As I noted last night, Hillary Clinton’s suprising win in the New Hampshire primary may be linked to Mitt Romney’s surprisingly weak (by historical standards) showing in the state’s most populous region, which comprises the cities and bedroom communities in a triangle between Manchester, Nashua, and the coast. The maps below show which candidate has won the most votes in each city and town, regardless of party affiliation, in the last five elections when both parties had contested primaries. In each case, dark blue is used for the more liberal or reformist Democratic candidate (Barack Obama this year), with light blue for the more centrist or establishment Democrat (Clinton this year), light red for the more centrist Republican (John McCain this year), and dark red for the more conservative Republican (Romney this year).

The most striking change in 2008 is that the top two vote-getters were Democrats, even though the top vote-getter was a Republican from 1980 through 2000. Now most of the state is blue, and even though Obama lost, he outpolled McCain in dozens of smaller communities where the Republican had come out on top in 2000. More important, in terms of the number of votes, Clinton outpolled everyone else on the ballot in larger southeastern communities that had been solidly for Ronald Reagan in 1980. During the 1970s and 1980s, southern New Hampshire was almost a bit of the American West in New England, with strong libertarian and anti-tax policies. Now it resembles Long Island and Westchester County in New York: more fiscally conservative and socially cautious than the nearby big city (in this case, Boston) but increasingly supportive of Democratic candidates. That was bad news for Romney, who needed to win big in former Reagan strongholds like the town of Derry — where he beat McCain by a margin of 2,093 to 1,760 but fell short of Clinton’s 2,387. (For town-by-town results, go to Boston.com.)