Roosevelt won New Hampshire by 6.44%, at the time the best performance by a Democratic presidential candidate in this traditionally Republican state since the latter party was founded[1] and the first time since Franklin Pierce in 1852 that a Democrat won the state with an absolute majority of the vote. (It had been won with a plurality by Roosevelt four years earlier and by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and 1916.) Roosevelt's gain in New Hampshire and other New England states, in an election when Willkie carried almost seven hundred counties that the President had won during his landslide four years beforehand, was due to support in the region for helping Britain and France during World War II.[2]