It's easy to imagine, in the thick of an election season, that this is the big one, that this one is different than the rest.
In terms of actual turnout, it's often not the case. The harsh light of election data often shows seemingly-heated elections to be relatively sleepy affairs.
Not Tuesday's New Hampshire presidential primary.
A review by WGBH News of presidential primary data collected by the New Hampshire Secretary of State shows this year's Granite State primary to have been remarkable not only in drawing turnout, but in drawing some of the most divided turnout in recent history for the state.
Preliminary data published by the N.H. Secretary of State showed voter turnout in numbers unprecedented in the last decade; and it also showed that voters were driven to casts their ballots with almost equal determination within both the Democratic Party and the GOP.
Democratic voters showed up in numbers just shy of the turnout seen in 2008 — only a few weeks after the contest between then-Senator Hillary Clinton and now-President Barack Obama in the heated Iowa Caucuses, (Obama lost the New Hampshire primary, though by a margin so small the outcome was initially contested), with just over 60% of the party's electorate choosing Vermont senator Bernie Sanders over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
New Hampshire Republicans, meanwhile, turned out in the highest numbers in ten years, with Donald Trump winning more than twenty percent of the vote over his next-closest rival in this primary, Ohio Governor John Kasich.
Hankering for more data? See our maps of contributions to Democratic campaigns in New England, and stay tuned for updates for GOP candidates and more.
