Then-Sen. Kamala Harris greets supporters during a campaign stop for the Democratic presidential nomination on April 23, 2019, at Uptown Bakery in Claremont. (Scott Eisen | Getty Images)
New Hampshire has gone to Democrats in seven of the last eight presidential elections, including all five since 2004. But with its independent nature, and a tumultuous race, the state is no guarantee.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton took the state over Donald Trump by just 2,736 votes, or less than 0.4 points. And as President Joe Biden clung to his hopes for a second term following a debate performance that ultimately ended his campaign earlier this month, polling showed Trump narrowly beating him here.
But soon after Vice President Kamala Harris launched her campaign, two polls showed her leading Trump by six points in New Hampshire, one from the Saint Anselm College Survey Center and another from the UNH Survey Center .
“I definitely think it’s in play today,” said Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire professor of political science and international affairs, of the state hours after Biden dropped out.
He added, “Whoever the nominee is of the Democratic Party, it’ll be a measure of their viability how quickly they can get New Hampshire out of the swing-state status that it’s in right now, in my opinion, and … there’s polling state and nationally to back that up.”
If the Democratic nominee is fighting for New Hampshire in October, Scala said, that spells trouble for the Democrats nationally.
Though New Hampshire voters have recently favored Democrats for president, they’re distinctly purple, ticket-splitting voters. Republicans hold the governorship, majorities in both chambers of the Legislature, and four of five seats on the Executive Council. At the same time, all four members of the congressional delegation are Democrats.
Christopher J. Galdieri, a politics professor at Saint Anselm College, agrees that New Hampshire is “probably in swing-state territory.” Not at the top of that list, he said, with states like Pennsylvania and Arizona, but “right under that group of the top six or so swing states.”
“It’s a state, rare these days, where Republicans and Democrats can win statewide elections, where control of the state Legislature is always in play,” Galdieri said. “… I think both campaigns are going to have to put in a lot of work here.”
And for Harris, who has already secured enough delegates to become the presumptive party nominee come next month’s convention, that work is well underway. The Biden for New Hampshire operation swapped its branding for Harris the day after the president’s announcement. And party leaders, including all of the state’s pledged delegates, took just hours to coalesce around her .
Biden stepping down was unprecedented in modern political history for its closeness to the election – a little more than 100 days out from Nov. 5, and even fewer to when the first early voting ballots will be cast. Despite that, New Hampshire political watchers told the Bulletin that down-ballot Democrats were likely feeling relieved after weeks of public turmoil in the party and fears that Biden would drag down other candidates.
“I think compared to that and all the anxiety that must have created, you’re breathing a little easier today,” Scala said.
A successor
Harris has campaigned in New Hampshire before, when she launched an unsuccessful bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. At her first town hall event in the state in February 2019, she was greeted by a large crowd of voters.
“It was packed,” said Dean Spiliotes, a civic scholar at Southern New Hampshire University, of the event in Portsmouth . “And then she even came out onto the steps because there were people outside waiting to hear from her.”
But that enthusiasm diminished over time, spurred in part by a perception from state Democrats that Harris did not prioritize the state and rarely visited.
In October 2019, Harris was the preferred pick of just 3 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in the Granite State among a crowded field, according to a CNN/UNH poll . Her favorability in the state had fallen 15 points in about three months.
She ended her campaign that December, two months before Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won the state for the second primary in a row.
“It’s hard to really assess” her performance in New Hampshire, Spiliotes said, “because it’s not like she put in a really strong, deeply organized effort here. I just recall, at some point, she was just … not around anymore. She was elsewhere.”
Spiliotes doesn’t read much into what happened here with her primary run. She now has 3½ years under her belt as vice president and is taking over the Biden campaign apparatus here and around the country.
“It’s just gonna be, I think, fundamentally different for her,” Spiliotes said.
Full circle moment
For Granite Staters who supported Harris’ presidential run back in 2019 – even amid her floundering campaign – her ascent this summer is validating.
“I’ve already got out my old Kamala T-shirt and my pin, and I’m ready to go,” said Rep. Patricia Cornell, a Manchester Democrat, in an interview shortly after Biden announced he would not seek reelection.
Cornell was an early endorser of Harris, supporting her from her first speech in Portsmouth to the day she dropped out of the race.
Her second choice in the New Hampshire primary? Biden. “I was really happy when President Biden chose her as his vice president because I was hoping that would someday lead to her being president,” she said.
To Cornell, Harris was strong and smart – “and I love the way she handles herself.” She cited Harris’ Senate record approvingly and praised Harris’ background as a prosecutor. Harris’ questioning of then-Supreme Court hopeful Brett Kavanaugh stood out for her.
Cornell’s support became a somewhat lonely affair, she recalled. She didn’t know many New Hampshire Democrats who were backing Harris, other than her own husband.
“I don’t know who was helping her run her campaign from the top, you know?” she said. “Sometimes that makes a difference in the advice that you get of how much time to spend where.”
Rep. Steve Shurtleff, a Penacook Democrat, did not support Harris in 2019; then the House speaker, Shurtleff endorsed Biden early on. Shurtleff doesn’t know why Harris failed to catch on then – “but the same thing happened to Joe,” he said, noting Biden’s fifth place finish in the state.
Still, Shurtleff argued that even though Harris performed poorly last time around, her time as a candidate will still be a boost this year.
“It’s one thing to be a member of the Senate or some other body and run in a presidential primary,” Shurtleff said. “But when you’ve run a national campaign and (learned) the organization and what you need to do, I think that was an education.”
‘Wait and see’
It might be weeks before there’s a clear picture of how Harris is performing against Trump.
Many Democrats, including Harris, had been matched up against Trump in polls before Biden dropped out, but those “were almost entirely treating it as a hypothetical,” Galdieri said. It will probably take until after the convention, he said, “to really get a sense of what this race looks like.”
Spiliotes said he will wait between two to four weeks “before I really sink my teeth into believing anything I see.”
Still, Harris enters the race with some clear advantages over her former running mate. At 59, she is unburdened by the questions of age that ended the 81-year-old’s campaign, and she’s almost two decades younger than 78-year-old Trump. She also has proven to be a more effective communicator on abortion than Biden, who, as a lifelong Catholic, was sometimes uncomfortable talking about the issue.
“Will she capture the imagination of young voters? We’ll have to wait and see,” Scala said. “But all of a sudden, you know, the age question, that’s no longer a wash. … Now, it’s Republicans with the old man.”
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