Bernie Sanders Prevails and G.O.P. Has 3-Way Tie as 3 New Hampshire Towns Vote

Bernie Sanders Prevails and G.O.P. Has 3-Way Tie as 3 New Hampshire Towns Vote

The results are in.

Or, at least, the first results from the tiny New Hampshire towns — Dixville Notch, Millsfield and Hart’s Location — that practice the time-honored tradition of voting at midnight to claim the distinction of casting the election’s first primary ballots.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont emerged as the Democrats’ big winner of the wee hours on Tuesday, with 17 votes in total, while Hillary Clinton received nine.

On the Republican side, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Donald J. Trump and Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio each had nine votes.

Oh, and in Hart’s Location, a Democrat named Mark Stewart Greenstein received two votes.

The minuscule township of Dixville Notch was the first in New Hampshire to turn midnight voting into a spectacle, in 1960, at the behest of Neil Tillotson, who owned a resort perched amid the jagged slopes there. On Tuesday, the televised event at the resort, which is currently closed, was not much different: Dozens of journalists squeezed into a makeshift “ballot room” and up an adjacent staircase, craning their necks to watch as the township’s nine voters cast their ballots. Mr. Tillotson died in 2001, at the age of 102; on Tuesday, his son Tom, clad in a bow tie, helped oversee the vote.

Experts say the results do little to influence the outcome of the final statewide vote, but that has not stopped a litany of candidates in years past, such as Ronald Reagan and both George Bushes, from trekking to Dixville Notch to meet voters. Their photographs hung on the wall on Tuesday morning, overseeing another year’s hoopla.

This year, however, only Mr. Kasich made it to Dixville Notch, perhaps a critical component of his narrow victory there.

The full breakdown:

Dixville Notch: Sanders 4, Clinton 0; Kasich 3, Trump 2

Millsfield: Clinton 2, Sanders 1; Cruz 9, Trump 3, Kasich 1, Marco Rubio 1, Jeb Bush 1, Chris Christie 1, Carly Fiorina 1, Rand Paul 1

Hart’s Location: Sanders 12, Clinton 7, Greenstein 2; Kasich 5, Trump 4, Christie 2, Rubio 1, Bush 1, Ben Carson 1