Although he missed the state’s first nationwide primary, current survey shows President Joe Biden has a slight advantage over former President Donald Trump in New Hampshire.
A poll of 600 likely voters in New Hampshire conducted by the Center for Public Opinion at UMass Lowell and YouGov from May 6-14 shows that if a general election were held today, the forty fifth president would lose the Granite State for the third consecutive 12 months, although Biden decided to not take part in the state's primary elections for allowing South Carolina to vote first.
“Biden leads Trump 42% to 36%, even though there are less than six months until Election Day on Tuesday, November 5th. Eleven percent of respondents support independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., while 9% are undecided and 2% say they would vote for another candidate,” the pollsters wrote.
Most respondents expressed dissatisfaction with continuing the 2020 election in 2024. More than half of respondents – 58% – said they were very or somewhat dissatisfied with the repetition of the Biden vs. Trump dichotomy. Among independent voters, that number rises to 71%.
According to Rodrigo Castro Cornejo, deputy director of the Center for Public Opinion and assistant professor of political science at UMass Lowell, “Most New Hampshire voters surveyed are dissatisfied with the presidential election.”
Because that could be a feeling shared by voters Cornejo says in states across the country, each candidates must woo the undecided.
“In a polarized America divided along partisan lines, each Biden and Trump will first seek to activate their base, and as November approaches, they’ll seek to appeal to undecided voters. Even though undecided voters make up only a small portion of the electorate, convincing them might be particularly necessary as we face a presidential election that might be very closely contested,” he said.
The poll also examined the impact of former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte Anti-Massachusetts stance in her campaign for governor of New Hampshire. The former senator has built much of her campaign on the claim that the Granite State is just “one election away from becoming Massachusetts.”
New Hampshire voters don't seem to believe that message, according to Joshua Dyck, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and director of polling stations and chair of the political science department.
“In an increasingly nationalized political environment, it's unclear whether Kelly Ayotte's decision to run against liberals in Massachusetts is the appropriate technique to get her into the governor's mansion. We won't have a greater idea of where this race stands until New Hampshire voters get to know their potential opponents for the autumn election. “In the meantime, she has one thing on her side: name recognition in a sea of relatively unknown candidates,” he said.
According to the poll, 30 percent of voters imagine the state is in “great danger” of becoming “too much like Massachusetts.” Just over a 3rd of respondents said there’s some risk, and 36 percent said there is no such thing as a risk, of the Granite State turning into the Bay State.
image credit : www.mercurynews.com