to win by about 20 percent points in their respective contests. But 2016 was no fluke; here’s what time we’ve gotten calls in contested primaries since 2004.
There’ve been few late nights in recent N.H. primaries
Timing of winner declarations in contested New Hampshire presidential primaries, 2004 to 2016
| Year | Party | Primary Winner | Final margin (in percentage pts.) | Winner called by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | D | John Kerry | 12.1 | 8:30 p.m. ET |
| 2008 | D | Hillary Clinton | 2.6 | 10:30 p.m. ET |
| 2008 | R | John McCain | 5.4 | 8:15 p.m. ET |
| 2012 | R | Mitt Romney | 16.4 | 8:15 p.m. ET |
| 2016 | D | Bernie Sanders | 22.4 | 8:15 p.m. ET |
| 2016 | R | Donald Trump | 19.5 | 8:15 p.m. ET |
The 2012 GOP primary wasn’t close either, so Mitt Romney got a quick call right after 8 p.m. In 2008, the final result on the GOP side looked reasonably close — John McCain beat Romney by a little more than 5 percentage points — but McCain had a clear lead from the outset and got a call just a few minutes after polls closed. The other race that night provided the only drama in recent years, as it took until about 10:30 p.m. for networks to declare Hillary Clinton the winner over Barack Obama in the Democratic primary — an unexpected result considering Obama had led the polls beforehand.
So, when might we know the winner tonight? If it’s not that close, it could be right after polls close. But if the race is pretty close — and the polls suggest it will be — expect it to last a while longer. Of course, I might be tempting fate here — I did this same analysis for Iowa, too, and we didn’t get any results until the following afternoon. But we’re probably safer — crossing my fingers — with a primary run by the state, rather than the state party, this time around.