New Hampshire is the latest sign of Donald Trump’s shrinking map

NORTH HAMPTON, New Hampshire — Donald Trump hasn’t set foot in New Hampshire since he won the state’s GOP primary in January. His campaign hasn’t sent a high-profile surrogate here since the spring.

And now, even as they insist he can win here, some of Trump’s most ardent supporters in this blue-leaning swing state are openly saying that his campaign should focus its efforts elsewhere.

“This election is going to be won in those seven swing states” and not in New Hampshire, said Lou Gargiulo, who co-chairs Trump’s campaign in this state. “That’s where the effort’s got to be put.”

It’s a marked shift from when New Hampshire was among the bluish battlefields where Trump’s campaign boasted it could expand its electoral map as President Joe Biden faltered. Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley said days after the June debate that the party had started to “engage” in New Hampshire , Minnesota and Virginia. A post-debate survey showed Trump had erased Biden’s polling lead in the Granite State, leaving Republicans gleeful and Democrats spooked .

Today, New Hampshire stands as the latest sign of how Trump’s map is constricting in his run against Kamala Harris. A trio of surveys have shown the vice president opening an outside-the-margin-of-error lead over Trump — one that she aimed to cement on Wednesday with a campaign event at a brewery on New Hampshire’s Seacoast where she touted her new plan for small business tax breaks . Race raters have shifted the state to the left. And Republicans here are privately bemoaning the Trump campaign’s lack of investment in this state where Democrats outnumber Republicans in field offices by 17 to 1.

“The Trump campaign does not appear to be matching or contesting” New Hampshire, said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist from the state and former Trump administration appointee.

“Organizationally speaking there have been no visits, no surrogates. They have their institutional support and they’re going to go with it,” said Bartlett. “Whereas Democrats, even with a lead, continue to flood the zone week after week with high-profile people.”

Trump’s campaign insists it is contesting New Hampshire, a state where he has thrice won GOP primaries but lost two consecutive general elections, including by 7 percentage points to Biden in 2020. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign who hails from New Hampshire, said the campaign is “maintaining an offensive posture” here and in the other blue-leaning swing states of Minnesota and Virginia.

“They’re not in our target seven battleground states,” Leavitt said. But New Hampshire is “certainly a state we believe the president can flip red.”

But Harris sought to put Trump on defense on Wednesday, when she touted her latest economic plan to a crowd of more than 3,000 people who waited hours under the blazing sun to see the Democratic nominee — and slammed Trump’s stances on everything from taxes to abortion access.

“We will move forward because ours is a fight for the future and it is a fight for freedom,” Harris said. “And I don’t have to tell the folks in New Hampshire, the Live Free or Die state — you know the importance of individual freedoms.”

Trump and his allies seized on Harris’ visit as a sign that Democrats were concerned about their standing in a state that hasn’t voted red in a presidential election since 2000 and that prognosticators view as “likely” to vote blue in November.

“Comrade Kamala Harris sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because of the fact that they disrespected it in their primary and never showed up,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday. “I protected New Hampshire’s First-In-The-Nation Primary and ALWAYS will! To my friends in New Hampshire, get out and vote TRUMP.”

And he pledged to return to New Hampshire before the election while calling into a local radio show Wednesday morning.

“It’s a very important place in terms of winning this election. It could come down to New Hampshire. I'll be there,” Trump said.

But Trump put no date on the calendar. Meanwhile, in his absence, Trump’s campaign has not sent a high-profile surrogate to rally the troops here since appearances by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum in April and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds in May — despite requests from the state GOP, according to a person familiar with the conversations granted anonymity to discuss the internal matter.

And his team has done little to expand its official footprint in New Hampshire since the primary. Trump’s campaign maintains its headquarters in Manchester and has “several” paid staff on the ground, Leavitt said — though she declined to specify a number.

“I’m not seeing any organized effort on Trump’s behalf, whatsoever,” said Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire GOP chair. “I’m not getting any phone calls automated or otherwise. I’m not seeing a county headquarters.”

Republicans affiliated with Trump’s campaign in New Hampshire argued they are fielding a strong grassroots effort for their party’s nominee in the state. The campaign runs training sessions for volunteers out of its Manchester office and online. Supporters have marched in local parades and staged a boat parade last month on Lake Winnipesaukee.

And there is some benefit to Trump staying away from New Hampshire — at least for another week. Should he visit before Tuesday, the former president would face pressure to put his thumb on the scale in the hotly contested gubernatorial primary. In that race, polls show former state Senate President Chuck Morse, who shares an adviser with one of the super PACs supporting Trump and who is running on his loyalty to the former president, trailing far behind former Sen. Kelly Ayotte.

But after Tuesday, “it would be good of him and [Ohio Sen.] JD Vance to show up,” said Sean Van Anglen, a Republican consultant in the state.

“I have hopes they can win in New Hampshire — but you have to be here. You have to go person to person, you have to have surrogates here, the candidate’s got to be here a few times,” Van Anglen said of the state that prides itself on putting even the highest-profile candidates through the retail-politics ringer. “I know it’s only four electoral votes, but it has played a crucial role in so many presidential elections.”

The paucity of the Trump campaign’s operations in New Hampshire is particularly glaring when contrasted with that of his rivals. Democrats have flooded the state with field offices and dispatched some of the party’s biggest stars — among them: California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and, over Labor Day weekend, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and California Rep. Ro Khanna — to launch canvasses and headline fundraisers. Biden visited the state twice after the primary — partly as a mea culpa after a bitter battle between state and national Democrats over the order of this year’s nominating calendar led the president to leave his name off the January ballot (he won the contest on the write-in campaign his allies waged on his behalf).

And on Wednesday, it was Harris’ turn to make the appeal. Standing behind thick panes of glass on a stage erected in the middle of a field ringed by bleachers full of eager supporters, she professed adoration for the state — “it’s so good to be back in New Hampshire” — and urged her backers to treat her campaign as the “underdog” against Trump.

“This race is going to be tight until the very end,” Harris said. But “we are up to the task. And with your help, we will win in November.”