Donald Trump’s team’s claim that New Hampshire will be “in play” at the 2024 election looks unlikely to come to fruition, with polls and experts suggesting Kamala Harris will win the Granite State in November.
It was recently reported that a former GOP official will no longer be involved with Trump’s campaign after he determined that New Hampshire should not be considered competitive, urging fellow volunteers to focus their attention on the swing state of Pennsylvania instead.
Tom Mountain, a Massachusetts volunteer for the Trump campaign, said in an email obtained by The Boston Globe that Trump was “sure to lose by an even higher margin” in New Hampshire in November than he did in 2016 and 2020, citing “campaign data/research.”
Trump lost New Hampshire to President Joe Biden by 7 points at the last election. At the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton managed to win the state over Trump by just 0.3 percent, or around 2,700 votes.
Mountain also “claimed resources would be suspended” in New Hampshire and that “the campaign would not send Trump or high-profile surrogates such as his sons.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel on January 17, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Polls and experts suggest Trump will lose to Kamala Harris in New Hampshire at the 2024 election.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied the claims from Mountain, and said that the campaign will continue to fight in New Hampshire.
“This isn’t true: President Trump’s campaign maintains an on-the-ground presence in New Hampshire, including staff and offices, while Kamala Harris is parachuting in because she knows that the Granite State is in play,” Leavitt told Newsweek.
“We look forward to building on the momentum that we have grown since the primary and sending New Hampshire’s four electoral votes to President Trump’s column on November 5.”
In the 1970s and 80s, New Hampshire was a GOP stronghold. However, a Republican presidential candidate has only won New Hampshire once in the previous eight elections—George W. Bush in 2000—with the Democratic candidates winning the last five in a row.
Christopher Phelps, a historian of modern American politics who teaches at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., said that while “anything is possible” in politics, Trump winning New Hampshire “is a low probability” due to Harris’ current polling.
“A generation ago, New Hampshire was a reliably Republican state, and it still often elects Republican governors, but like the rest of the New England region it has shifted toward the Democrats in national-level contests for the Senate and presidency,” Phelps told Newsweek.
“Trump has more serious problems in North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona and will undoubtedly concentrate his resources there.”
On August 21, a University of New Hampshire poll showed Harris with a healthy 7-point lead over Trump in the state (50 percent to 43).
On August 19, a Saint Anselm College Survey Center (SACSC) poll showed Harris has expanded her 6-point lead from July, and now holds a 7-point advantage over the former president (51 percent to 44).
“The key to Harris’s lead is partisan intensity,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, said in a statement.
“While President Joe Biden had the backing of just 82 percent of Democratic voters in June, Harris has united her party, securing 94 percent of the Democratic vote.
“By contrast, Trump is receiving 90 percent of the Republican vote. Trump and running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, will need to diminish their opponents’ relative popularity if they are to make New Hampshire competitive in November.”
