Early-Voting Town Has Predicted GOP Nominees Since 1968

One of two things is going to happen at the Republican National Convention this summer: Dixville Notch's long streak of predicting GOP nominees is going to end, or John Kasich will prevail. The tiny New Hampshire town is one of three that voted at midnight, and it has picked the eventual GOP nominee every year since 1968, though there was a tie in 1980 between George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan, and one between Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman in 2012, reports NPR. This year, Kasich got three votes to Donald Trump's two in Dixville Notch, though it was a three-way Kasich/Trump/Ted Cruz tie across the three towns, with scattered votes for other GOP candidates, including ex-candidate Rand Paul.

Dixville Notch has, however, turned out to be a poor indicator of how the rest of the state will vote, and its record in predicting Democratic nominees has been mixed, with Wesley Clark getting the most votes in 2004. Candidates no longer consider the village in the state's far north a vital stop, but the early-voting tradition continues to attract the media every year, even though the stately Balsams Resort where voting takes place has been closed for years awaiting renovation, the New York Times reports. "I never once lost the feeling that when the stroke of midnight was about to come, that this little town of 20-some-odd people was going to start the democratic process of electing the most powerful person in the world," says former resident and Balsams partner Steve Barba. (More New Hampshire stories.)