New Hampshire

Democrat Chris Pappas won the Senate seat, which Democrats already held, by 13.8 points over Republican John E. Sununu. Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, was re-elected by 4.4 over Democrat Cinde Warmington.¹ Kamala Harris carried the state by 2.8 points in 2024. Democrats kept both U.S. House seats, Stefany Shaheen by 14.1 points and Maggie Goodlander by 20.0. The state Senate went from 16 Republicans and 8 Democrats to 15 Democrats and 9 Republicans in our count, and Democrats won all five seats on the Executive Council, where they had held one.^{1, 2}

Compared with the 2024 presidential vote, the Senate race moved 11.0 points toward the Democrats. Pappas drew 85 votes for every 100 Harris won here, and Sununu drew 68 for every 100 of Donald Trump’s. The governor’s race ran the other way: Ayotte’s margin was 7.2 points better for Republicans than the presidential result, on the same ballots. The Senate race drew 637,981 votes in our count, 103% of the 2022 figure and 78% of the 2024 presidential vote.

The state moved by nearly the same amount everywhere. New Hampshire’s part of the Boston area, which casts 34% of the vote, moved 10.5 points, from D+1.5 to D+12.0. The Manchester area moved 11.5, from D+2.9 to D+14.4, and the rest of the state, with 38% of the vote, moved 11.0, from D+3.8 to D+14.8.

Of the three counties that voted for Trump in 2024 and for Pappas this year, Rockingham County, in New Hampshire’s part of the Boston area, is the largest. It went from R+2.4 to D+7.0 on 158,594 votes, 25% of the state’s total. Hillsborough County, around Manchester, cast more votes than any other county and went from D+2.9 to D+14.4. Strafford County moved furthest, 13.6 points, to D+25.6. Coos County moved nearly as far and stayed Republican, by 1.3 points where Trump had won it by 13.8.

Republicans lost full control of state government: Ayotte stays, and Democrats took both chambers.^{1, 2} The House clerk’s unofficial count, reported by NHPR, gives Democrats 292 of the 400 House seats, with 107 Republicans and one independent; the Boston Globe reported 291 Democrats from the clerk’s preliminary count.^{1, 2} More than half of that majority will be new lawmakers, NHPR reported.³ A veto can be overridden with a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate, as the Keene Sentinel states the rule. Either House figure is above two-thirds. In the Senate, 15 of 24 seats is one short, so Democrats would likely need at least one Republican vote to complete an override.^{2, 4}

The Executive Council changed more completely than either chamber. Democrats won all five seats, up from one; the Associated Press called the last of them, District 1, for Democrat Luz Bay over Joe Kenney on November 6.^{1, 2, 5} The new majorities will also choose who runs elections. The secretary of state is elected by the full House and Senate in December; the incumbent, David Scanlan, in the job since 2022, is seeking another two-year term, and NHPR reported that several Democrats are considering a challenge.⁶

House Democrats nominated Rep. Alexis Simpson of Exeter for speaker on November 12, by 200 votes to 75 over Rep. Jim Maggiore, and the full House votes on December 2.³ “We know that people are struggling, needing lower property taxes, needing more affordable housing, needing to lower the cost of childcare, and to find accessible, affordable childcare throughout the state,” she said after the caucus vote.³ One early test is a bill to legalize marijuana, which a Democratic representative plans to sponsor and which Ayotte has long opposed.⁴

The two questions on every ballot followed different rules. A constitutional amendment needs a two-thirds majority, as NHPR states the rule, and Question 1, which would have removed the register of probate from the constitution, drew 64.8% yes in our count and failed.⁷ Question 2 was a local question asked in every city and town at once: a cap on annual increases in local school taxes that applies only in the communities that passed it by 60 percent.⁸ Its statewide yes share, 58.9%, decides nothing.

The school tax cap was settled town by town. Voters in at least 113 communities passed it, NHPR reported, citing WMUR. It narrowly failed in Manchester, where 59.8 percent supported it, and in Bedford, at 59.2 percent. Where it passed, the cap can still be overridden at the annual school district meeting.⁸

The governorship was the one Republican-held office in our count that stayed Republican. Ayotte won by 4.4 points on a ballot where the Republican candidate for Senate lost by 13.8, and she kept her office while her party lost both chambers and the Executive Council majority.¹ “I believe in our state and our people, and together we will work to make life more affordable for everyone,” she said, WCAX reported on November 4.⁹ In the Senate race, two of the state’s 10 counties voted Republican, and none moved toward the Republicans from 2024. Democrats, for their part, fell one seat short of two-thirds in the state Senate, which NHPR described as just shy of a veto-proof majority.²

The next Senate seat on the ballot is Margaret Wood Hassan’s, in 2028, in a state that voted Democratic for president by 2.8 points in 2024 and Democratic for Senate by 13.8 this year. Before that, the House chooses its speaker on December 2, and the House and Senate together elect a secretary of state at the start of the session in December.^{3, 6}

The House clerk’s figures are unofficial, our own count could not read every district, and the clerk said recounts were likely.^{1, 2} Simpson is the Democratic caucus’s nominee for speaker, and the office is not hers until the full House votes.³