President-elect Donald Trump spoke with reporters in October 2023 after signing candidacy papers for the 2024 New Hampshire primary. To his left are his regional campaign chairman, Steve Stepanek, center, and Secretary of State David Scanlan.
Vice President Kamala Harris snagged the state’s four electoral votes, but President-elect Donald J. Trump’s stronger-than-expected performance in New Hampshire translated into several down-ballot upset victories for Republicans, according to an analysis of voting results.
A strong case can be made that Victoria Sullivan of Manchester and Tim McGough of Merrimack will become state senators thanks at least in part to Trump’s pull at the top of the ballot.
To be sure, Republican Governor-elect Kelly Ayotte’s 9-point victory over Democrat Joyce Craig of Manchester, more than double what the final polls had forecast, contributed to these wins.
But it all started with Trump’s third and most surgical run for the White House, a New Hampshire effort that managed to attract 30,000 more votes than he got here in 2020 and 50,000 more than when he won the presidency in 2016 and narrowly lost New Hampshire to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Harris’s underperformance in key battleground states, compared with what President Joe Biden did in 2020, was pivotal in Trump’s comeback victory nationally.
“This was addition by addition,” said Steve Stepanek, former Republican state chairman and Trump’s regional campaign manager in New Hampshire and Maine.
“We made a concerted effort to identify the likely Trump voters who were out there but not registered to vote and closed the sale with them.”
Stepanek credited House Majority Floor Leader Joe Sweeney, R-Salem, with leading the effort with the Trump national campaign to identify a universe of 59,000 fiscal and social conservatives who fit the profile of a Trump voter but had never cast a ballot for him.
President-elect Donald Trump spoke with reporters in October 2023 after signing candidacy papers for the 2024 New Hampshire primary. To his left are his regional campaign chairman, Steve Stepanek, center, and Secretary of State David Scanlan.
Sweeney is chairman of Granite Solutions, a political consulting firm.
“We were able to get some limited resources from the national campaign to build out this model and then we spent months focusing almost exclusively on this population,” Stepanek said.
This included three mailings in the final month and weeks of door-knocking at these potential voters’ homes.
“I told our field people to recheck the numbers three times because they were reporting that 91% of those who answered them said, ‘Yeah, we like Trump and show us how we can register to vote and we will,’” Stepanek said.
“This kind of uptake rate is unheard of, but clearly it worked.”
Secretary of State David Scanlan will soon report on the number of people who registered to vote at the polls on Election Day. Prior to the election, Scanlan said the number could be as high as 100,000.
“We had 2,600 Election Day registrants in Salem and 1,900 in Derry, and trust me, they were overwhelmingly Republican,” Stepanek said.
Same-day registration convert
As former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Stepanek was never a fan of Election Day registration.
The Republican-led Legislature adopted it in 1992, so it didn’t have to comply with the so-called federal Motor Voter Law that requires states to register voters at many public locations including motor vehicle substations and welfare offices.
“The Democrats always used this device to great effect to sign up college kids to vote,” Stepanek said. “Now I wouldn’t get rid of it because we have figured out a way to make it work for us.”
The shift is most acute in the southern portions of the state.
In 2020, Biden won Rockingham County in the southeastern region over Trump by about 5,000 votes.
Last Tuesday, Trump won it by 5,000.
This wasn’t done by flipping communities from blue to red; it was by winning already-Republican towns by bigger margins than he had the last time.
Trump won in Salem by 3,500 last week compared with 2,300 in 2020; he won Derry by 2,100 votes, nearly double his win total four years ago.
Hillsborough County, anchored by Manchester and Nashua, has always been a stronghold for Democrats running for president.
Biden won it by 18,000 in 2020; this time, Harris won it by only 6,000.
Likewise, Cheshire County to the west went big for Biden by about 8,000 four years ago; Harris won this time, but only by a 4,000-vote edge.
Case studies: Down-ballot impact
House Speaker Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry, just elected to his 17th term in the House, forcefully coaxed GOP partisans at a Center Right meeting last month.
“Too many times I’ve seen us lose seats because our voters didn’t go far enough down the ballot and theirs did,” Packard said.
He got his wish last week that helped produce these outcomes:
• Senate District 18: Senate Democratic Leader Donna Soucy of Manchester lost to Sullivan in this district that consists of five Manchester wards and Litchfield.
In 2020, Biden beat Trump there, 52% to 48%; last week, Trump turned the tide, he beat Harris 50.7% to 49.3%.
Trump got 13,553 votes; Sullivan was right behind with 13,290.
Soucy ran five points better than Craig, who lost to Ayotte in the district, 57% to 43%, but Trump helped seal her fate.
• Senate District 11: Three-term Rep. McGough retired two-term Amherst Democrat Shannon Chandley in this district that includes Amherst, Merrimack, Milford and Wilton.
Harris won all four towns, but Trump got more than 1,500 above his 2020 total. This included 800 more voting for Trump in McGough’s hometown of Merrimack, where he decisively beat Chandley.
• Cheshire County House District 10: Alstead Republican Rich Nalevanko upset 17-term incumbent Rep. Dan Eaton, D-Stoddard.
In 2020, Biden won the four-town district over Trump 54% to 46%; on Tuesday, Harris squeaked by, 51% to 49%.
So in a rematch, Eaton lost by 39 votes to an opponent he beat two years ago by 128 votes.
• Hillsborough County House District 39: Rep. Benjamin Baroody, a 15-term incumbent, finished third for two seats that went to Republicans to represent Manchester wards 6, 8 and 9.
Trump won both wards 6 and 8 and lost Ward 9 by only 25 votes.
• Strafford County House District 8: Eight-term Rep. Chuck Grassie lost his Rochester Ward 4 seat to Republican Sam Farrington by 267 votes.
Grassie and Republican David Walker tied for the seat after a recount two years ago and then he easily won in a special election a few months later.
In 2020, Trump lost Rochester Ward 4 by 103 votes; last Tuesday he took it by 87.
• Coos County House Districts 5 and 7: Three Berlin-based, House Democrats lost last Tuesday, completing a 9-0 GOP sweep of a delegation that had been 5-4 Republican after 2022.
In 2020, Biden beat Trump in Berlin 2,147 to 1,852.
