NH is definitely trending rightward long-term.
This seems to be the conventional wisdom for some reason, but I still don’t get why people are so convinced that this is actually the case. This is a state where Republicans are disproportionately reliant on winning some of the most populous suburban/exurban areas by lopsided margins (a prospect which was already tenuous even before Trump's presidency and is almost unattainable now), holding their own in affluent areas, and breaking through some of the most Democratic rural areas in the country (which have been much more resitant to national trends than other rural areas with similar demographics), to name only a few things. There’s a reason Republicans have been shut out at the federal level since 2012 even as other Obama/Trump states like IA, OH, WI, and ME-02 already showed signs of cracking in 2014, and if our current alignment continues, there’s virtually no reason to expect NH to become a solid Republican state in the near future. Maybe its trend will remain stable, but even then I’m pretty sure it would take a Republican wave year (or at least a very good year) for them to actually score a win in a Senate/presidential race here. Even Sununu's win wasn’t that impressive; Baker, Scott, and even Hogan (!) won by more than him.
Of all the "swing states", this one and GA will probably be the trickiest for the GOP to figure out IMO.
