I stayed up late last night to report the first-in-the-nation poll results on our special Election Day edition of The Mark Steyn Show. New Hampshire has a law that permits any town with fewer than a hundred voters to hold the vote at midnight as long as every voter votes. So last night two communities availed themselves of that opportunity.
The famous one is Dixville Notch. So its five-zip vote for Biden was eagerly reported by the national media - as the first total blowout for any candidate since Nixon in 1960. Great start for Joe!
The other town, as I mentioned on the show, is Millsfield. Trump over Biden 16 to 5. Nobody reported that.
These two early-voting communities are, in fact, the story of this weird election.
Dixville Notch is the perfect place for the Biden campaign's first 100 per cent victory. It's a Potemkin town for a Potemkin campaign. It's not a town; it's a business masquerading as a town. The business is the Balsams, a nineteenth-century grand hotel. Neil Tillotson, the owner of the joint, started the midnight vote as a gimmick, and it was kind of cute to see him as the very first voter in the nation every four years. But he died, at the age of 102, almost a decade ago - and the hotel has been shuttered since then, pending a so-called "redevelopment" and "reopening".
So it's a business masquerading as a town - and the business has been dead for ten years. So it's a perfect emblem for Joe Biden, who's a dead husk masquerading as a guy who's running for president.
Neil Tillotson was a lifelong resident of the far north of Northern New England - the old Indian Stream republic - who first got to know the Balsams while visiting his grandparents' home in Dixville. He was, technically, born in Canaan, Vermont, which is the only town in the Green Mountain State to share a land border with New Hampshire, because when you're that far north the Connecticut River wanders off the frontier to head for the Connecticut Lakes. The new head honcho at the Balsams is a ski-resort developer born in New Jersey. It is unclear whether the hotel will ever reopen.
But the business keeps a small skeleton staff - too small, indeed, to hold an election. You need five persons to fill the requisite poll-station offices, and since 2016 the "town"'s population had declined from eight to four. So Governor Chris Sununu told 'em they won't be able to do the midnight-vote thing. The developer, Les Otten, then "moved" his "residence" to Dixville Notch to be the necessary fifth man. He subsequently announced that, even though he was Republican, he'd be voting for Biden. Perfect: a NeverTrumper for an hotel that's NeverOpen.
There are still Tillotsons in the neighborhood. I noticed Neil's son Tom voting last night. His dad more or less invented modern latex gloves such as the finger-hugging ones with which your doctor examines you. Neil Tillotson founded the Tillotson Rubber Company to manufacture such products, and opened a plant right on the grounds of his Dixville hotel.
Latex gloves is a crackerjack business to be in in the age of pandemic. And I noticed just now that, as it happens, we have a box right here in the house, presumably purchased to ward off the Covid and chosen because it's a "local" brand. Here's what it says on the Tillotson glove box:
Made in China
That's the only way in which Dixville Notch is a "typical" American small town: The plant moved to China. Just like the Biden Crime Syndicate's business interests.
Dixville Notch is the perfect embodiment of this year's Biden campaign: It's a corpse. Like a Biden car "rally", it's a fake maintained entirely by media malarkey.
By contrast, there is Millsfield ten miles down the road. Despite the proximity, no media make a quadrennial pilgrimage to report their results: They're simply announced on the town website. Millsfield is not quite as remote as Dixville Notch, although it boasts the only access road to Erving's Location (population: 1). But, unlike Dixville, Millsfield has eight real households. It is not in any sense typical of current American demography (population by race: 100 per cent white), but the twenty-one registered voters are more or less authentic residents of an authentic place.
In 2016 16 of the 21 voted for Trump and 5 voted for either Hillary or Bernie. Four years later, the sixteen original Trump voters stuck with Trump, and the five Dems voted for Biden.
That struck me as a rather interesting result, even though no one in the national media has mentioned it. We are told that there has been slippage from Trump's 2016 base by voters disenchanted with his policies or offended by his Tweets. Yet not one of the town's previous Trump supporters has abandoned him.
I know they're not exactly "suburban housewives" unless the urbs they're sub- of is Errol, which has a municipal airport with a single grass runway. But, if the media narrative was even remotely true, you'd think at least one or two would have fallen away.
Bottom line: Of the only two final results we have thus far, the fake burg voted Biden and the real one voted Trump. The running tally to date:
Trump 16
Biden 10
Go out and vote, and make that score national.
~We opened The Mark Steyn Club over three years ago, and I'm thrilled by all those SteynOnline supporters across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. My only regret is that we didn't launch it eighteen years ago, but better late than never. You can find more information about the Club here - and, if you've a pal who might be partial to this sort of thing, don't forget our special Gift Membership.
Oh, and if you're seriously chafing under the lockdown and looting, there's no better way to cock a snook at the lockdown than by booking a berth on our Third Annual Steyn Cruise sailing the Med next year - and with Conrad Black, Michele Bachmann, John O'Sullivan and Douglas Murray among our shipmates. We'll be attempting some seaboard versions of The Mark Steyn Show, Tales for Our Time, our Sunday Poem and other favorite features. If you're minded to give it a go, don't leave it too late: as with most travel and accommodations, the price is more favorable the earlier you book - and, if the lockdown ever does gets totally lifted, why use your newfound freedom of movement just to visit the county fair or see X-Men 47 at the multiplex when you can bestride the world like a cruising colossus?
I'll be back later at SteynOnline for post-Millsfield/Dixville analysis. Hope you'll swing by.