Dixville Notch

2002-2024 | 22 years

In this episode, Josh and Donna are running around trying to secure votes in Hartsfield’s Landing, a town based on the real-life Dixville Notch, which is known as the first town in America to vote in the primaries. The people in Dixville Notch gather the night before voting day and then drop their votes in the ballot box as the clock strikes midnight. Every election year 1968-2016 Dixville Notch correctly predicted the Republican nominee for President.

Josh sums up why early voting towns are so important when he tells Donna “The rest of New Hampshire doesn't come in until nine PM. That's 21 hours of the news having nothing to report but the winner at Hartsfield's Landing”. Every election year 1968-2016 Dixville Notch correctly predicted the Republican nominee for President. We can see that what Josh told Donna is still true today, as Yesterday during the New Hampshire Primary news outlets continued to talk about how the 6 people of Dixville Notch all voted for Ambassador Haley until the polls in the rest of the state started closing at night and results started to come in. 

The importance of media coverage on election day is also covered in another episode later in the series during the Santos-Vinick election, which was an extremely tight race. In that episode, the Santos campaign had to determine how long to hold back information regarding the death of their VP candidate so they would not lose votes in the Western states where the polls were still open. Campaign staff have to be very cognizant of how the media narrative on the day of an election can affect that election.

This concept is so important that in the special “When We All Vote” episode of The West Wing, where the cast got back together 20 years later to re-enact an episode, they chose Hartsfield’s Landing to perform again on stage.