Should New Hampshire Have The First Primary In The Nation?

Voting Booths with no people — Three college students spent their summers at home building a website, Impact Change USA, to educate younger citizens about upcoming elections, voting registration, and politicians.

Arjun Singh is a producer for Boston Public Radio. A California native, Arjun moved to Boston to study international relations at Boston University. Prior to working at WGBH, Arjun worked at a tech company and for a political campaign.

February 04, 2020

Updated August 07, 2023

After a glitch in an app used during the Iowa caucuses created concerns in the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) that their results had inconsistencies it chose to delay the release of the results of the caucuses just over a week before the New Hampshire Primary.

New Hampshire employs a primary system, and rather than caucuses voters make their decisions in a private ballot box that is then tallied after polls close. Yet it also has been dogged by criticism from candidates and pundits due to its relative lack of diversity. More than 90 percent of the state's residents are white, compared to 60 percent for the rest of the nation.

During an interview with Boston Public Radio on Tuesday, Arnie Arnesen, a New Hampshire based political analyst and the host of the show "The Attitude," said that she agreed with the critique that New Hampshire is not a fair representation for a majority of the nation.

“I get [the criticisms], but there is a virtue, and the virtue of being a small state is that you don’t have to be a Mike Bloomberg or a Tom Steyer or someone who has a history like a Hillary Clinton or even a Joe Biden...and there is an advantage to that because then the little people get to decide.”