Former President Donald Trump has the momentum in the presidential race right now. He's erased Kamala Harris's leads in the RealClearPolitics national polling average and is winning in all of the battleground states. Such momentum at this point in the race is huge, and some believe that he can expand the electoral map.
And sure enough, another blue state appeared to show signs that Trump is very much in play there. The latest New Hampshire Journal/Praecones Analytica poll released Sunday night shows him narrowly leading Harris in the Granite State. Trump’s lead stands at 50.2 to 49.8 percent. Is it a small lead within the margin of error? Yes. But is that a big sign that Trump could potentially win the state? You bet it is.
"But the fact that Trump, who’s lost the Granite State twice, is leading in a state Democrats carried in seven of the last eight presidential races, could be very significant," writes Michael Graham at the New Hampshire Journal. "It’s one of a series of indicators that the Trump campaign is expanding the field of potential pick-up states less than two weeks before Election Day."
The last time a Republican won New Hampshire was in 2000.
It's not the only poll showing New Hampshire is close. A recent Emerson College poll indicated that Trump was only trailing Kamala by 50% to 47%. For our liberal readers, that's just three points.
Trump’s neck-and-neck polling with Harris in New Hampshire adds fuel to the narrative that his campaign is gaining momentum going into the last week of the campaign, momentum his team believes is expanding the map. The former president is scheduled to appear in both New Mexico and Virginia in the final days of the campaign.
“The interesting thing that is going unreported right now is the shift in the dynamic,” former Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said on Mark Halperin’s 2Way news program last week. “We have seen a shift, and now Minnesota, New Hampshire, Virginia, New Mexico, and potentially Nebraska [Second Congressional District] are all back in play in a way we wouldn’t have been talking about four weeks ago.”
The report continues:
“Look at the data,” Spicer added. “Look at what is happening in each of these states. They are all trending in Trump’s direction.”
On the generic ballot questions, Granite Staters were split. While they preferred Republicans control Congress 52 to 48 percent), a slim majority (50.6 to 49.4 percent) would prefer to see Democrats control the state legislature in Concord.
In an interview with Megyn Kelly, Mark Halperin mentioned New Hampshire as a potential state Trump could flip and noted that Trump is hiring campaign workers in the state.
I'm not predicting Trump will win a landslide. I'm not rooting for Trump winning a landslide. But there's a school of thought that says, Trump's going to go to Albuquerque to try to win New Mexico. He's going to go to St. Paul to try to win Minnesota. He's going to go to, I don't know, Richmond to try to win Virginia. And then he's going to go to New Hampshire. And I was told yesterday, as someone showed me, an email saying that the Trump campaign is doing last-minute hiring, paying a pretty robust sum for folks to do doorknocking at the last minute.
"So watch that dynamic," Halperin said. "Let's see."
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