It’s official: The New Hampshire presidential primary will be held on February 9, maintaining the state’s first-primary-in-the-nation status and making the entire 2016 primary calendar now formally set.
The New Hampshire primary, the first contest of its kind in the 2016 nominating process, will be held eight days after the Iowa caucuses on February 1st.
Secretary of State Bill Gardner formally announced the long-anticipated date on Thursday at a ceremony at the state house. New Hampshire officials unveiled the date with a poster commemorating the 100th anniversary of the contest.
While it was no secret the primary would be held on that day next year, it’s Gardner’s role to set the date, and he did not actually make an official announcement until Thursday.
In prior years, the setting of the date of the primary involved more contentious elements, as other states threatened to move their caucus or primary voting dates forward in the calendar and threaten New Hampshire’s early state status. Gardner waited until this late – December 16th – to make the day official, saying he was waiting for other states to put their voting dates on the books. This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com
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