New Hampshire and Massachusetts: Primary Fields Take Shape

New polling from the University of New Hampshire offers the clearest look yet at the state's crowded Senate race, and the numbers cut in two directions at once. On the Democratic side, Chris Pappas holds 47 percent in the primary field, a commanding share that suggests he has consolidated the bulk of the party's institutional and grassroots support well ahead of the vote. But the same UNH survey finds him trailing Republican John Sununu 45-43 in a hypothetical general election matchup. The gap sits within a range where turnout modeling and undecided voters could move the outcome, and it complicates any narrative that Pappas's primary strength translates cleanly into a general-election advantage. New Hampshire has a history of close statewide contests, and this early deficit against Sununu — a Republican with his own long history in state politics — signals a race that national committees on both sides will likely treat as competitive from the outset.

Down the ballot, New Hampshire's 2nd Congressional District race is shaping up as a lopsided pair of primaries rather than a competitive one. Maggie Goodlander leads Maura Sullivan 59-24 on the Democratic side, a 35-point spread that leaves little room for Sullivan to close before voters weigh in. On the Republican line, Lily Tang Williams holds a similar advantage over Holly Noveletsky, 58-28. Both margins are large enough that, barring a shift in the underlying electorate, the general election matchup in this district is likely to be set well in advance of any late-breaking developments. The size of the gaps also raises a practical question for both parties' campaign operations: whether resources currently allocated to the primary phase should instead be redirected toward the general contest, given how settled the primary picture already appears.

In Massachusetts, the university's polling of the Democratic Senate primary shows Ed Markey at 63 percent. That is a wide lead by any measure, and it stands in contrast to the more competitive dynamics playing out just across the border in New Hampshire. The scale of Markey's advantage suggests the Massachusetts primary is unlikely to be the marquee storyline of this cycle's Senate calendar — but it also underscores how differently the same polling outfit's methodology is landing in neighboring states with very different partisan compositions. Where New Hampshire's numbers point to genuine uncertainty in a general election, Massachusetts's point toward a primary that may be largely academic by the time votes are counted.

Taken together, the two states illustrate a familiar New England pattern: primaries that clarify quickly in safely partisan contests, and a genuine fight brewing in the one race — New Hampshire's Senate contest — where neither party can yet claim the advantage.

What to Watch Tomorrow

Attention turns to Nevada's 1st Congressional District, which both parties' campaign committees have newly targeted, with additional filings and polling expected. Also watch for developments in Alaska's Senate race, where two Republican candidates sharing the name Dan Sullivan have both advanced to the general election ballot — a quirk of ballot mechanics that could complicate voter identification of the two campaigns in the general election.