At midnight, the six residents of a tiny township in New Hampshire cast their ballots - with officials touting their status as the “first in the nation” to do so in person on Election Day.
The vote was a tie, reflecting the divisions across the country in what is expected to be one of the tightest, tensest and most historically consequential presidential campaigns in recent memory.
Three of the six residents of Dixville Notch in New Hampshire voted for Vice President Kamala Harris and the remaining three voted for former president Donald Trump, officials there announced, later inscribing the result on a handwritten sign.
“Following the national trend!” said Tom Tillotson, the town moderator, which is an elected position charged with regulating town business, referencing Harris and Trump being neck-and-neck in the polls in a charged political environment.
Four of the registered voters in the town are Republicans and the other two are independents.
The tiny forest town of Dixville Notch, located near the Canadian border, has kept its midnight voting tradition since 1960 and is usually the first in the country to report election results.
Watching the results in Dixville Notch is a hobby for some political observers, although there’s no correlation between the outcome there and the final tally of the presidential race.
President Joe Biden swept the hamlet in 2020 - and went on to win the U.S. election. Getting a unanimous vote in Dixville Notch was a first since 1960, when all nine of the community’s voters chose Republican Richard M. Nixon over Democrat John F. Kennedy.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton earned four votes in Dixville Notch, while two residents voted for Trump and one selected Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. Clinton went on to lose to Trump in the U.S. election.
The hamlet was once a destination for presidential candidates, but the visits have slowed to a trickle since the Balsams Resort - where residents cast their vote at midnight - closed in 2011 and the local population declined with it. The property’s new owners are now planning to redevelop it, according to CNN.
This year, residents of Dixville Notch also cast their vote in the competitive New Hampshire governor’s race: Five voted for Republican Kelly Ayotte and one for Democrat Joyce Craig, the former mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire.
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Marisa Iati and Justine McDaniel contributed to this report.
