New Hampshire Senate primary tightens as forecasters shift race to Toss-up

Three days before New Hampshire voters choose party nominees for an open U.S. Senate seat, independent forecasters and the campaigns themselves are recalibrating a race that, as recently as this spring, looked like a lock for Democrats. On Thursday, the nonpartisan newsletter Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales moved its rating of the contest for retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen's seat from Tilt Democratic to Toss-up, a formal acknowledgment of what polling has shown for weeks: both the Democratic primary between Rep. Chris Pappas and political newcomer Karishma Manzur, and the general election test to come, have tightened considerably.

The state's primary is set for Tuesday, and it will decide not just who represents Democrats and Republicans on the November ballot, but how national strategists in both parties think about a Senate map where control could again turn on a handful of contests.

The numbers

The shift shows up most starkly in the Democratic primary. A University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll released in late August found Pappas leading Manzur, 47 percent to 34 percent, a 13-point margin. That gap has been shrinking steadily: Pappas led Manzur by 43 percentage points in a January survey, according to the Concord Monitor's review of the polling, and by 24 points in the center's June release. The Pappas campaign has pushed back on the trend, releasing internal polling — first reported by Semafor — that put the congressman ahead 71 percent to 15 percent.

On fundraising, the gap between the two Democrats is wider than the polling gap. Federal Election Commission records show Manzur raised roughly $415,000 through July 29, compared with $15.4 million for Pappas over the same filing period; the congressman began August with about $4.3 million in cash on hand versus roughly $104,000 for his primary rival. Both candidates' full filing histories are public through the FEC's committee records for Pappas's Senate campaign and its counterpart filings for Manzur.

The same UNH poll found a general-election test between Pappas and former Sen. John E. Sununu essentially tied: 45 percent for Sununu, 43 percent for Pappas, with 5 percent for other candidates and 7 percent undecided — among the first surveys this cycle to show the Republican with any edge at all. On the Republican side, the primary is far less competitive: Sununu leads former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, 60 percent to 20 percent, in the same poll, a margin that tracks with Sununu's fundraising advantage over Brown in his own FEC disclosures. All of the underlying poll releases and methodology are archived by the UNH Survey Center's public poll repository.

How the race got competitive

The seat has been open since Shaheen, a Democrat first elected in 2008, announced she would not seek a fifth term, setting off the most consequential Senate contest New Hampshire has seen in years. Democrats need to hold the seat, along with the rest of their current caucus, if they hope to have any path to a majority; the party is simultaneously trying to flip Republican-held seats in Iowa and Ohio, and strategists in Washington have said losing New Hampshire would make that math nearly impossible.

Pappas, a four-term member of the House who represents New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District — a perennial battleground that has previously sent Republican Karoline Leavitt against him in 2022 — was widely seen as the presumptive Democratic nominee when he entered the race. He has built his campaign around experience, hitting themes of political corruption, affordability and the state's housing shortage. According to the UNH poll, 32 percent of his supporters cite his experience as their top reason for backing him.

Manzur, a biochemist from Exeter and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has never held or sought elected office before this year. She has run on a message aimed squarely at money in politics, campaigning against what she calls a political system "controlled by corporations" and calling for policies including a $25 minimum wage and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. Her rise mirrors a broader pattern of progressive challengers testing establishment Democrats in primaries this cycle. Most of her supporters, per the same poll, cite her policy positions or ideology — not experience — as the reason for their support.

On the Republican side, Sununu, who held the same Senate seat for one term before losing to Shaheen in 2008, has spent the years since working in the private sector and serving on corporate boards; he has campaigned on cutting taxes and regulation and protecting privacy rights. Brown, a former Massachusetts senator who later served as U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa during President Donald Trump's first term, has emphasized his military and diplomatic background. Both Republicans have sought some distance from Trump on the trail even as they court his voters, and Republican strategists see a boost coming from Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a popular incumbent at the top of November's ballot.

What the campaigns are saying

Pappas has increasingly framed his campaign around the stakes for Senate control rather than the primary itself, arguing that Democrats cannot risk nominating an untested candidate in a race the party needs to win.

"It's a building block that Democrats can't afford to toss aside," Pappas said in an interview. "If we can't hold the Senate seat, then the math just doesn't work in other states."

He has also leaned into anti-establishment language typically associated with challengers, telling reporters, "Our political system is rigged. The system is broken, and it's skewed in favor of corporate special interests" — phrasing Manzur says he lifted directly from her own stump speech. "He is basically copying my talking points," Manzur told New Hampshire Public Radio while canvassing volunteers in Durham this week. "It's so annoying."

Manzur, whose campaign describes her run as a grassroots challenge to entrenched incumbency, has cast Pappas's political career — and his spouse's work as an Uber executive and former Amazon lobbyist — as evidence he is closer to the establishment than his current messaging suggests. "I am honored to have the support of people across New Hampshire," she said in a statement, calling her campaign "a true grassroots effort."

Pappas's allies argue his experience is the point, not a liability. "Chris has the experience and know-how to get things done," Concord Mayor Byron Champlin said in a Pappas endorsement video. "Chris knows how to reach across the aisle and reach consensus when it's important."

Republicans, watching the Democratic contest tighten, have used it to argue Pappas is vulnerable regardless of who wins the primary. "Poll after poll shows that Granite Staters are fed up with Party Line Pappas being a rubber stamp for Democrats' radical agenda and they are ready to elect John Sununu in November," National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Samantha Cantrell said in a statement.

Democratic strategists in the state, meanwhile, say the primary's competitiveness reflects a shift in mood rather than a genuine threat to Pappas's standing. "For months, nobody was really thinking of it as competitive," said Steve Marchand, a longtime New Hampshire Democratic strategist and former candidate for governor. "But I think the bar has been raised."

What happens next

Voters in both parties cast primary ballots Tuesday, with the winners advancing to a general-election campaign that both national parties now consider genuinely competitive rather than a formality. The outcome carries stakes well beyond New Hampshire: with Democrats defending a state Shaheen has held for nearly two decades while trying to pick up Republican-held seats elsewhere, a loss here would substantially narrow the party's path back to a Senate majority in the second half of Trump's term.

For now, both leading campaigns are looking past Tuesday. Pappas has continued to campaign as though the general election, not the primary, is the fight that matters, a strategy that assumes his lead — however narrowed — holds through the vote. Manzur's campaign has signaled it will contest the result closely regardless of the final margin, arguing that a shrinking gap on a fraction of Pappas's budget is itself evidence of durable momentum. Whichever Democrat wins goes on to face a Republican field led by Sununu, whose own advantage over Brown appears comparatively secure, setting up a fall campaign that both parties expect to be decided at the margins.