Best of Greater Nashua: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of Greater Nashua is and who runs it

Best of Greater Nashua is a readers' choice business award programme run by The Telegraph, the daily newspaper serving Nashua and the wider Greater Nashua area of New Hampshire. The paper's publisher is named on the ballot page as Ogden Newspapers of New Hampshire, LLC, and the newspaper's own address, 110 Main St, Ste 1, Nashua, appears on the same page. This is a contest the paper hosts on its own website: the ballot lives at nashuatelegraph.com/promo/?pid=1803, under the Telegraph's masthead alongside its news, sports and opinion sections.

The format is a best-of competition in the business readers' choice mould, the kind New Hampshire newspapers have long used to let their own audience pick the shops, restaurants and services it rates highest. Because the organizer is a newsroom with a street address and a parent publishing company rather than a standalone contest company or a business association, the programme is promoted through the paper's own channels, and its FAQ, rules and dates are published on the ballot page itself.

For a supporter trying to judge whether the award is worth chasing, the fact that a named newspaper with a physical Nashua address and a parent publishing company stands behind it matters. It separates this programme from anonymous ballot sites, and it means disputes about rules go to a newsroom that publishes those rules openly.

The 2026 dates and what the ballot does not publish

One edition of Best of Greater Nashua is confirmed: the 2026 cycle whose ballot is live on the Telegraph's site. Its printed schedule has four dated milestones. The nomination period ran September 12-18. First round voting ran November 1-8. The final voting round ran December 20-27. Winners were announced on February 7.

That schedule splits the contest into a nominating stage, in which readers can propose businesses, organizations and names for all of the categories, and then two voting stages that narrow the field. The three-part structure matters for planning: a business that misses September's nomination window is not on the ballot for November, and support aimed at the final result has to be timed to the two voting rounds.

This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The Telegraph's ballot page does not print a roster of the categories on offer, nor does it state eligibility terms for nominees beyond the general invitation to propose businesses, organizations and names; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What is certain is the rule that governs every round: voting is limited to one vote in each category per person per day. Every date quoted here comes from the Telegraph's own contest FAQ, printed on the same page as the ballot, so a reader can verify the schedule without leaving the paper's site.

How a supporter votes on the Telegraph's ballot

Voting happens on the Telegraph's own domain, and the sequence a supporter follows is short. The ballot at nashuatelegraph.com/promo/?pid=1803 changes with the phase. In September it accepts nominations: a reader proposes a business, an organization or a name for any category they want to see on the ballot. From November 1-8 it presents the first-round nominees for voting. From December 20-27 it presents the finalists for the last round.

The constant across both voting windows is the Telegraph's stated limit: one vote in each category per person per day. A supporter can vote in several categories in a single sitting, and can return on a later day and cast another, but repeated submissions in the same category inside one day fall outside the printed rule. For a business owner, that shapes the whole ask: the request to supporters is a daily habit during the open window, not a burst of clicks.

No step in the process involves leaving the Telegraph's site. The nomination form, the nominee list and the voting form all sit behind the paper's masthead, and the FAQ answering questions about missing nominees is printed on the same page. That keeps the mechanic simple for supporters and means any change to dates, phases or rules shows up first on the ballot itself, where the paper publishes its own contest information for Greater Nashua readers.

How this ballot sits among New Hampshire's best-of contests

Best of Greater Nashua is one of several readers' choice programmes in New Hampshire, but it answers to its own newsroom and its own ballot. The closest relatives in the state include Best of Mount Washington Valley, Best of NH, Best of NH, Best of the Lakes Region, Best of the Seacoast and CommunityVotes Manchester.

What makes the Telegraph's programme distinct is geography and host. It is scoped to Greater Nashua, a specific market in southern New Hampshire, not the whole state or a tourism region, and it is run by the local daily paper on the paper's own site. CommunityVotes Manchester, by contrast, is the CommunityVotes format applied to a neighbouring New Hampshire city, published under that operator's name and governed by that operator's rules.

For a business with customers across the state, these programmes are separate efforts: winning in Nashua carries nothing toward the Lakes Region ballot, and each organizer sets its own nomination windows and voting rules. A nomination in the Telegraph's September window puts a business on the Nashua ballot only. Support in each contest has to be organized around that contest's own dates, its own per-person rule and its own live page, which is why the Telegraph's printed schedule of September, November and December phases is the calendar that matters for this market.

Strengthening support within the Telegraph's rules

The Telegraph's printed rule gives any Greater Nashua business a clear frame: one vote in each category per person per day. Everything that helps starts there. A daily reminder to customers during the November 1-8 first round and again in the December 20-27 final round converts a one-time vote into a habit, and the two rounds mean a business gets two separate chances to mobilize the same people.

The ballot page publishes no guidance on outside help beyond its per-person limit, so the safe reading is the literal one: mobilize real supporters who each vote within the daily rule. Tactics that ask a supporter to exceed the limit contradict the paper's own text. For tactics that stay inside a daily-limit format, our guide to getting more votes online covers email reminders, point-of-sale prompts and staff asks. The legal and rules-side questions are laid out in our page on whether buying votes is legal. No service can promise a February 7 win; the newspaper announces the results, and the counting is theirs.