Why does DHCP use raw sockets?

The DHCP protocol has some specific requirements to really work properly - in particular being able to transmit to and receive packets sent to the all-ones limited broadcast address (255.255.255.255), and being able to send a unicast without an ARP. It's not possible to do this via BSD/UDP sockets, although dhcpd does also open a BSD/UDP socket (called the "fallback interface") that you will see in netstat.

The raw socket:

• Receives all DHCP packets, so the DHCP packet sent to the server must come in on the interface the socket is opened on.
• Transmits directed unicasts (w/out ARP), and special RFC 2131 complying all-ones limited broadcasts. These are needed in clients' initial configuration stage (when the client does not yet have an address configured).

The BSD/UDP socket:

• Is read from to empty it and free up buffers (it will receive some packets that are duplicates of packets received via the raw socket.
• Is used to transmit routed unicasts. These are used to reply to any relay agent, or to reply to clients apparently in the renewing state.

It is possible to compile raw socket behaviour out for very specific reasons, but this will only work if you never have any directly-connected clients - that is, clients on the same broadcast domain as the DHCP server. All clients must be reached by relay agents in this case.