In some parts of New England—much of Massachusetts, notably—voters will have few close state and local races keeping them up late watching election returns on Tuesday night.
Elsewhere in the region, however, some have ballots full of high-stakes, close-as-can-be races.
No voters in the country, in fact, have more top-to-bottom close calls this year than New Hampshire. It is considered one of the few true toss-up states in the presidential contest. Even with just four electoral votes at stake, New Hampshire has emerged as a crucial battleground.
How crucial? On the eve of the election, Donald Trump plans to hold his final rally in Manchester Monday night, while President Barack Obama will do the same not far away in Durham. Hillary Clinton rallied in Manchester the night before.
Carol Shea Porter’s re-re-re-match with current (and former) incumbent Rep. Frank Guinta is another close race in the Granite State. Control of both state legislative chambers are at stake as well.
But it’s the two statewide races there—nail-biter races for U.S. Senate and governor—that merit spots on my list of top five things to watch in New England on election day.
The other three items on my top five list are not elections for public office, but decisions on new laws, relating to drugs, voting, and public ethics. I’ll start, however, with the bank-busting blowout that could decide control of the U.S. Senate.
An astonishing $120 million has been spent on this race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Most of that came from outside groups—including $80 million spent on negative advertising.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte, the Republican incumbent, has been targeted since she won the Senate seat in 2010. When Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan decided to challenge her, it set up a premier contest. With predictions that control of the Senate could easily hinge on one seat in either direction, that ratcheted it up to arguably the closest-watched election in the country other than the presidential race.
Ayotte has struggled to distance herself from Trump without alienating his voters. Although that awkward dance has earned her mockery in the national media, it has also kept her even or slightly ahead in the polls.
Hassan has been helped by literally hundreds of Democratic activists from Massachusetts—Boston Mayor Marty Walsh brought a small army to knock doors in Manchester Saturday.
Maine’s Question 1 and Massachusetts’ Question 4 would decriminalize the possession and use of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use. Oregon, Washington, and Colorado have already done so, and three other states—Arizona, California, and Nevada—will also vote on measures Tuesday.
In other words, the western U.S. is tipping pro-pot; Tuesday we’ll learn whether a second region, New England, joins in.
Polls have shown the ballot questions leading in both states, but that’s no guarantee. Voters tend to decide late on ballot questions, especially as they become aware of details that raise red flags.
In Maine, state Attorney General Janet Mills threw a curve ball into the race when she expressed concerns about the lack of regulatory details in the ballot question. Mills, a Democrat, raised the possibility that minors would not be barred from possessing and using marijuana. She followed up that bombshell with other concerns.
Supporters of the bill refute those claims—and have spent far more than opponents in getting their message out.
Supporters have outspent opponents in Massachusetts as well. But the “no” side brought out a mighty weapon in early October: the Catholic Church. The disapproval of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts was critical four years ago in defeating an assisted-suicide ballot question that had also been leading in the polls.
Maine could become the first state in the nation to adopt ranked-choice, or instant-runoff voting.
It’s an idea that’s long grabbed the fascination of college activists and hipsters—I saw a Harvard student ask John Edwards about it early in his 2004 presidential campaign—and, some think, could spread once one state leads the way.
Maine’s Question 5, which has led in several polls, would apply ranked-choice voting to elections for U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, governor, state Senate, and state House of Representatives.
Ranked-choice voting would replace the usual “first-past-the-pole” system, in which the candidate with the highest vote total wins, even if that is far short of 50 percent support.
Ranked-choice proponents argue that this can result in widely-disliked candidates winning, when votes are split among several candidates. First-past-the-pole also, in their view, discourages voting on third-party candidates.
This is not purely hypothetical to Maine voters. Gov. Paul LePage has been elected twice, both times with less than 50 percent of the vote.
A ranked-choice system allows voters to literally rank the candidates on the ballot. All the first choices are tallied; if no candidate reaches 50 percent, the lowest vote receiver is eliminated, with those votes redistributed to the second choice on each ballot. That process continues until one candidate tops 50 percent.
Not everybody likes the idea of shaking up a system that’s been the norm for American democracy since its beginnings. There are also questions about constitutionality.
Still, the Ballotpedia web site, which tracks elections all over the country, puts Maine’s Question 5 in its “Top 10 State-Level Races” of 2016.
The massive attention—and blitz of money—on the presidential and U.S. Senate races have overshadowed one of the best gubernatorial contests in the country.
Democrat Colin Van Ostern and Republican Chris Sununu, currently colleagues on the New Hampshire Executive Council, won crowded primaries and now face each other to succeed Hassan.
A reliably Republican-held office for most of the previous 150 years, New Hampshire’s top post has been won by a Democrat in nine of the last 10 biannual elections.
But recent polls show Sununu—the latest political star in a family that has already given the state one governor and one U.S. senator—ahead of Van Ostern by around 4 percentage points.
Meanwhile, next door in Vermont, Republican Phil Scott appears to hold a small lead over Democrat Sue Minter, in a race that opened up when Democrat Peter Shumlin chose to not run for re-election.
If those leads hold, the four most northeastern states in the country will all have Republican governors—belying the notion of pure-blue New England.
Rhode Island has a notorious history of political scandals, and not just in the far past. If you’re looking for Gordon Fox, speaker of the House as recently as 2014, you’ll need to visit him Canaan U.S. Penitentiary.
It hasn’t helped, at least in the public eye, that the state’s Ethics Commission has no authority over the state legislature, thanks to a 2009 court ruling.
With Question 2, a proposed constitutional amendment, Rhode Islanders get the chance to effectively reverse that court decision. And polls suggest a strong appetite for doing so.
However, there are concerns that the wording is too broad. The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island opposes Question 2, citing concerns about restriction on legislators’ freedom of speech.
