Hillary Clinton supporters hold signs in Manchester, New Hampshire, the state’s largest city, which issued 2,117 absentee ballots as of Thursday. | AP Photo New Hampshire set for record primary turnout New absentee ballot data and state projections point to more voters than ever in Tuesday's primary.

New Hampshire is on track for record turnout in Tuesday's presidential primary, according to officials across the state and a POLITICO review of absentee ballot data.

A potential snowstorm Tuesday could deter some people from voting. But regardless, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner predicted on Friday that a record 550,000 voters will head to the polls next week. Gardner projected 282,000 ballots will be cast in the Republican primary and 268,000 in the Democratic contest.


In 2008, the last time Democrats and Republicans both had open presidential primaries, 529,000 New Hampshire voters cast ballots.

Gardner's lofty turnout prediction squares with high rates of absentee ballot requests and returns across New Hampshire so far. Absentee votes comprise a fairly constant share of primary turnout in the state, and requests for absentee ballots are up 12 percent in seven of New Hampshire's 12 largest towns, per POLITICO’s analysis of figures provided by local elections authorities.

Manchester, the state’s largest city with population of about 110,000, had issued 2,117 absentee ballots as of Thursday. In 2008, it counted only 1,825 absentee primary votes. While only 1,587 have been returned so far this year, town clerks throughout the state said 90 percent to 95 percent of those who request absentee ballots mail them back in.

In Londonderry, a city of about 24,000 people, about 600 absentee ballots have been requested so far, and voters have already returned about 540, according to the clerk’s office. That's nearly double the 2008 rate, when only 301 people voted absentee.

What remains unclear is which candidates would benefit from the predicted record turnout.

In New Hampshire, Donald Trump's campaign added only one more paid organizer to his team last month, deepening his bet on the power of his personality (and sizable polling lead) over the conventional rules of poltitical campaigning.

The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll found Trump leading the Republican field at 30 percent, with Marco Rubio at 17 percent and Ted Cruz at 15 percent. That same poll showed Bernie Sanders leading the Democratic primary 58 percent to 38 percent over Hillary Clinton.

Iowa Republicans already set a turnout record Monday, when more than 180,000 caucus-goers turned out, besting 2012's record of 121,503. Another 171,000 Democrats participated in Iowa, though those numbers fell short of the 236,000 who turned out in 2008.

Conventional wisdom before Iowa held that record turnout would ensure a Trump victory, because Trump would have lured in many of the new caucus-goers. But Cruz's campaign and its frenetic, data-driven approach to finding and turning out supporters, ultimately carried the day.

One last bit of uncertainty in New Hamsphire: who the state's independents will choose. Since the state has a semi-closed primary system, independents can participate in either contest, and both Sanders and Trump have proven attractive among many independents.

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