Republican Don Bolduc is locked in a dead heat with Senator Maggie Hassan after trailing the incumbent Democrat for months, according to a new shock poll of the New Hampshire Senate race released Tuesday.
The retired Army brigadier general holds a 1 point advantage over Hassan, 48 to 47 percent, according to Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics poll. The institute’s September poll showed Bolduc trailing Hassan by 6 points, which suggests the Republican is gaining momentum just a week out from Election Day.
Partisan intensity among Bolduc and Hassan supporters is approaching parity, the poll suggests. While 93 percent of Democratic voters back Hassan, 91 percent of Republican voters back Bolduc, compared with an 11-point spread a month ago. Hassan is now tied with Bolduc among undeclared voters at 45 percent after leading by 8 points among that demographic in September.
Just last week, an Emerson College poll had Hassan leading Bolduc by a 3 point margin. Hassan’s upper hand was even stronger in late September, when a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll of likely midterm voters projected she would beat Bolduc 50 percent to 41 percent.
In the closing-argument ad of her campaign, “Whatever It Takes,” Hassan appealed to moderate New Hampshire voters and promised to work across the aisle with Republicans as well as “stand up to the President.” She doubled down on her pledge to challenge President Biden when he errs in an interview with NBC News.
“I’m always going to look out for New Hampshire first, which means I will criticize the President when I think he’s wrong, as I have on everything from the withdrawal from Afghanistan, to the administration’s need to have much more robust security at the southern border, to objecting to his FDA commissioner who I thought had too much too close ties to the opioid manufacturers,” Hassan said.
Bolduc secured the GOP nomination after defeating rival Chuck Morse, president of the state senate and self-styled as a moderate Republican, in the September primary. Despite Bolduc’s embrace of President Trump’s moves to question the election results, Democrats spent $3.1 million to boost his primary candidacy because they thought he’d be an easier opponent for Hassan.
Bolduc has had campaign-trail support from ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, who slammed Biden at a New Hampshire rally for allegedly persecuting and demonizing Trump supporters as an existential threat to democracy, comparing the president’s rhetorical tactics to Hitler’s.
While Republican New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu endorsed Morse, Trump didn’t formally endorse Bolduc ahead of the primary, although he complimented him as a “strong guy, a tough guy.” However, on Monday, Trump extended his endorsement to Bolduc, making clear that he was rewarding the candidate for questioning the results of the 2020 election.
“Don Bolduc has run a great campaign to be the U.S. Senator from the beautiful State of New Hampshire,” Trump said in Truth Social post. “He was a strong and proud ‘Election Denier,’ a big reason that he won the Nomination, but he then disavowed. He has since come back, at least on busing, but that is only a small part of N.H. Election Fraud.”
Before the primary, Bolduc maintained that the 2020 election was plagued by widespread voter fraud that may have affected the final result. However, since his general campaign has been under way, he has clarified that he does not believe Trump was cheated.
“Don Bolduc has asked for my endorsement, and he’s got it, Complete & Total. His opponent is a disaster on Crime, the Border, Inflation, & all else. Vote for Don Bolduc,” Trump wrote.
The poll was conducted October 28–29 among 1,541 likely voters. The margin of error was 2.5 percentage points.