"For decades, New Hampshire has generated brisk and gratifying drama with its first-in-the-nation presidential primary. The Granite State momentously destroyed a presidency in 1968, when the Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy ran against President Lyndon Johnson on an antiwar platform. Johnson had been so confident of his renomination that he had not initially deigned to enter the New Hampshire race, while other leading Democratic politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy Sr., remained aloof, fearful of challenging the president despite his mounting unpopularity during the Vietnam War. Thus, McCarthy was the only major Democrat on the ballot. When the fervor behind his campaign revealed the senator’s surging support, Johnson hurriedly mobilized a write-in effort, which duly yielded him a 50 percent share against McCarthy’s 42—a poor enough showing for a sitting president to embolden Kennedy to enter the race four days later, and for Johnson to announce his retirement from the race two weeks after that.

For Joe Biden, the New Hampshire primary’s history is entirely hateful. In 2020, the contest came close to terminating his hopes for the White House. Running out of money, his staff deflated by the results in Iowa, his public image scarred with mishaps (including an unpleasant jibe in which he called a questioner a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier”), he finished fifth, with just 8.4 percent of the vote. Fleeing the state before the polls closed, he moved to the more congenial territory of South Carolina, where black voters, generally his most dependable constituency, set him on the path to the White House.

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