After being politically left for dead, New Hampshire Trump fans are feeling fine thanks to a slew of breaking news on Thursday showing the Granite State may be in play for the Republican nominee.
That’s the view of former Trump spokesman Sean Spicer, co-host of the Morning Meeting with veteran journalist Mark Halperin. During an appearance on the Megyn Kelly podcast, both Halperin and Spicer said the Trump campaign believes New Hampshire is within striking distance.
And a new Emerson poll that hit Thursday night appears to back them up. It shows Vice President Kamala Harris with a narrow 50 to 47 percent lead over former President Donald Trump in the Granite State.
“Harris’ margin among women is similar to that of Biden in 2020 — however, male voters have shifted about two points toward Trump,” said Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling. “In addition, Harris is underperforming Biden’s 2020 support among independent voters, who break for Harris by 13 points, but broke for Biden by about double that amount.”
Halperin told Kelly he’s been asking questions about New Hampshire for awhile.
“When Kamala Harris a few weeks ago did an event in New Hampshire, I said to everybody in both parties, ‘What’s going on?’ Because she’s spending a day campaigning in New Hampshire. They said, ‘Oh, no, she’s got a fundraiser in Boston. She’s giving a national speech. It’s got nothing to do with being worried about New Hampshire.’
“Then Joe Biden was in New Hampshire last week.”
Halperin says he’s now hearing New Hampshire may be on the list of upcoming campaign stops for Trump, along with some other states that were dismissed as out of reach just a few weeks ago.
“I was told yesterday, as someone showed me an email saying that the Trump campaign is doing last-minute hiring, paying a pretty robust sum for folks to do door knocking at the last minute. So watch that dynamic.”
Multiple sources in the Trump campaign told NHJournal Thursday night that there is no Trump trip planned for New Hampshire, but they have moved some money into the state as the map appears to expand for their campaign.
“Solid funding was sent to New Hampshire to invest in the field program and staff,” one source said on background. “The target numbers in the field are being hit, and the campaign was inspired to see what New Hampshire can produce with a last-minute boost.”
Spicer said Thursday that the Granite State is definitely on the board.
“The interesting thing that is going unreported right now is the shift in the dynamic,” Spicer said. “We have seen a shift, and now Minnesota, New Hampshire, Virginia, New Mexico, and potentially Nebraska [Second Congressional District] are all back in play in a way we wouldn’t have been talking about four weeks ago.”
“Look at the data,” Spicer added. “Look at what is happening in each of these states. They are all trending in Trump’s direction.”
Spicer said he didn’t believe Trump could win all four, but he believed the former president would pick up at least one. If Trump truly is competitive in these more purple states, that’s very bad news for the struggling Harris campaign.
And it’s very good news — whether Trump wins New Hampshire or not — for Kelly Ayotte.
Emerson also released a poll of the governor’s race and, like most of the polling, it shows Ayotte with a three point lead (46-43 percent) over Democrat Joyce Craig. The consensus is that, like first-time gubernatorial candidate Chris Sununu in 2016, Ayotte’s vote total is going to be close to Trump’s. When Trump ran the first time, he won 46.5 percent of the Granite State vote compared to Sununu’s 49 percent.
“Republicans are dreaming if they think Ayotte is going to outperform Trump by 10 or 12 points,” one New Hampshire GOP campaign insider told NHJournal Thursday before the Emerson poll was released. “Trump has to do his part, keep it close. If he [expletive] the bed, he’ll take Kelly down with him.”
Gov. Chris Sununu has made the case that Craig’s entire campaign strategy is to just hold onto the Democratic base and count on Harris to carry her over the top.
“That’s 100 percent the strategy,” Sununu said this week.
The average of the five public polls since New Hampshire’s September primary put the presidential race in New Hampshire at 51.2 to 43.6 percent for Harris. If Trump can get to 45 percent on Nov. 5, that’s considered good news for Ayotte, putting her in a strong position to win.
The five-poll average in the governor’s race gives Ayotte a slim 45.4 to 43.6 percent edge over Craig.
