In 2000, New Hampshire was considered a swing state. While it had voted for Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in the 1980s, Democrat Bill Clinton won the state twice in the 1990s, and polling indicated that the state would be a toss-up in 2000. New Hampshire would play a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2000 Presidential Election. George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in New Hampshire, by a narrow 7,211 votes, in the midst of one of the closest elections in US history. Had Gore won the state, New Hampshire's electoral college votes would have swung the national election in his favor. The 2000 election was the most recent time that a Republican presidential candidate won New Hampshire or any state in New England, though Donald Trump did win an electoral vote from Maine in 2016. New Hampshire would narrowly vote for Democrats John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 by increasingly larger margins. However, Hillary Clinton would reverse this trend, only carrying the state with a razor-thin margin over Republican Donald Trump in 2016. The election is the only time after 1944 that New Hampshire did not vote the same as neighboring Vermont and the only time after 1968 in which it did not vote the same as neighboring Maine.
Although voters select or write in their preferred candidate on a ballot, voters in New Hampshire, as in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, technically cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. Since New Hampshire is represented by 2congressional districts and 2 senators, it is allocated 4 electoral votes. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 4 electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whichever candidate wins the most votes in the state is awarded all four electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector. The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 18, 2000 to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols. The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All were pledged to and voted for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney:
