Republicans in the Granite State were expected to give up some ground in the midterm elections.
They hadn’t expected to give up their slate of seats in Bedford, a GOP stronghold. Or the Senate seat in the heart of the Lakes Region. Or to be blown out of the Executive Council. The current House Speaker, Sherman Packard of Londonderry, was unseated, as was state Rep. Ross Berry, the conservative architect of the school tax cap ballot initiative that drew Democrats’ ire. In the New Hampshire Blue Wave, down-ballot candidates took the brunt.
“When you watch a video of a tsunami, right, the first thing you think about is, ‘Oh, those poor souls on the beach who are just looking at this wave coming at them,’” said Dante Scala, a professor of Political Science at UNH. “In New Hampshire, those are state legislators.”
The re-election of Governor Kelly Ayotte, slipping modestly compared to her fellow state Republicans, stood as the exception.
Former state GOP chair Chris Ager said it feels like the Tea Party midterms – but in the other direction.
“It looked like there was straight ticket voting against Republicans,” he said. “It’s not unprecedented at all, but it was more than what we expected…it’s kind of like their equivalent of 2010.”
While state Democrats exceeded expectations in state races – with projections for a low 290s seat majority in the 400-member House and a 15-seat majority among 24 Senators – they aren’t quite on track to pull the kind of dominant legislative position Republicans held in 2010, with GOP majorities 298 House seats and 19 Senate seats strong. Still, it remains the most sure-footed partisan clinch of the Legislature in years, and Democrats are projected to claim more seats in the New Hampshire House than ever before, knocking on the door of veto-proof majorities in both houses.
“To see this deep of a wave: Democrats sweeping in Bedford, winning six seats in Londonderry,” said Lucas Meyer, a Democratic strategist. “I mean, these are places where any political observer has never seen anything like this in a long time.”
Unlike Gov. Ayotte, Scala said down-ballot candidates have little name recognition or money and are likely to get swept into the national mood.
“Voters were in a mood to punish the national party in power, and it also seems clear that voters weren’t in much of a mood to pick and choose or discriminate between, say, federal officeholders and state officeholders,” he said. “If they had an ‘R’ next to their name, they were in trouble.”
That included House Speaker Packard, who finished tenth in a seven-seat district in Londonderry. The town backed an all-Republican state ticket in 2024 and endorsed Trump by a five-percentage-point margin.
“The voters have spoken, and I respect their decision,” Packard said in a statement Wednesday. “It has been the honor of my life to represent the people of Londonderry in the New Hampshire House for 36 years, and to serve my colleagues as Speaker for the last six.”
Senate President Sharon Carson, also of Londonderry, was poised to keep her seat by a nose, less than 500 votes, late into Wednesday.
To Ager, the biggest surprise came in the 2nd Senate District, where Republican incumbent Tim Lang was defeated in one of the state’s most typically red regions. When viewed alongside Bedford and Londonderry, Ager laid the blame at national, not local, politics.
“Those towns with long-term, well-respected Republican state representatives, people who’ve been there for multiple terms, who’ve done very well this year, were defeated by completely unknown Democrats,” he said. “They seem to be caught in the wave of negativity towards the president’s party.”
“It wasn’t that Republicans in New Hampshire did something wrong per se,” he continued.
“It seems like it was more of a Washington-based vote than a New Hampshire-based vote.”
Ayotte pulled ahead throughout the night, in part thanks to voters who split their ticket between Pappas and Ayotte. Take Bedford, for example, which Pappas carried with 53.5%. Ayotte won the town with 58% of the vote.
Denise Ricciardi, a three-term Republican state senator from Bedford, lost the town by more than five points to Matthew McLaughlin and appears likely to lose her seat entirely. McLaughlin claimed victory with more than a seven-point lead as of midday Wednesday, though six percent of votes had yet to be counted.
Merrimack saw a similar story, with Pappas winning at 56% and Ayotte at 53.3%. Democratic Senate candidate Shannon Chandley retook District 11, which includes Merrimack, by 16 percentage points. Chandley lost in 2024 to Tim McGough and, perhaps because of scandals surrounding McGough, outperformed both Pappas and Warmington to reclaim the seat.
Ayotte’s return to the corner office was the biggest Republican win of the night in the Granite State, especially as gubernatorial races in other U.S. Senate battleground states like Texas, Iowa and Ohio went the way of the Blue wave.
Democrats also clinched a majority on the Executive Council that serves as a check on the governor’s powers. Karen Liot Hill, who represents Concord, handily won reelection. She led her Republican challenger by 29 points on Wednesday afternoon, with 89% of votes counted. Democrats Jim O’Connell and Melanie Levesque also ousted Republican councilors John Stephen and Dave Wheeler, respectively. Democrats led in the other two races on Wednesday, too.
While Democrat Cinde Warmington notably flipped the major cities of Manchester and Nashua, Ayotte’s hometown, she chewed just a few percentage points away from the governor – with a 51-47 split towards Ayotte this year compared to her 54-44 win two years ago.
Watching early results in Concord and on the Seacoast, Scala began to wonder if a Warmington upset could come to pass. But Ayotte pulled ahead throughout the night, thanks to voters who split their ticket between Pappas and Ayotte. Take Bedford, for example, which Pappas carried with 53.5%. Ayotte won the town with 58% of the vote.
Ager credited Ayotte for running an affordability campaign that stayed focused state issues and for the aggressive ‘opioid lobbyist’ tack against Warmington, who got no financial backing from the Democratic Governors Association.
“Had they picked a different candidate,” he said, “who knows what would have happened.”
Scala mused that even a better-funded Warmington might have turned a competitive race into a flipped seat amid the blue tsunami. Ayotte out-fundraised her 5:1.
“New Hampshire Democrats are obviously happy today, but I’m sure some of them are saying, ‘Gee, we could have had the trifecta. We could have won. Ayotte was vulnerable,’” Scala said. “I imagine, amid all the happiness, there’s a bit of a ‘could have, should have’ mood among Democrats when it comes to the governor’s race.”
