NEWFIELD, N.H. — It’s the first time in 24 years that a Republican has carried the battleground state of New Hampshire in a presidential election.
We have to go all the way back to then-Texas Governor George W. Bush in 2000. Four years later, Bush was re-elected but narrowly lost the state, beginning a losing streak that continues to this day.
But following two recent polls suggesting the race in New Hampshire is within the margin of error, and an extremely tough performance in Biden’s first head-to-head primetime debate nine days ago between former President Trump and Biden, Republicans are increasingly hopeful they can end the losing streak.
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Former President Donald Trump speaks while celebrating his victory in the Republican presidential primary in Nashua, New Hampshire on January 23. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
“I do believe New Hampshire is a big issue,” Steve Stepanek, a senior adviser to Trump in New Hampshire, told Fox News.
Cathy Sullivan, a former state party chair and former Democratic National Committee member, disagreed, saying “New Hampshire is not a Trump-friendly state” and stressing that “the balance of power in New Hampshire between Biden and Trump has not changed at this point.”
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Since the general election rematch between Biden and Trump began four months ago, much of the campaign’s attention has been focused on seven key battleground states that decided the 2020 election. Those states include Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada (which Biden narrowly won four years ago) as well as North Carolina, which Trump won by a narrow margin.
The Trump campaign began turning its attention to Democratic-leaning Minnesota and Virginia in May, with top Trump campaign advisers saying the states are “clearly in the contest.”
Trump headlined a Minnesota Republican Party fundraiser later that month and held a large rally in Virginia last week, the day after his debate with Biden.
Former President Trump and President Biden will face off in a debate in Atlanta on June 27th. (Getty Images)
The debate was a major setback for Biden, who at 81 is the oldest president in U.S. history. His halting speech and halting answers in the Atlanta debate caused widespread panic within the Democratic Party and prompted calls from within his own party for him to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.
Biden is fighting back, aiming to show Americans he still has the stamina and acumen to do the toughest, most demanding job in the world, and to prove he has the energy and fortitude to beat Trump.
Nonpartisan political handicapper tips two states to Trump
Earlier this week, a well-known independent political handicapper Sabbath’s Crystal Ball The debate resulted in two key states tipping in favor of Trump.
Michigan was changed from “Democrat Preferential” to “Close Race,” and Minnesota was changed from “Democrat Preferential” to “Democrat Preferential.”
In New Hampshire, a post-debate poll by the Saint Anselm College Research Center showed Trump leading Biden by 2 points, within the poll’s sampling error. The poll follows one from the University of New Hampshire Research Center in late May that showed Biden leading by a low single-digit margin.
“I think we’re in a battleground state right now,” said Neil Levesque, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. “We’re likely to see states similar to ours end up with a tie or with Trump leading.”
On March 11, President Biden visited his campaign office in Manchester, New Hampshire and addressed his supporters. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
But Levesque pointed to the latest polls, telling Fox News: “The good news for Biden is that he has little support among self-described liberals – just 67% approve. That means that ultimately, many of them are likely to vote for Biden, even if they don’t want to admit it right now.”
Wayne Lesperance, a veteran New Hampshire-based political science professor and president of the University of New England, also said the state is “at stake.”
“Biden’s performance in the most recent debates has left Democrats questioning his ability to campaign, win and govern. Recent polls in New Hampshire show continued unwavering support for Trump by Republicans, with Democratic support waning and some turning to independent candidates,” L’Esperance noted. “As long as doubts remain about Biden’s ability to move forward, the president will continue to lose support and New Hampshire will be at risk.”
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Polls are showing a close race in a state that Biden won by 7 points over Trump four years ago, but Democrats currently hold a huge organizational advantage over Republicans when it comes to ground-level efforts.
The Biden reelection team and the state Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign have been on the ground since January with 14 field offices across New Hampshire, while the Trump team and Republicans currently have one field office in addition to the campaign’s state headquarters.
“The New Hampshire Democratic Party will continue to leverage our strong grassroots campaign base to reach out to New Hampshire residents in every corner of our state so that we can come together to re-elect President Biden and Vice President Harris in November. This is more important than ever,” longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said in a statement.
But Stepanek, who served as Trump’s campaign chairman in New Hampshire in 2016 and later served as chairman of the state’s Republican Party, stressed that “there is an army of Trump supporters out there, and they are all coming out.”
“It’s going to be a turnout issue. Despite everything that’s going on with the Democrats in New Hampshire, we feel like we can have a really important campaign that gets not only Trump supporters but Republicans and Republican-leaning independents all out to vote,” Stepanek predicted.
And he argued that Democrats “face a huge enthusiasm gap, and we don’t have it.”
When asked about the details of how the Trump campaign will run its ground-up campaign in New Hampshire, Stepanek said, “My strategy is classified, so I can’t tell you.”
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Sullivan, a top Biden surrogate in New Hampshire, fired back, arguing that when it comes to ground operations, “Republicans always say they’re going to do something, but they never do it.”
Sullivan noted that Democrats have “had an incredibly strong ground mobilization and we’re not seeing any ground mobilization from the Trump campaign,” and that “on issues like abortion, the Republican Party is not mainstream.”
“Given the Biden team’s ground game, issues and spending, and the Trump team’s lack of presence, I don’t see Republicans catching up,” she predicted.
Supporters of Joe Biden’s write-in ballot campaign in the New Hampshire primary pose for a photo in Concord, New Hampshire, on January 19. (Fox News – Claire O’Connor)
Sullivan also noted that outside outreach by the state Democratic Party led to the president’s landslide victory in New Hampshire’s January Democratic presidential primary, in which Biden was not running, and emphasized that “when Biden’s secret ballot initiative came up, that gave us a huge head start.”
Sullivan also pointed out that in a state where Trump’s rival in the Republican presidential primary, former UN ambassador and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, won 43% of the vote and lost to Trump by just 11 points, “the Biden team will be reaching out to moderate to conservative Republicans who understand how dangerous President Donald Trump is to our democracy.”
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