The Battleground

In the Post, EJ Dionne elaborates on how New Hampshire could be one of the most contentious battlegrounds this Fall. An excerpt:

The race for electoral votes could be so close in November that small states may well pick the next president. Among those diminutive states, New Hampshire is by far the most interesting. Consider that in 2000, George W. Bush beat Al Gore here by 7,211 votes (Ralph Nader got just over 22,000). If New Hampshire's four electoral votes had gone the other way, Gore would have won, and Florida would not have mattered.

New Hampshire is also one of only three states that changed sides between 2000 and 2004, and the only one that switched to the Democrats. John Kerry carried it by 9,274 votes out of almost 680,000 cast. Because the state holds the nation's first primary, voters here have been studying the candidates for well over a year. New Hampshire probably has the highest percentage of citizens who have actually met John McCain and Barack Obama. Maddeningly, the polls suggest that the vote here this year could be as close as it was in the past two elections. "You're going to see house-to-house combat for these votes," said Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, a Democrat.