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To see how Kamala Harris has changed the presidential race, look to New Hampshire

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2 years ago

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To see how Kamala Harris has changed the presidential race, look to New Hampshire


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A campaign sign with President Joe Biden’s name cut out stands in Northwood, N.H., on July 21. Homeowner Tom Chase, 79, said he removed Biden’s name last week and was relieved and delighted that the president withdrew from his 2024 campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.Holly Ramer/The Associated Press

If you’re looking for a place to gauge the effect the ascendancy of Kamala Harris has had on the American presidential election, come to Carroll County, the only county in all of New England that arch-conservative Barry Goldwater carried as the Republican presidential nominee 60 years ago.

Here, and throughout the rest of New Hampshire, the electorate is especially sensitive to the political winds because of a heritage of more than a century of vital presidential primaries, and the Harris impact is vivid, telling, and potentially consequential.

Only weeks ago, this state – where the mountains stretch to the sky and the air is cool even when the rest of the country bakes – was considered in play for Donald Trump. Now, it seems to have settled back into the Democratic column.

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Two months ago, when Joe Biden was still the presumptive Democratic nominee, the St. Anselm College Survey Center poll showed the President, who as recently as December held a 10-point edge over Mr. Trump in New Hampshire, running two percentage points behind. The latest poll shows Ms. Harris ahead by six points.

A similar movement is evident in the University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll, in which Mr. Biden held a tottering three-point lead in the state. Now, Ms. Harris holds a six-point lead over Mr. Trump in that poll – a phenomenon that, while not always as dramatic as it is in New Hampshire, is emerging in other states.

“For weeks, we were in despair here,” said David Van Note, a New Hampshire resident who has been active in national Democratic politics for decades. “Then all of a sudden Biden is out, Harris is in, and there is a feeling of great hope.”

That despair has deep roots. New Hampshire once was so Republican that the GOP prevailed there in 28 of the 34 presidential elections from 1856 to 1988, with Mr. Goldwater winning Carroll County in 1964 by 10 percentage points, though he lost the state to Lyndon Johnson.

In recent years, New Hampshire has been in full rebellion against the view of its most famous literary figure, Robert Frost, who in a poem published in 1920 – the year Republican presidential nominee Warren Harding carried the state in a landslide – wrote, “Yankees are what they always were.”

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“This state was Republican, and reliably so,” said Ellen Fitzpatrick, a University of New Hampshire historian. “In the old days, New Hampshire and Vermont were the Republican counters to the Democratic dominance of Massachusetts. But that is a long-gone phenomenon.”

Recently, the Granite State has become more Democratic. The party has won here in seven of the past eight presidential elections.

New Hampshire veered into the GOP column in that period only in 2000, when George W. Bush took its four electoral votes largely because Green Party candidate Ralph Nader captured four per cent of the vote. Mr. Nader’s supporters would almost certainly otherwise have voted for vice-president Al Gore, delivering the state and the presidency to him, and making the spectacle of recounts in Florida meaningless.

Mr. Biden won New Hampshire by seven percentage points in 2020, the largest margin since Barack Obama (with Mr. Biden as his running mate) won the state in 2008.

Donald Trump took New Hampshire’s Republican primary in January, defeating Nikki Haley by 11 points. Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor, had calculated that the state’s voters were her best chance of stopping the former president’s march to his third presidential nomination. Her “NH for NH” buttons were everywhere, but the votes were for Mr. Trump.

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That likely will not help Mr. Trump in November.

“Trump has a core here that he will get regardless, but he is not going to pick up any voters that already aren’t for him,” said Thomas Rath, a former state attorney-general who has been involved in Republican presidential politics for a half-century.

“Everything changed the day Biden got out. With Biden gone, Trump won’t pick up even three more people than he already has.”

This is a state that is, both figuratively and literally, independent.

Independents – voters not affiliated with any political party – count for 37 per cent of the vote, more than the figure registered by either the Democrats or the Republicans. The GOP holds a state-government trifecta: the governor’s chair and both chambers of the state legislature. But the Democrats control the state’s two seats in the U.S. Senate and its two seats in the House of Representatives.

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Ms. Harris, who is Black and South Asian, may be able to shore up support among Black voters in states such as Georgia, who polls showed were less enthusiastic about Mr. Biden in this election than they had been in the past. But in New Hampshire, where Black, Indigenous and other racialized people make up only about 10 per cent of the population, a more important factor may be gender.

This state is comfortable with female leaders. Both of its senators, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, are women and so is one of its House members, Annie Kuster. As both parties will likely nominate women for the fall gubernatorial election, the next governor probably will be a woman as well.

“We are back to 2020,” said Andrew Smith, who runs the University of New Hampshire poll.

“Democrats lost their enthusiasm for Biden, and a lot of them felt they weren’t motivated enough even to show up to vote. Now, they have someone they feel they can vote for – and now we see it’s the Republicans who are losing their enthusiasm.”



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New Hampshire

Bill to outlaw using student IDs to vote clears NH Legislature

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7 hours ago

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March 9, 2026

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Bill to outlaw using student IDs to vote clears NH Legislature





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New Hampshire

NH cold case solved 40 years after police found man’s skull in woods

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19 hours ago

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March 8, 2026

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NH cold case solved 40 years after police found man’s skull in woods


Local News

Investigators partnered with a nonprofit genetic genealogy analysis organization to identify the man who the remains belonged to.

Warren Kuchinsky was born in 1952 and last known to be alive in the mid-1970s. New Hampshire Department of Justice

By Darin Zullo

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2 minutes to read

After nearly four decades, a man whose skull was discovered in the New Hampshire woods has been identified.

Warren Kuchinsky was born in 1952 and was last known to be alive in the mid-1970s, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark Hall said in a statement. In 1986, his skull was found in a wooded area in the town of Bristol.

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At the time, investigators weren’t able to identify whose skull it was, according to officials. Last year, however, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner partnered with the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization, to solve the case using forensic genetic genealogy techniques.

Kuchinsky’s identity was confirmed through DNA testing of a surviving family member, according to officials. There is no evidence that his death was caused by foul play, according to the statement.

Founded in 2017, the DNA Doe Project partners with law enforcement, medical examiners, and volunteer genealogists to apply investigative genealogy to John and Jane Doe cases. By analyzing DNA profiles and building family trees from publicly available genetic databases and historical records, the organization has helped solve more than 250 cases nationwide.

“We are honored to have partnered with the State of New Hampshire on this case,” DNA Doe Project Team Leader Lisa Ivany said in the statement. “Through the power of investigative genetic genealogy and the dedication of our volunteer genealogists, we were able to develop a critical lead in less than 24 hours. We truly hope that this identification brings long-awaited answers to Mr. Kuchinsky’s family.”

Initial DNA testing turned up only distant matches, so the DNA Doe Project selected the case to be worked on at a virtual retreat in May 2025, according to the organization’s case profile. Over the course of a weekend, more than 40 genealogists from the U.S., Canada, England, and Scotland collaborated virtually to work on the case.

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Within hours, the team discovered that the unidentified man had roots in New Hampshire and Quebec, according to the profile. They later zeroed in on Kuchinsky, who had attended school in Plymouth, N.H., but had no official proof of life past 1970.

“This identification reflects the power of partnership and scientific advancement,” Formella said in the statement. “The dedication of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the investigative support of the New Hampshire State Police, and the extraordinary work of the DNA Doe Project have restored a name to an individual who had been unidentified for nearly 40 years. We are grateful for their professionalism and commitment.”

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New Hampshire

New Hampshire House Advances One of The Nation’s Most Extreme Transgender Bathroom Bans

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1 day ago

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March 8, 2026

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New Hampshire House Advances One of The Nation’s Most Extreme Transgender Bathroom Bans


The proposal would fine transgender people up to $5,000 for using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity.

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Bathroom bans targeting transgender people have been spreading rapidly across the United States. In previous years, adult bathroom bans in public buildings were limited to a handful of states with extreme laws. This year, they have become one of the primary vehicles for anti-trans legislation nationwide. Kansas was the first to act, passing a bathroom bounty hunter system and invalidating transgender people’s IDs. Idaho and Missouri began advancing their own bills. Now, the New Hampshire House of Representatives has passed its own version — one of the most extreme in the United States, which states that a trans person using the bathroom of their gender identity is a crime under the state civil rights act, violations of which carries hefty penalties. The bill passed 181-164 on Wednesday night, just weeks after Governor Kelly Ayotte vetoed a separate bathroom ban. Republicans are now sending her something far more aggressive — raising the question of whether they are trying to move the goalposts or simply daring her to veto again.

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, with the exception of RSA 21:3, RSA 21:54, and paragraph II below, all multi-user facilities, including bathrooms, restrooms, and locker rooms located in buildings owned, leased, or operated by any municipality shall be used based on the individual’s biological sex,” reads the new bill. This prohibition is expansive: it applies to parks, rest stops, airports, civic buildings, and more, and could leave transgender people struggling to find a public place to use the restroom across the state.

The bill contains a novel enforcement mechanism not seen in any other state. It declares that a transgender person “asserting” that their gender identity allows them to use the bathroom is against the law under the state civil rights act, turning civil rights protections that were meant to be protective of transgender people into a weapon against them. “It shall be unlawful for any person to assert that their gender identity is a sex other than that defined in RSA 21:3 for the purposes of accessing places or services restricted on the basis of sex,” reads the bill. Such violations could result in fines of up to $5,000 per incident and even jail time if a person violates a resulting court injunction by continuing to use the restroom.

The bill also contains provisions for private businesses. It permits any owner or operator of a “place of public accommodation” — a category that under New Hampshire law includes hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, bars, and concert venues — to restrict bathrooms by assigned sex at birth. The bill then immunizes those businesses from discrimination claims: “Adoption or enforcement of a policy pursuant to this section shall not be deemed discrimination under RSA 354-A or any other state law,” it reads.

A separate bill, HB 1217, also passed on Wednesday. That bill permits governmental buildings and businesses to classify bathrooms and locker rooms by assigned sex at birth — similar to the bathroom bans Ayotte has already vetoed. It passed by an even wider margin, 187-163. It contains no enforcement mechanism, but rather, states that bathroom bans and sports bans are not discriminatory towards transgender people under New Hampshire law.

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The bills are part of a larger movement towards bathroom bans for transgender people. Just last month, Kansas passed a bathroom ban that allows every citizen in the state to become a bounty hunter, where reporting transgender people in bathrooms can net them $1,000 per trans person caught. This law also invalidated trans people’s drivers licenses in the state. Meanwhile, Idaho and Missouri are both advancing extreme anti-trans bathroom bans of their own, with Idaho’s ban even applying to private businesses, making it against the law for a private business to allow a trans person to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.

The bills are substantially more extreme than the one vetoed by Governor Ayotte just weeks ago. In a veto statement of a bathroom ban last month, Ayotte stated, “I believe there are important and legitimate privacy and safety concerns raised by biological males using places such as female locker rooms and being placed in female correctional facilities… At the same time, I see that House Bill 148 is overly broad and impractical to enforce, potentially creating an exclusionary environment for some of our citizens.”

It remains unclear why Republicans are pushing an even more extreme version of a bill their own governor has already vetoed three times. The bill still needs to pass the New Hampshire Senate and be signed by Ayotte to become law. One possibility is that the more extreme HB 1442 is designed as cover for HB 1217 — making that bill appear moderate by comparison and improving its chances of earning a signature. Another is that Republicans believe they can pressure Ayotte into signing, or are simply laying the groundwork for an override attempt down the line. Regardless, HB 1442 is one of the most extreme bathroom bans moving through any state legislature in the country, and transgender people across New England will be watching closely as it advances to the Senate.

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