2024 ELECTIONS
New Hampshire is the latest sign of Donald Trump’s shrinking map
As Kamala Harris visited New Hampshire on Wednesday, Donald Trump’s campaign in the state is almost nowhere to be seen.


Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign stop at the Throwback Brewery, in North Hampton, New Hampshire, Sept. 4. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP

By LISA KASHINSKY
09/04/2024 05:51 PM EDT

NORTH HAMPTON, New Hampshire — Donald Trump hasn’t set foot in New Hampshire since he won the state’s GOP primary in January. His campaign hasn’t sent a high-profile surrogate here since the spring. … And now, even as they insist he can win here, some of Trump’s most ardent supporters in this blue-leaning swing state are openly saying that his campaign should focus its efforts elsewhere.

“This election is going to be won in those seven swing states” and not in New Hampshire, said Lou Gargiulo, who co-chairs Trump’s campaign in this state. “That’s where the effort’s got to be put.”

It’s a marked shift from when New Hampshire was among the bluish battlefields where Trump’s campaign boasted it could expand its electoral map as President Joe Biden faltered. Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley said days after the June debate that the party had started to “engage” in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Virginia. A post-debate survey showed Trump had erased Biden’s polling lead in the Granite State, leaving Republicans gleeful and Democrats spooked.

Today, New Hampshire stands as the latest sign of how Trump’s map is constricting in his run against Kamala Harris. A trio of surveys have shown the vice president opening an outside-the-margin-of-error lead over Trump — one that she aimed to cement on Wednesday with a campaign event at a brewery on New Hampshire’s Seacoast where she touted her new plan for small business tax breaks. Race raters have shifted the state to the left. And Republicans here are privately bemoaning the Trump campaign’s lack of investment in this state where Democrats outnumber Republicans in field offices by 17 to 1.

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