Republicans thought they had one of their best shots at flipping a Democratic Senate seat in purple New Hampshire this year after longtime Sen. Jeanne Shaheen announced her retirement. It’s looking less that way every week.
Party leaders did have reason to be hopeful, even in a difficult national environment for Republicans.
They felt they had momentum after nominating John E. Sununu in September. The former senator belongs to one of the state’s most prominent political dynasties, he has a record of distancing himself from an increasingly unpopular President Donald Trump and Republicans have millions of dollars to spend in the small state.
Many of them also thought Sununu could catch a draft from the reelection campaign of popular Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte.
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But a lot of those hopes are not materializing, and not just because of a bad national political climate.
New Hampshire has a way of defying what the experts back in Washington expect, said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist from the state.
“Historically, the past 10 years, we have been Republican at home and Democrats in D.C.,” Bartlett told The Washington Sun. “We are a middle finger in New England. We really have our own brand of conservatism, of this independent, maybe even libertarian streak to us.”
In fact, despite GOP optimism, Sununu has largely trailed the Democratic nominee, Rep. Chris Pappas, in recent polls. The Cook Political Report moved the race from a “toss up” to “lean Democrat” earlier this week.
Bartlett pointed to some of the reasons. For one, New Hampshire voters have a tradition of splitting the ticket, and the premise Ayotte will have coattails is probably false. In New Hampshire, the governor is on the ballot every two years, Bartlett said, meaning she has less of an impact on turnout than in a state like Pennsylvania, for example, where the governor is only on the ballot every four years.
“New Hampshire voters have never been afraid to bounce back and forth,” Bartlett said. “It ping-pongs back and forth between federal and state on the New Hampshire ballot, and I think voters are going to follow the ping-pong ball pretty consistently.”
Those unique local dynamics are compounded by the difficult national environment for Republicans across the country with rising prices linked to the war in Iran, as well as Canadian tariffs that have special relevance in the northern border state, said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire.
Pappas has centered the rising cost of living in his campaign spiel and repeatedly tried to link Sununu to the unpopular president. An AARP survey conducted in late September found that half of the voters in New Hampshire cite affordability as the top issue “driving their voting decisions this November.”
Rachel Petri, Pappas’ campaign manager, stuck to that theme in a statement to The Sun. “Chris Pappas is fighting to lower costs, end Trump’s war in Iran and tariff taxes, and stand up to a reckless Trump administration,” she said. “John Sununu is running to boost the bottom line of his corporate special interest backers.”
Sununu’s campaign did not respond to several requests for comment, but he told a local TV station that “it doesn’t make sense” to engage in a trade war with Canada and has repeatedly said he opposes the war in Iran, highlighting differences with Trump.
In an August candidate forum, Sununu said it was a “mistake” for the U.S. to enter Iran and argued that Congress should vote to reclaim its war powers after a series of failed votes to curb the administration’s military actions.
“What he’s been trying to do in his messaging is he’s trying to take full advantage of the fact that he’s been out of politics for so long and present himself as an outsider,” Scala said. “He’s leaning into presenting himself as an independent for New Hampshire ... he kind of downplays the party label and emphasizes the independent.”
Still, Scala said those differences might not be enough to overcome Democratic “enthusiasm in 2026.” Democrats saw significantly higher voter turnout than Republicans in the state’s September primary.
“The Democratic base is fired up,” Scala said. “So the Sununu name carries weight, I’m not denying that, but is it enough to overcome all of these other factors? I’m not seeing that and it’s four weeks out.”
Republicans do still have one element in their favor — the money.
Scott Spradling, a former political journalist in New Hampshire, said Republicans hold a significant spending advantage over Democrats in New Hampshire, which could be decisive in such a tight race.
The state has been flooded with mailers and television advertisements targeted at Pappas, Spradling said. And in a race this narrow and in a state with such a sparse population, how effectively both sides can leverage their campaign spending to pull over split-ticket voters could be the decisive factor.
The biggest outstanding question, though, is how far an onslaught of political spending can move the needle in the remaining month until the election.
“The Senate race is a single-digit race. Nobody’s going to debate that,” Spradling said. “It’s close enough that an investment of that much money could drive up just a few more negative points for Pappas and pull out a few more Republicans to vote in this race … it all remains to be seen.”
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