Nashua and Manchester: Election Day 2026 In Our Two Big Cities

By KATHARINE WEBSTER and ZACH LAIRD, InDepthNH.org

At Nashua’s Ward 5 in Nashua High School-South, Moderator Michael Munster said, “ You missed the craziness at 6 this morning. We had a huge bolus of people who came in.”

“We had lines like Disney,” he said. The lines were wrapped around the voting booths and he was expecting another big push from 4 to 5 p.m. His ward had 280 absentee ballots at beginning of the day and more expected.

As of 3:15 p.m. 3,245 people had voted out of the approximately 6,700 registered voters in this Nashua ward.

In Manchester, voters at Webster Elementary School voiced a variety of opinions on the general election, and what it could mean for New Hampshire.

“I used to be an Independent, and I used to sometimes vote Republican when I was Libertarian, but now that Republicans are the party of (President) Donald Trump, I just can’t make myself do it. So, I’ve become a Democrat and I just vote ‘D’ all the way down until something changes,” Vanessa Parker said.

Parker is concerned about LGBT rights, abortion rights, and election suppression this election.

“I feel like Republicans are really letting us down,” she said.

Pete Walsh of Manchester feels the opposite way, hoping to preserve Kelly Ayotte as Governor and see John Sununu go to the Senate. His concern is for unborn babies lost to abortions.

Sofiya Birnbaum is voting to make urgent changes to the direction of the country. “Life is difficult, and it has to change,” Birnbaum said.

In Nashua Ward 5, a federal election observer from the U.S. Department of Justice arrived mid-afternoon and sat in the observer area, the moderator said. The DOJ person is primarily here, as during the primary, to look at how they handle disabilities, access and non-English speakers, he said.

And he said he’s been told Nashua’s diversity is growing so much that at some point they will probably add language services.

One woman who got her New Hampshire driver’s license after moving to Nashua from Massachusetts was surprised she wasn’t automatically registered to vote through the DMV.

And Elisabeth Martin, who was stacking bake sale goods for her son’s elementary school, said: “It’s cool to see the turn out today…I’m hoping we can get some change going.”

On Question 2, she said: “I don’t think cutting local funding is going to help.” It will only hurt those already disadvantaged, she said.

Army veteran Dave Johnson said what was utmost on his mind was “saving America from communism.” For 34 years he was a recruiter and retention counselor.

“I’m here to vote because it’s the patriotic thing to do. You get what you vote for.  In France they got chaos,” Johnson said.

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