NH-SEN 2022 Megathread: General Dysfunction

[Spectator]

I didn’t realize Hassan had a high approval as well. No shocker about Sununu’s. If they are both popular, it’s anyone’s guess who wins, but edge Sununu.

[Spectator]

Does Sununu even want to be the guy who puts the nutjob national GOP back in power?  He strikes me as at least a half-decent human being; if I were him, I’d just chill in my state with my high approval rating as Governor.

He’s a Republican, of course he wants to see a Republican Senate. Look no further than how he, Baker and Hogan all endorsed and made ads for Republican Senate candidates last year.

[Spectator]

I didn’t realize Hassan had a high approval as well. No shocker about Sununu’s. If they are both popular, it’s anyone’s guess who wins, but edge Sununu.

Morning Consult always inflates elected official's "approval ratings," especially (but not exclusively) when it’s Democrats. Her approval ratings are a lot less rosy in other polls.

Anyway, not sure this even warranted its own article. While Sununu would obviously be a top recruit for the GOP, I also don’t buy that he’s going to immediately shift this race three categories to the right, i.e., that Hassan would have been pretty much safe without him or, conversely, that this would be way better a pick-up opportunity than AZ/NV solely because of Sununu's candidate quality. This state has been an uphill battle for any Republican at the federal level for quite some time now, and while I do expect a (moderate) rightward shift in NH under Biden, the party still has a pretty deep hole to climb out of here, with not much of a reliable, R-trending base area to max out like in ME. Don’t lose sight of the fundamentals.

“The political cemetery is filled with folks who underestimated Maggie Hassan,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley.

More like “The political cemetery is filled with folks who underestimated New Hampshire's Democratic lean.”

Do you think Sununu could have beat Shaheen in 2020? The ticket-splitting was ginormous. I think him waiting until 2022 was the right call.

[Spectator]

It’s not that difficult, honestly. Any Republican candidate needs to keep losses among NH women to low double digits while winning over nearly all the persuadable male voters in order to just barely get over the top statewide — that, combined with record R base turnout, only gets you a narrow win in the NH of today. The type of male Republican most likely to accomplish this (especially against a D female incumbent) is reserved, "knows his place," doesn’t make any conspicuously gender-based appeals/categorically refuses to engage in identity politics tailored to a predominantly male audience, keeps his head down, and basically brands himself as a non-ideological, compassionate citizen who only reaches his most important decisions after listening to the counsel of his wive (and daughter). By contrast, people like Scott Brown, Donald Trump, Don Bolduc, Corky Messner, Paul Hodes, and other assertive, confrontational, male 'machismo' candidates who literally or metaphorically step into the female comfort zone/safe space and think they can set the tone inevitably end up getting rejected in a humiliating fashion by said D female candidates and the kind of female voter base that endorses/celebrates/actively contributes to this resounding rejection. We’ve seen this movie before and know how this story ends, and there’s not much reason to believe it will be any different with Bolduc (or Lewandowski, LOL). If the Republican goal in NH is "supercharged gender polarization", i.e., aiming for R margins among NH men that exceed the D margins among NH women, then good luck — there’s a good 43%-44% of NH men, many of them oppressed in a very one-sided relationship, many of them socially liberal, many of them single, who will gladly join the female-driven humiliation of the type of man they are not/cannot be (think of them as the Chris Pappases of NH). This really just boils down to simple psychology, and it has been observable in just about every NH race since 2006 — the Shaheen campaign knows how to exploit these anxieties better than anyone else, and Ayotte was one of the very few Republicans to benefit from them in 2010. Also, every time we think Republicans have finally 'bottomed out' among NH women, they keep sinking to new lows with this demographic. There was a poll last year which showed Shaheen leading Messner 70-26 among NH women even as Messner was (very narrowly) leading her among NH men, and that’s probably the future we’re headed for (not in 2022, but sooner than we’d like). The bottom line is that betting on NH men to somehow outvote NH women in a federal race involving candidates like Hassan or Bolduc is... bold.

My guess as to the realistic range of outcomes in this race, with the GOP best-case scenario on the left and the DEM best-case scenario on the right:

NH women (52-53%): 59-41 Hassan / 65-35 Hassan
NH men (47-48%): 56-44 Bolduc / 52-48 Bolduc

Olawakandi is right: Sununu was able to win in 2018 because he had a fairly large cushion in his race against Molly Kelly, which allowed him to withstand the inevitable losses among NH women in the final weeks/months of the campaign and the predictable consolidation of "undecided" NH women around Molly Kelly. I don’t think we’ll ever even be entertaining any "cushions" in the case of Bolduc, Messner, Lewandowski, etc.

This is so funny, I love it.

[Spectator]

SLF is willing to throw $23M into NH with Bolduc the likely nominee, but the RGA isn't spending anything for Mastriano?

Like Bolduc is the worst possible outcome for the GOP, why would they waste $23M there on that race? That's $50M between Ohio and NH that should just be so unnecessary for them to spend, and $50M that's not going to actual swing state competitive races.

They’re probably gonna cancel if Bolduc wins the primary.

[Spectator]

Okay yeah he's finished

https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1579084964611919872

This is almost like the Democrat caricature of what they think every Republican would do with abortion. Except this moron actually said it