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NHDP

MEMO: Momentum is with NH Democrats Despite Lopsided Primary

This year New Hampshire Democrats are fortunate to have strong candidates in every elected federal seat and share a unified vision for the state of New Hampshire across the party, and thus have had fewer costly, contentious primaries as a result.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire Republicans wage one damaging fight after another within their caucus, and the ultimate victims of their battles are inevitably the people of New Hampshire. Their internal ideological conflicts has resulted in a slate of extremely messy and costly primary campaigns up and down the Republican ticket.


TOPLINES:

  • Republicans have TEN primary races in the State Senate; Democrats have just 1.

  • Republicans have FIFTY-EIGHT primary fights in the State House while Democrats have just 21.

  • There are ELEVEN Republican candidates running for the US Senate seat currently held by Senator Maggie Hassan.

  • There are SEVENTEEN Republican candidates running for the 2 seats currently held by Congresswoman Kuster and Congressman Pappas’s seats.

Due to their extremely large number of messy primary races and a pronounced lack of leading, high-quality candidates on the Republican side able to capture a majority of support, as well as top of the ticket claimed entirely by strong Democratic incumbents without challengers, Democrats expect significantly higher turnout overall among Republican voters on primary day, September 13.


In turn, we expect Republicans will spin this higher turnout on their end to imply greater Republican enthusiasm in the race overall, when the result of this greater turnout is merely a matter of arithmetic: more races = more voters.


However, Granite State Democrats have been building momentum for the November midterm election for over a year.


EXAMPLES:

  • Democrats have made unprecedented investments in our field program, hiring staff earlier and in more districts than ever before, and our legislative campaigns have set records in their fundraising this cycle.

  • 2021 saw THREE back-to-back highly competitive Special Election victories for Democratic State House candidates — including in the Republican stronghold of Bedford — and another Special Election victory this year.

  • Democrats swept the state in Town Meeting day elections for School Board following the defunding of Croydon School District by radical Free State Republicans, and rejected ballot measures to replace state voting machines based on Republican misinformation in support of the Big Lie.

  • Democrats won 10 of 13 races for Mayor in November 2021 municipal elections.

  • Democrats won 274 seats on Town Meeting Day, while Republicans failed to capture even 100.

  • Over 45 young Democrats across the state in towns like Exeter, Londonderry, Milford, and Bedford were elected to local office in March 2022 Town Meeting Day.

  • The closure of Gunstock — similar to that of Croydon — has been a self-inflicted Republican disaster for Belknap county, and voters are paying attention.

  • Our federal delegation has delivered for Granite Staters time after time, with essential votes in passing the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan, the CHIPS Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

CONCLUSION:

With New Hampshire Democrats already outperforming national election trends, a national climate becoming increasingly more favorable to Democrats, major wins being delivered by our federal delegation, and an historically low-quality slate of Republicans on both the local and national levels, one thing is clear: New Hampshire Democrats are going into November in the absolute strongest position possible.

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