Politics

Ayotte holds late polling edge in the most competitive Gov race

New Hampshire is the marquee contest on a limited map.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Ayotte, who faces Democrat Joyce Craig in the November 2024 election, during a visit to a local concrete coating business, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

In the tightest of the 11 gubernatorial contests, former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) is heading into Election Day with a narrow lead in New Hampshire.

Ayotte led former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig (D) by 2, 3 and 4 percentage points in four polls released during the campaign’s final days, illuminating a small but consistent edge in the swing-state race to replace outgoing Gov. Chris Sununu (R).

Whether she prevails, political insiders say, depends on whether she can convince a critical mass of voters likely to reject former President Donald Trump to vote for a Republican governor.

“Trump is Ayotte’s biggest liability. There’s no question about that,” said Jim Demers, a Concord-based lobbyist and former Democratic state lawmaker.

As states increasingly sort into Democrat- and Republican-leaning camps, New Hampshire remains stubbornly purple. Thirty-six percent of registered voters are unaffiliated with either major political party.

New Hampshire residents backed Democratic presidential candidates in 2020 and 2016 and have had an all-Democrat congressional delegation since 2017. At the same time, they re-elected Sununu by healthy margins in 2018, 2020 and 2022 and are represented by Republican majorities in the state House and Senate.

“New Hampshire is still, I think, a bona fide swing state,” said Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of Inside Elections, a nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes political campaigns.

Sununu, who is not seeking re-election, managed to outperform Republican candidates for national office in all his races. His smallest margin of victory was his first, in 2016, when he won by 2.3 points. The same year, Trump lost the state by 0.3 points and Ayotte lost her Senate re-election bid by 0.1 points.

The question this year is whether Ayotte, like Sununu, can do better than Republicans at the top of the ticket.

As of Monday morning, she led Craig by 2.5 points, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average. Trump, meanwhile, trails Vice President Kamala Harris by 3.5 points in New Hampshire.

While she’s been elected statewide, Ayotte doesn’t have Sununu’s joie de vivre or famous political lineage — but neither does Craig, and Ayotte may not need to replicate Sununu’s appeal to win, Rubashkin said.

“I don’t buy that New Hampshire is this Democratic state that Sununu has somehow unlocked,” he said.

Ayotte came into the race better-known than Craig, thanks to her time in the U.S. Senate and as state attorney general, an appointed position. She has raised $17.6 million, three times more than Craig.

She’s running with Sununu’s support and has pledged to continue on the same policy path, such as by eliminating the last vestiges of the state’s income tax as scheduled next year. She’s touted that she has a bipartisan bent, saying in their final debate that as a senator she “never hesitated to cross the aisle to do the right thing for New Hampshire.”

Ayotte has also pledged to crack down on drug dealers and illegal immigration. Her campaign sought to paint Craig as a soft-on-crime progressive who oversaw an explosion of homelessness as mayor of New Hampshire’s largest city.

Joyce Craig, Democratic candidate for governor, speaks with workers during a visit to the Milan Lumber mill, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, in Milan, N.H. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)

Craig, meanwhile, has made reproductive rights and kitchen-table issues, such as housing costs, the centerpiece of her campaign, while also tying Ayotte to Trump. Her team points out that violent crime in Manchester dropped during Craig’s tenure, and it has portrayed Ayotte as unreliable on women’s rights and too close to the far right.

Complicating the race some is a third-party candidate, libertarian Stephen Villee, who received 4% support in an Emerson College poll released on Oct. 25. Villee appears to be pulling support from both the Republican and Democratic gubernatorial candidates, said Spencer Kimball, head of the Emerson College Polling Center.

The latest polling is encouraging for Ayotte, but Trump’s performance may be what tips the scales, political strategists say. Harris led Trump 51%-46% in both the St. Anselm College and University of New Hampshire polls, 50%-47% in the Emerson College poll, and 50%-43% in the UMass Lowell/YouGov poll, all released in late October or early November.

“If Trump keeps it tight, Kelly can win,” said Dave Carney, a veteran Republican strategist based in New Hampshire. He said that despite conventional wisdom, Trump could even carry New Hampshire.

Both Ayotte and Sununu have waffled in their support for Trump, reflecting their need to win over both hard-core Trump fans and independents wary of the former president.

Sununu, an outspoken Trump critic in this year’s presidential primary, now supports him as the nominee. Ayotte disavowed Trump in 2016 but now calls him “the right choice for the White House.”

“[Ayotte] has a really delicate walk that she has to do, because she can’t disassociate herself completely from Trump,” Demers said. “But she has to figure out how she doesn’t look like she is a very strong Trump supporter.”

Craig may be buoyed by Harris’s coattails, which include the vast grassroots operation Democrats have built in New Hampshire. Democrats have 120 staff members across 17 field offices there, according to the state Democratic Party. The Trump campaign has two field offices.

The work Democrats have done to blanket the state with volunteers could prove decisive, Demers said.

“Kelly Ayotte has the advantage with money and television advertising, and Joyce Craig benefits from this very robust ground game that the Democrats have,” Demers said. “But I’ll tell you, historically, the Democrats have won in New Hampshire when they have a good grassroots campaign. And they have probably their strongest ever going right now.”