With the 2020 election cycle now in the rear view mirror and the early moves underway for the 2022 midterms, a new poll suggests two out of five New Hampshire voters view the job Sen. Maggie Hassan is doing in Washington favorably.
Hassan, the Newfields Democrat and former two-term governor who’s running next year for a second six-year term representing New Hampshire in the U.S. Senate, was the headline in a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll released on Friday.
“N.H. Senator Hassan Less Popular Than Colleague Shaheen,” the poll announced.
The new survey indicated that Hassan had a 41% favorable rating among Granite Staters, with 36% of New Hampshire residents viewing the senator holding an unfavorable opinion of her. Nineteen percent of those questioned were neutral, with 4% unsure.
Hassan’s favorable rating was up five points since the previous UNH poll, which was conducted in December, but lower than earlier in her current term in the Senate.
While her current favorable rating is above water, it’s not much to brag about as Hassan slowly builds toward next year’s re-election campaign. But how much is the new poll an accurate barometer of Hassan’s political strength heading into the 2022 election cycle?
“Most people don’t pay attention to politics most of the time, so for Hassan it’s largely been out of sight, out of mind during the presidential election year in particular, but even longer than that,” UNH Survey Center Director Andrew Smith cautioned.
As expected, there’s a wide partisan divide when it comes to views of Hassan. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats hold a positive view of the senator, but that plunges to just 6% among Republicans. A quarter of independent voters questioned said they had a favorable view of the senator, with 27% neutral and 45% holding an unfavorable view of Hassan.
The job approval rating of newly inaugurated Democratic President Joe Biden could influence how people view Hassan.
“I’m paying less attention to Hassan’s favorabilities right now as I am to Democratic President Joe Biden’s job approval ratings going into 2022, because that’s going to be a bigger indication of what happens not only in New Hampshire but across the country for Democrats,” Smith said.
“If Biden has a low job approval going into 2022, it’s going to be real hard for Democrats,” Smith added.
The UNH survey, which was conducted Jan. 21-25, indicated Biden with an initial 55%-37% approval/disapproval rating among Granite Staters.
As with Hassan, there was a wide partisan divide, with 98% of Democrats but just 16% of Republicans approving of the job Biden was doing in his first days in the White House.
The U.S. Senate is split 50-50 between the two parties, but the Democrats won back the chamber’s majority for the first time in six years due to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. That means Republicans only have to flip one seat in 2022 to regain the majority they lost in the 2020 elections.
But the GOP is defending 20 of the 34 seats up for grabs next year. The difficult map isn’t the only obstacle facing the Republicans. They’re also defending open seats in two crucial battleground states due to retirements. Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Richard Burr of North Carolina are not running for reelection. Plus two-term Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio announced this week that he’ll retire from the Senate rather than run for re-election in 2022.
Republicans see pick up opportunities in several states, including in New Hampshire. Besides Hassan’s seat, Republicans are eying Arizona and Georgia, where Democrats Mark Kelly and Raphael Warnock – who won special elections to serve two years in the Senate – are up for re-election in 2022 in key battleground states. And the GOP sees possible pickups in Nevada – where first term Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto is up for re-election.
The biggest question surrounding Hassan’s re-election is which Republican will end up challenging her in 2022. Retired Gen. Don Bolduc, who unsuccessfully ran for the 2020 GOP Senate nomination, is already in the race.
But speculation is swirling around popular three-term GOP Gov. Chris Sununu and former Republican senator Kelly Ayotte, who lost her 2016 re-election to then-Gov. Hassan by a razor-thin margin.
Sununu, who could run for a fourth term as governor, take on Hassan for the Senate, or leave politics in 2022, isn’t ruling anything in or out right now.
“Not until well into 2021,” Sununu said last month when asked about his 2022 timetable. “And we’ll look at all aspects of the political opportunities or private opportunities, whatever it might be.”
According to @UNHSurveyCenter, @ChrisSununu‘s favorability rating is **ten times** higher than @SenatorHassan‘s.
net +41 versus net +4#nhpolitics https://t.co/Lxo9gC8u79
— Ben Vihstadt (@brvihsta) January 29, 2021
But the governor’s spokesman sparked more speculation about a possible Sununu Senate bid, courtesy of a tweet on Friday.
“According to @UNHSurveyCenter, @ChrisSununu’s favorability rating is **ten times** higher than @SenatorHassan’s. Net +41 versus net +4,” Benjamin Vihstadt wrote.
New Hampshire Republicans are divided over whether former President Donald Trump should run for president again in 2024 to try to win back the White House, according to the UNH survey.
Forty-seven percent Republicans questioned say the former president should run again in 2024, with 45% disagreeing.
Yet the survey indicates that by a nearly two-to-one margin (58%-31%), Granite State Republicans say the GOP should follow Trump’s leadership rather than going in a different direction.
Trump dramatically reshaped the Republican Party and ruled over it with an iron grip during his four years in the White House. The former president has repeatedly vowed to play an influential role in the GOP going forward, and is flirting with a 2024 presidential run.
“Most of the activists I talk to still have a lot of warm feelings for the president, particularly when they look back at the last four years and contrast that with the first week of the Biden administration,” Greg Moore, a longtime conservative activist and member of the Hillsborough County Republican Committee, told the Monitor. “He’s still tremendously popular and is going to carry a lot of weight.”
Moore said the big question is whether those feelings will last another four years.
While politically wounded by the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by right-wing extremists and other Trump supporters intent on disrupting congressional certification of Biden’s White House victory – after encouragement from the president – Trump remains extremely influential among Republicans.
While half of all Granite Staters say Trump “bears a great amount of responsibility” for the insurrection at the Capitol and another 10% said he “bears a good amount of responsibility,” more than three-quarters of New Hampshire Republicans say Trump bears little or no responsibility for the storming of the Capitol.