A Northeast Senate race is flying under the radar and could end up tanking the Democratic Party’s hopes of taking control of the upper chamber. Sure, Democrats might flip Texas or Iowa, maybe even take Alaska or Maine, but if they let New Hampshire slip from their grasp, the fragile math holding their Senate dreams together starts to crumble. The primary is tomorrow, September 8, but the widely expected November matchup is four-term Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas against former GOP Sen. John E. Sununu – and polls show Pappas standing on shaky ground lately. Maybe that’s why he sounded the alarm last week.
New Hampshire Blues
Three-term Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen announced her retirement in March, leaving an open seat that the Democratic Party treated as safe until Pappas warned his party on national TV a week ago. “The math doesn’t really work for Democrats to pick up the four seats we need if we’re taking steps backward in the seats we already hold,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju. “We’ve got to hold this race in order for the rest of the math to work for Democrats to take back the Senate majority.” In a fundraising email on Friday, he put it more bluntly: “We’re losing.”
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Despite holding double-digit leads in primary polls, Pappas could come up short against Karishma Manzur, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who has never held public office. An August poll from St. Anselm College shows Pappas beating Manzur 59% to 28%. But a University of New Hampshire poll points to a tighter race; in fact, if you look at only the UNH surveys this year, Manzur steadily gains ground. In January, Pappas held a 54-point lead over Manzur; in April, it was 43 points. The gap narrowed again in June, when his lead dropped to 24 points. UNH’s last survey in August showed the congressman ahead by only 13 points.
Yet Pappas has campaigned as if he were already in the general election, largely ignoring his primary opponent and spending most of his time attacking Sununu and MAGA Republicans. Along the way, he has gained the support of several establishment Democrats. Even former Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed him, a move that delighted the representative. Yet Harris’ support among New Hampshire Democrats was a mere 3% in a recent St. Anselm College poll for the 2028 presidential primary. So her endorsement probably won’t help much.
“People forget that New Hampshire’s not a blue state,” Kathy Sullivan, the former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, told The New York Times. “It’s a purple state.” But it has become a little bluer over the past couple of election cycles, and New Hampshire Democrats haven’t lost a US Senate race since 2010. Since then, however, they haven’t faced any serious contenders like Sununu.
The Challenge
Sununu is expected to cruise to victory in the Republican primary against Scott Brown, a former Republican senator from Massachusetts who rocketed to political stardom in 2010 after defeating Democrat Martha Coakley in an upset to claim the seat held by the late Ted Kennedy. Brown later served in the first Trump administration as the ambassador to New Zealand. His campaign, however, has been rather quiet. Sununu, on the other hand, served three terms as a congressman in the district Pappas currently represents. He then beat Shaheen in the 2002 Senate race but lost to her in a 2008 rematch. He heads into the primary with a Trump endorsement and a family name New Hampshire is familiar with; his father and his brother are former New Hampshire governors.
Sununu’s lead against Brown has grown from 23 points in January to 40 in August, so it seems unlikely he will lose the primary. The November matchup is where it gets tighter. Two recent general-election polls show Sununu narrowly leading Pappas, the only two surveys in which Sununu has led all year. However, he could benefit from a down-ballot effect with the popular Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte running for re-election.
Liberty Nation News’ polling aggregator shows Pappas with an average lead of nearly three points in a matchup against Sununu. However, if Manzur makes it to the general election, she could also have a tight race against Sununu. Though New Hampshire is largely viewed as a libertarian state, it is also rife with progressives who might be more apt to turn out for a democratic socialist than an establishment Democrat. However, none of the general-election surveys asked participants about a matchup with Manzur, so there’s no way to predict how she might do.
Whether it’s Pappas or Manzur, the New Hampshire Democrats have a tougher battle than usual. They haven’t faced a serious GOP contender for a Senate seat since Ayotte ran for re-election in 2016 and lost to Maggie Hassan, the state’s other Democratic senator, by roughly 1,000 votes. Though Shaheen and Hassan were handily re-elected in 2020 and 2022, respectively, both beat little-known Republicans in their races. Now Pappas may have a shot at beating a big-name Republican, with a fundraising edge and a favorable political environment. Then again, neither advantage has stopped his lead from shrinking for months, so there's no guarantee they'll matter now.
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