PPP (4/17-18, New Hampshire voters, no trendlines) (primary numbers):
John Lynch (D-inc): 47
John Stephen (R): 36
Undecided: 18John Lynch (D-inc): 47
Jack Kimball (R): 35
Undecided: 18John Lynch (D-inc): 47
Karen Testerman (R): 29
Undecided: 23
(MoE: ±2.6%)John Stephen (R): 29
Karen Testerman (R): 15
Jack Kimball (R): 10
Undecided: 46
(MoE: ±3.9%)
As PPP’s thorough visit to New Hampshire comes to a close, it looks like John Lynch, New Hampshire’s three-term Democratic incumbent Governor going for a barely-precedented fourth term, is going to have a tougher race than was initially expected. Of course, that’s all relative: the broadly popular Lynch has gotten accustomed to winning by huge margins (70-28 in 2008, 74-26 in 2006), and most pundits expected nothing different this year, so the fact that he’s under 50 and looks like he’ll have to put some effort in campaigning certainly amounts to “tougher.”
I’d have chalked that up to the late entry to the race by John Stephen, a better candidate than was expected, to the extent that he’s a former state Health and Human Services secretary and the guy who narrowly lost the 2008 GOP primary in NH-01 to Jeb Bradley. But Lynch fares pretty much identically against random businessman Jack Kimball, suggesting that declines in the Democratic brand in New Hampshire are rubbing off even on the redoubtable Lynch.
and Lynch used to be the only governor with 70% favorables not named Beebe or Hoeven.
In any other state, I wouldn’t be too concerned, but this is New Hampshire. It’s a lot more susceptible to political winds than most states, more blindly obsessed with tradition than pretty much all of them, and seems to delight in confounding conventional wisdom and delivering political upsets to whichever party takes it more for granted. Very few people counted on Carol Shea-Porter to beat Jeb Bradley in 2006 or on Lynch himself to beat Craig Benson in 2004. Nobody bet on statewide Dems picking up 70 seats to regain the state legislature for the first time in a century (even if the general court is so large that pretty much every field, stream, woodchuck hole, or guy living in a shack in the woods has their own state representative).
As far as I’m concerned, if Lynch keeps polling under 50 and Stephen wins the primary and starts running a decent campaign, we’ve got a real race on our hands. Our entire ballot could be a wash in NH this year if Dems keep taking the state for granted as much as the GOP did in the last decade. (I doubt CSP will lose because she does grassroots campaigning beautifully, but the Senate seat is looking farther away on a daily basis, and we’ve pretty much lost NH-02, at least until 2012 when they remember why they booted Bass in the first place and our likeliest candidate isn’t named Swett.)
Not trying to spread doom and panic (I’m pretty bullish about a lot of other races, especially in the House), but I grew up in the state across the river from New Hampshire and I know their voting patterns a bit too well. Lynch better start working his ass off.
Finding such low favorables for everybody? Even Rasmussen has Lynch at 59% job approval.
As politics got nationalized and polarized, and as the national GOP was pushing hawkish foreign policy and emphasizing the concerns of cultural conservatism, the Republican brand took a big hit in NH. That stuff, regardless of what the Union-Leader thinks, doesn’t sell well in the Granite State at all. Throw in a guy like Craig Benson as Governor and you’ve got a recipe for big Dem gains.
However, New Hampshirites still really hate taxes and are still conditioned to respond favorably to claims that government is the problem rather than the solution. It’s not a message that works all that well for a party that controls the levers of power, especially in their case because they were so clearly talking the talk without walking the walk. But for a party out of power….different story.
To the extent that an election cycle centers on the active role of government in helping level playing fields and lessen the role of profit-seeking entities, this isn’t a state or an electorate that’s likely to be of much help to us. I think this is why we’re seeing some lost ground here.
It may not be this way forever, though…Vermont had a similar political makeup to New Hampshire once upon a time.