Our previous post looked at the last competitive New Hampshire primary on the Democratic side. Below is a depiction of candidates’ strongholds in the last competitive Republican primary: 1996, when Pat Buchanan narrowly defeated Bob Dole. (Votes for other candidates, including Lamar Alexander, are not counted here.) What happened to 2000? Well, McCain’s blowout victory over George W. Bush isn’t very interesting visually; he carried all of New Hampshire’s counties and an overwhelming share of individual cities and towns. Looking at the Buchanan v. Dole battle of 1996 does raise an interesting question: Which one is the equivalent to Mitt Romney and which one is closer to John McCain this year? Is McCain an insurgent candidate like Buchanan or the more moderate choice like Dole? Is Romney an uber-conservative like Buchanan or a party establishment favorite like Dole?

In contrast to the Democratic electorate, Republican primary voters are more concentrated in the southern region close to the Massachusetts border. (New Hampshire’s recent move toward the Democrats has been more pronounced in the north and west than in the band of communities with a lot of former Bay Staters.) In 1996, Buchanan was strongest in the corridor of towns between two former mill cities: Manchester to the north and Lawrence, Massachusetts, to the south. He got his biggest margin in Manchester, followed by the neighboring community of Goffstown and, closer to Massachusetts, the town of Derry. Dole was strongest on the seacoast in certain towns to the north and west of the Manchester-to-Lawrence zone. His biggest margins were in Concord, Nashua, and Dover.

So which areas are the candidates focusing on this year? A look at last-weekend campaign schedules suggests that neither Romney nor McCain are ceding any major voter troves. Both have appearances in Manchester as well as historically more moderate Nashua. But Romney does seem to be sticking closer to the south, and he is the only Republican candidate with a scheduled stop in the Buchanan stronghold of Derry. Meanhwhile McCain and Mike Huckabee are the only Republicans heading north to Concord, though it’s not clear whether that’s because the city was the most hostile to Buchanan’s far-right (and rather anti-immigrant) campaign or because it’s simply at a comfortable distance from Massachusetts.