New Hampshire Poll: Generic Republican Leads One Congressional District, Virtual Tie with Democrat in Other

Leading up to the midterms roughly a year away, a generic Republican candidate leads a generic Democrat in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District, held by vulnerable Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH), according to the Saint Anselm College Survey Center.

In Pappas’s first congressional district, the hypothetical poll shows, only 41 percent in the district would vote for a generic Democrat candidate, compared to 48 percent who would vote for the generic Republican candidate. There were four percent who said they would vote for “someone else” and seven percent undecided.

While Pappas’s name wasn’t directly used in the poll, the poll’s results come as bad news for the congressman. Republicans have marked him as a vulnerable member, with many looking for opportunities to unseat the Democrat who has voted with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on her partisan agenda 99 percent of the time.

There have even been reports circling that Pappas may not run for reelection at all and possibly run for a higher office or retire, which in that case would hurt Pelosi’s chances of staying in the majority even more by leaving the seat wide open for Republicans to take, as many of Pappas’ House Democrat colleagues have also done.

A report said that in some Republican circles, “it’s a foregone conclusion Pappas will run for governor in 2022 rather than seek re-election in an anti-Democratic Party midterm, and in a district, the GOP-controlled legislature is about to re-draw,” while one anonymous longtime GOP operative said, “He’s ‘dead man walking.’”

Additionally, Pappas was outraised by Republican candidate Matt Mowers — who was once a senior White House adviser during former President Donald Trump’s administration — by nearly $80,000, in the most recent fundraising fling with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), The Mowers campaign noted that Pappas had three months to fundraise while Mowers was only in the race for a month.

“Early resources are important in a race where Nancy Pelosi has been pushing Chris Pappas across the finish line with special interest dollars for years,” Mowers told Breitbart News at the time. “With this momentum, we will take on Pappas and Pelosi’s entrenched Washington interests and put New Hampshire families first.”

The poll also found that a generic Democrat slightly edges out a generic Republican in the second congressional district, which is currently represented by Rep. Annie Kuster (D-NH). Forty-five percent of the respondents said they would vote for the generic Democrat compared to only 44 percent who said they would vote for the generic Republican candidate. There were also three percent who said they would vote for “someone else” and nine percent undecided. That one point Democrat lead is inside the survey’s margin of error meaning it is a statistical tie there, an awful sign for Democrats as they generally considered Kuster safe in her reelection chances.

The Saint Anselm College Survey Center conducted the poll, asking 1,323 registered New Hampshire voters from October 20 to 22. There was a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points. The survey center said the cell phone users were “randomly drawn from a sample of registered voters reflecting the demographic and partisan characteristics of the voting population.”

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.