It’s one of those amusing moments where you see the liberal media panicking and spewing pure nonsense that’s more explicit than usual. When has New Hampshire ever been on the solid battleground state list? I’ve been there for the primaries—there are surely die-hard Trump supporters. It’s a state where the Trump message resonates enough to make things interesting, but it’s likely to fall into the Democratic column again. On Fox News Wednesday, Trump said he’d like to win the Granite State, but the Keystone showdown is where the 2024 election will be decided, and he’s doing better there.
Vice President Kamala Harris opted to do an event in New Hampshire on Wednesday, busing in supporters because this campaign gives Astroturf a new name. The question is, why? Isn’t she supposed to win this state anyway? It’s showing signs that perhaps the internals aren’t good for Harris, something that even pro-Harris pollsters are firing warning flares about post-convention. And yet, Politico decides to spin this, claiming that New Hampshire is another sign of Trump's shrinking map or something:
Bizarre headline from Politico. Why is Harris in NH at all if the state is off the table? And Trump has never had a presence in NH, so the fact he still doesn't means nothing. https://t.co/uhJEwlD6JX pic.twitter.com/7aXyMHnb0g
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) September 5, 2024
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.
“The Trump campaign does not appear to be matching or contesting” New Hampshire, said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist from the state and former Trump administration appointee.
“Organizationally speaking there have been no visits, no surrogates. They have their institutional support and they’re going to go with it,” said Bartlett. “Whereas Democrats, even with a lead, continue to flood the zone week after week with high-profile people.”
Trump’s campaign insists it is contesting New Hampshire, a state where he has thrice won GOP primaries but lost two consecutive general elections, including by 7 percentage points to Biden in 2020. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign who hails from New Hampshire, said the campaign is “maintaining an offensive posture” here and in the other blue-leaning swing states of Minnesota and Virginia.
You could’ve stopped after the first paragraph, where there was some fantastical prose about how New Hampshire is "the latest sign of how Trump’s map is constricting in his run against Kamala Harris." It’s a fact that Trump is leading Harris handily in Nate Silver’s Electoral College probability model. Trump has more paths to 270 than Harris. Much ink was wasted on a state that Trump doesn’t need to win. Will there be a follow-up piece about how California “is the latest sign of Donald Trump’s shrinking map”?
Michael Graham of Inside Sources also wondered why Harris was heading to New Hampshire this week. The likely answer is to raise more money:
Poll after poll shows Vice President Kamala Harris locked in a margin-of-error wrestling match with former President Donald Trump over the seven swing states that will pick the next president.
And none of those states are New Hampshire.
Which is why political observers in New Hampshire and nationwide are scratching their heads over Harris’s decision to take one of the 63 campaign days she has left and spend it in Portsmouth this Wednesday. Veteran campaign insiders from both sides of the aisle told NHJournal they didn’t understand the decision and could only offer speculation. Speculation, they conceded, that didn’t entirely make sense.
[…]
Fundraising appears to be the most likely answer. Several campaign professionals in both parties said it’s very possible Harris is coming to the Boston area for a big-dollar event and a quick trip to Portsmouth will get media coverage in Maine and New Hampshire. Not exactly Michigan, Nevada, or North Carolina, but not entirely wasted, either.
It's not about Trump’s shrinking map. Are the internals that bad for Harris?
