Politics

President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton rallied a crowd of 14,000 people in Concord New Hampshire Sunday. It was Mr. Obama’s final bit of local campaigning, and it came in the wake of new UNH poll that shows him in a tie with Republican Mitt Romney.

New Hampshire has just 4 electoral votes but you wouldn’t know it the way the both presidential campaigns are stumping here. This rally brought our democrats in force. Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Governor John Lynch urged the President’s re-election. The Former President Bill Clinton made his case. 

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney greeted nearly 1,000 supporters at Portsmouth International Airport on Saturday morning.

Politics have divided our country to the extent that the two sides not only disagree on the solutions to the country’s problems, they represent two different realities. This week we hear from people who are intimately familiar with this rift. They’ve lost friends. They’ve become estranged from family. They've watched civility cede to skirmishes. Our political civil war and its consequences: a special pre-election episode.

Prologue

Friday night, St. Anselm College hosted the final debate between the candidates for the 2nd District congressional seat.  While abortion has been a signature social issue of the race, this time around, the candidates sparred on gay marriage.

Much of the election limelight has been on big races at the top of the ballot.  But here in New Hampshire, there are also hundreds of state senate and house races on the ballot – races that often go unnoticed, despite the fact that the winning candidates can have a game-changing sway over local politics.

Bette Lasky and Peggy Gilmour have a lot in common. Together, they host a weekly radio show on a local AM station. In 2010, they both lost their state senate races. Two years later, these two Democrats want their jobs back.

The US Attorney and state Attorney General will run special election complaint hotlines on Tuesday.  Assistant AG Richard Head says 30 lawyers and investigators will also be stationed at polling places across the state.  Typically, he says, the office fields around a hundred complaints on Election Day.

“There is no typical voter complaint," Head says with a chuckle.  "They can range anywhere from machines not working properly to signs--a wide range of issues.”

Five days before the Nov. 6 election, Republican nominee Mitt Romney and independent groups that support the presidential candidate are poised to outspend President Barack Obama on television ads targeting New Hampshire voters.

A review of television contracts filed this week with Federal Communications Commission show that the pro-Romney team reserved about $947,000 in air time from Oct. 29 through Election Day on WMUR, WBZ and WHDH.

Meanwhile, the Obama for America campaign reserved about $653,000 in air time on the three stations during the final week of the campaign.

While voters say economic issues are their top concern, abortion is also a high priority this year.  In a recent Gallup Poll, nearly two-thirds of voters said it’s an important factor in their decision. 

But when you have a pro-choice Republican running against a pro-choice Democrat, abortion doesn’t seem like an obvious lightning-rod issue. 

Protecting New Hampshire from a broad-based sales or income tax has been a major issue in New Hampshire elections for decades – at least according to political scientist Dean Spiliotes.

"It goes back to the 1970s when Governor Meldrim Thomson pledged to veto any sales or income tax."

And this year’s races for Governor, and even Congress have been no different. 

But for all the talk around the income tax this season, the proposed constitutional amendment banning a personal income tax hasn’t gotten much attention.

Why?