The Senate race in New Hampshire is a single-digit race, according to recent polls.
Don Bolduc trails Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) by seven points with 45% support to Hassan’s 52%, according to the latest AARP poll.
The retired Army general won the Republican nomination in September, beating out his closest competitor, state Sen. Chuck Morse (R), by a slim margin. Bolduc garnered 37.1% of the vote to Morse’s 35.8%.
Last week, two other polls showed Hassan with an even smaller lead over her challengers, which include Libertarian Party candidate Jeremy Kauffman, as well as Bolduc.
According to a St. Anselm College poll released last Tuesday, Hassan has a lead of just six points over Bolduc, 49% to Bolduc’s 43%.
According to yet another poll from the Trafalgar Group, Hassan leads Bolduc by only three points with 48.2% to Bolduc’s 45%.
In both polls, 4% of voters said they plan to vote for a different candidate, likely the Libertarian Party nominee.
Other polls are less rosy for Bolduc. A Suffolk University poll from last month puts Hassan nine points over Bolduc, leading 50% to 41%. Hassan also enjoys more support from Democratic voters than Bolduc does among Republican voters, according to the AARP poll.
However, Hassan, a first-term senator, is considered one of the most vulnerable Democrat senators this election cycle. She won by a tiny margin of about 1,000 votes in 2016, but her job approval has sunk since then.
Democrats have assumed that the more conservative Bolduc will be a weaker candidate against Hassan than the more moderate Morse, but with President Joe Biden’s poll numbers declining over the economy, that remains to be proven.
Meanwhile, Hassan has dug her heels in on ultra-progressive issues like late-term abortion, making her support of the procedure all the way through the third trimester part of her campaign. The polarizing issue could end up costing her with Granite State moderates.
Over the summer, Bolduc told The Daily Wire that inflation is the top issue facing New Hampshire voters this fall.
“People can’t afford a new car and can’t afford the gas. They can’t afford their groceries. They’re trading all of this, all of these decisions and putting that money towards keeping their vehicle going in order to be able to support their family and get to their jobs,” Bolduc said in July.
Despite their lagging poll numbers, Bolduc’s campaign remains confident, saying that Hassan’s presence on the campaign trail in New Hampshire borders on nonexistent.
“Gen. Bolduc has done more public events in the past 36 hours than Maggie Hassan has done in the past 36 weeks. She’s a ghost and Granite Staters know it. She doesn’t have the courage to face voters after what she’s put them through and the bill comes due on November 8,” Rick Wiley, a Bolduc campaign strategist, told the New Hampshire Journal.
Since winning his primary, Bolduc has made dozens of in-person campaign stops, appearing at town halls almost daily where he takes questions from voters. Meanwhile, Hassan has held few public campaign events.
In the campaign spending category though, Hassan beats Bolduc by a long shot. Hassan has spent at least $24 million on her campaign, while Bolduc has spent slightly more than $500,000.
