New Hampshire presented as one of the last bastions of independent political thought

More than one of the late-night talk hosts had their fun with it during the week: that moment in the electoral year where millions of Americans peer quizzically at a map of New England states and ask themselves: okay, so is that one New Hampshire or Vermont?

It’s definitely of its place, New England: tucked up in the top corner of the massive continent, undeniably the frozen north at this time of year and so easy for the mainland to forget but for its tradition for turning out generations of ”wicked smaht” graduates through its prestige universities, for the splendour of its autumn foliage, for its trinity of imperious national sports clubs – the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots – for its small army of dead poets and founding fathers, for its ancient graveyards and for its generally self-assured air at having been around for longer than most of the United States. For its hauteur, in short.

Although the 2024 election year is only a few weeks old positions in American politics has never been so entrenched, with Democratic and Republican voters regarding the other side’s candidate and policies with mutual fear and loathing. New Hampshire, then, in this week’s primary, was presented as one of the last bastions of independent political thought.

Few films of the modern era did as much for the profile of New England self-containment as Good Will Hunting, the 1997 bromance in which Matt Damon is plucked from a blue-collar life of scrapes and beers to realise his potential as a mathematics whiz who leaves the profs at a fictive MIT doe-eyed in adoration. Among the celebrated scenes is a moment in which Damon’s character Will and his best friend, Chuckie Sullivan, are taking a break from working construction – leaning on the bonnet of their Ford pickup and chugging beers, as you do – when Will rejects Sullivan’s idea that he will ever want to leave their tightly-formed locale.

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“What do I want a way out a here for? I’m gonna f***in’ live here the rest of my life – you know, be neighbours, have little kids, take ‘em to Little League together up Foley Field.”

It’s a fair point: he might have added that if this corner of the country was good enough for John Hancock and Samuel Adams it was good enough for him. And it was a moment that came to mind driving across New Hampshire over the past few days because it doesn’t take long to get a feel for the place, with its nicely-spread series of towns like Nashua and Manchester that are big and urban but retain a secure sense of intense local and civic pride. And off those arteries, the endless series of smaller, gorgeous towns where a body could easily live off-grid, such as Exeter or Wolfeboro – home to America’s first summer resort! – or Londonderry and nearby Derry, where Robert Frost laid fires in his dreamy farmhouse – now a public museum – for a decade and banged out some of the most-oft quoted verse of the 20th century.

It’s there in the surviving buildings redolent of the industrial growth of Manchester and in the inherent sense of a place not having sprung up suddenly but evolved slowly, over centuries, as one of the US’s original states. Easy for local kids to do as Will Hunting suggests: forget the wider world and build a den amidst all that rich history and tradition.

It was striking to note how many interested voters from Massachusetts made the short drive up to see and listen to the Republican candidates for themselves even though they had no vote last Tuesday. A surface history of New Hampshire voting points to a fascinatingly even century-long tug o’war between the Republican and Democratic sensibility.

New Hampshire was steadfastly Republican from 1948-1988 with the lone exception of Lyndon Johnson’s win there in 1964: four years earlier New Hampshire had even declined to award the state to its neighbouring rising star despite the entire Kennedy clan arriving in droves to lay on the big-smile charm for a full year in advance. Since 2000 New Hampshire has been a Democratic stronghold; on the day Donald Trump came to Manchester last week a small, vocal gathering of Democrat supporters took to the streets to campaign.

And even if the vast majority of New Hampshire Republicans voted for Trump on Tuesday night there were enough moderates and independents scattered around to suggest the state’s voters know their own mind. On the surface the result substantiated Trump’s claim that this Republican race is over. But the breakdown of New Hampshire voters also illuminates the internal struggle and wavering mindset an unaccountable number of Americans are experiencing in an election of elemental choices.

It’s a moment that New Hampshire and the region takes seriously and with good reason. Because once the primaries end, the candidates exit and leave town and New England, in Chuckie Sullivan’s ideal way, with, “no goodbye, no see ya later, no nothin”.