CONCORD, New Hampshire — With two days left before Election Day, the race for New Hampshire’s open Senate seat has settled into a shape that both campaigns recognise, even if neither will say it is settled. Democrat Chris Pappas, a congressman from Manchester, holds a lead over Republican John E. Sununu, a former senator trying to return to the chamber after nearly two decades away, in most of the final public surveys. The size of that lead varies from poll to poll, and one respected forecaster still treats the contest as closer than the headline numbers suggest, but the direction of the late polling has been consistent enough that the race is now discussed less as a pure toss-up and more as a Democratic-leaning seat that Republicans have not yet managed to pull back.
The seat is open because Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat who has held it since 2009, is retiring. That makes New Hampshire one of the few states where Democrats are defending a seat without an incumbent on the ballot, and it raises the stakes for a party that needs a net gain of four seats to overturn the Republican majority of 53 to 47 in the Senate. Holding New Hampshire does not by itself deliver that majority. Losing it, however, would make the arithmetic considerably harder, because it would force Democrats to find an extra pickup somewhere else on a map where most of the competitive seats are already accounted for. For Republicans, winning a seat that Democrats have held for almost two decades would be a major prize, and a sign that the national environment is not as hostile to them as the generic ballot suggests.
Pappas has been the frontrunner for most of the autumn, but the race has not followed a straight line. Early surveys in the summer showed a closer contest, and some Republican-leaning polls in the autumn narrowed the gap to within a few points. What changed in October was the accumulation of surveys from different pollsters pointing the same way. A University of Massachusetts Lowell and YouGov survey released on October 28 put Pappas ahead by seven points, 48 percent to 41 percent, with Constitution Party candidate Edmond LaPlante at 4 percent and 7 percent undecided. A Saint Anselm College Survey Center poll of likely voters, conducted October 19 and 20, put Pappas ahead by a similar margin, 50 percent to 43 percent. A survey by AARP New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, fielded in late September and released in early October, had Pappas ahead 51 percent to 44 percent. A Rasmussen Reports survey cited in late October reporting also put Pappas six points ahead, at 50 percent to 44 percent.
No single poll should be treated as the race. The surveys differ in their methods, their sample sizes, and the dates on which they were conducted, and several of them carry margins of error large enough that a lead of six or seven points could in reality be smaller. The UMass Lowell survey, for example, interviewed 600 likely voters and carried an adjusted margin of error of about five percentage points, which means its seven-point lead is only just outside the range of statistical uncertainty. The Saint Anselm survey was larger, with 1,672 likely voters and a margin of error of about 2.4 points, which gives its seven-point lead more weight. The AARP survey interviewed 1,042 likely voters, but it used an oversample of voters aged 50 and older, which is a group that votes at high rates in New Hampshire but is not a perfect mirror of the whole electorate. Taken together, however, the pattern is what matters: different pollsters, using different methods, have repeatedly found Pappas ahead by roughly five to seven points in the final weeks.
What the New Hampshire Senate race polls show in the final days
Polling averages tell a similar story, with a slightly smaller margin than the most favourable individual surveys for Pappas. One forecasting model updated on November 1 put the polling average at 48.8 percent for Pappas and 42.6 percent for Sununu, a margin of about six points, based on 30 polls, with the most recent poll in its average dated October 23. The same model projected a vote share of about 53.8 percent for Pappas against 46.2 percent for Sununu, and gave Pappas roughly an 88 percent chance of winning, rating the race as likely Democratic. Another tracker of verified polls, also updated on November 1, averaged 21 surveys and found Pappas ahead by about seven points, at roughly 54 percent to 46 percent when undecided voters were allocated. Those figures are models, not votes, and they rest on assumptions about turnout that could prove wrong. But they explain why prediction markets have also moved toward Pappas, with traders pricing him at about 90 cents on the dollar on both major platforms in the final days, compared with about 11 or 12 cents for Sununu. Market prices are a measure of what traders are willing to bet, not a forecast by election officials, and they can move sharply on a single poll. Still, the combination of polling averages and market prices points in the same direction.
The forecaster ratings have shifted over the course of the campaign, which is itself a useful reminder of how the race has been read at different moments. After the primaries, at least one major forecaster moved the contest into the toss-up category, reflecting Sununu’s name recognition and the possibility that a well-known Republican could compete in a state that has often split its ticket. By October, the same conversation had moved again, with forecasters describing the race as leaning Democratic, while noting that Sununu remained within reach if the national environment tightened or if turnout among Republican-leaning voters surged. That evolution matters because it shows that the current Pappas lead was not assumed from the start. It was built over months of campaigning, and it could still narrow in the final hours if undecided voters break disproportionately toward the challenger, as undecided voters sometimes do.
New Hampshire’s voting rules add a further layer of uncertainty that both campaigns have factored into their closing strategies. The state allows same-day voter registration, which means that the electorate on Tuesday will include some voters who were not on the rolls when pollsters drew their samples. Same-day registration tends to help campaigns with strong ground operations, because it rewards the ability to identify supporters late and get them to a polling place with the right documents. It also makes late polling harder, because a portion of the final electorate is by definition not yet registered at the time of the survey. Neither campaign has claimed that this factor favours it decisively, but both have invested in turnout operations designed to take advantage of it, and both have spent the final weekend urging supporters not to assume that a poll lead, in either direction, will survive contact with the actual electorate.
The candidates and the choice facing Granite State voters
Pappas, who has represented New Hampshire’s First Congressional District since 2019, has campaigned as a continuation of the state’s Democratic tradition on issues such as health care, abortion rights, and the protection of voting access, while also emphasising his record on local matters such as support for small businesses and for the state’s hospitality and tourism industry. His background as a restaurant owner in Manchester has been a recurring theme of his campaign, presented as evidence that he understands the pressures facing working families and small employers. His supporters argue that he is a known quantity in New Hampshire politics, with a voting record that voters can judge, and that his lead in the polls reflects a judgment that he is the safer choice for a seat that has been held by Democrats for a generation.
Sununu, by contrast, is asking voters to send back a senator they have already sent to Washington once before. He served in the Senate from 2003 to 2009, after serving in the House, and he lost his re-election bid in 2008 to Shaheen, the very senator whose retirement created this opening. His campaign has argued that his experience, including his work on fiscal policy and on technology issues, makes him better equipped to deal with the economic pressures facing New Hampshire families, and that Pappas is too closely tied to the national Democratic Party. Sununu’s supporters also point to the fact that he has remained competitive in a state where Democrats have a registration advantage, and they argue that his name recognition and his family’s long history in New Hampshire politics — his father was governor and White House chief of staff — give him a base that polls may undercount.
The contrast between the two campaigns has been sharpened by the parallel race for governor, which is on the same ballot and which has followed a different trajectory. Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte, who is seeking re-election, has led her Democratic challenger, Cinde Warmington, by roughly nine to twelve points in recent polls, and forecasters rate her race as likely Republican. That creates the possibility of a split ticket on Tuesday: voters choosing a Republican for governor and a Democrat for senator, or vice versa, in a state that has often divided its statewide offices between the parties. Analysts who follow New Hampshire have noted that Ayotte’s strength may help Sununu at the margins, by bringing Republican-leaning voters to the polls who might otherwise stay home, but they have also noted that the gap between Ayotte’s lead and Sununu’s deficit suggests that a significant number of voters are already planning to split their ballots. If that pattern holds, it would be consistent with New Hampshire’s history of ticket-splitting, and it would mean that the Senate race will be decided less by straight party loyalty than by voters making separate judgments about two different offices.
Both campaigns have also had to navigate the national environment, which has been a double-edged sword for each of them. For Pappas, the national Democratic advantage in the generic ballot — the question that asks voters which party they prefer for Congress, regardless of the local candidates — has been helpful, because it suggests that voters who are dissatisfied with the direction of the country are more likely to vote for Democrats. For Sununu, the same environment has been a headwind, because it means that even voters who like him personally may vote against his party as a way of expressing dissatisfaction with the administration in Washington. Sununu’s campaign has tried to counter that by emphasising his independence and his willingness to break with his own party, a theme that has been central to his pitch since the primary. Pappas’s campaign has tried to counter it by tying Sununu to the national Republican agenda, arguing that a vote for Sununu is a vote for a Republican Senate majority regardless of his individual positions.
Why New Hampshire matters beyond its own borders
The national significance of the race is not just about the Senate arithmetic, although that arithmetic is the most immediate reason it is being watched in Washington. New Hampshire is also a test of whether Democrats can hold a seat in a state that President Donald Trump lost by a narrow margin in 2024, but where Republicans have shown they can win statewide offices when they run the right candidates. Ayotte’s lead in the governor’s race shows that Republican candidates can win in New Hampshire. Pappas’s lead in the Senate race shows that Democratic candidates can also win, even in the same election, if they run the right campaign. The combination of those two results, if it holds on Tuesday, would suggest that New Hampshire voters are making candidate-by-candidate judgments rather than simply following national trends, which is a lesson that both parties will carry into the next cycle.
The race is also being watched as an indicator of how the broader Senate map is breaking. Democrats need to hold all of their competitive seats and pick up several Republican-held seats to win the majority. If they hold New Hampshire comfortably, it frees resources and attention for the more difficult pickups in states such as Texas, Kansas, and Ohio, where the margins are tighter and the outcomes less certain. If New Hampshire turns out to be closer than the final polls suggest, or if Sununu wins an upset, it would signal that the Republican turnout operation is outperforming the polls, which would have implications for every other close Senate race on the map. That is why the race has drawn national money and national attention disproportionate to the size of the state, and why both parties have sent senior figures to campaign in New Hampshire in the final days.
For voters in New Hampshire, the practical information is straightforward. Polls in the state close on Tuesday, November 3, and the result may not be known on election night if the margin is close or if late-arriving ballots and same-day registrations slow the count. The state has a reputation for counting efficiently, but close races in recent cycles have sometimes taken days to resolve, and both campaigns have prepared their supporters for that possibility. The most important fact for voters is also the simplest: the polls are snapshots, not results, and the only survey that counts is the one conducted at the ballot box. Pappas leads in the final polls, Sununu has a path if undecided voters break his way, and the outcome will be decided by the voters who actually turn out on Tuesday, not by the models that have tried to predict them.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Pollsmax, Seacoast Online and Washington Examiner.