(The Heart Sq.) – New Hampshire boasts one of many strongest performing economies within the nation, in response to a brand new report from the private finance web site WalletHub.
Monday’s launch of its 2022’s States with the Greatest & Worst State Economies sought to find out which states are pulling probably the most weight amid the financial uncertainties attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The evaluation used 28 metrics to check the efficiency and energy of economies within the 50 states and the District of Columbia – utilizing indicators starting from GDP development to startup exercise to the share of jobs in high-tech industries.
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The Granite State was ranked fifth among the many 50 states and D.C. on the general energy of the financial system and fourth on the innovation potential.
Within the financial exercise class, New Hampshire was ranked 18th within the nation, whereas it positioned thirteenth for financial well being, in response to the evaluation.
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Total, New Hampshire acquired excessive marks for its low employment, a powerful GDP charge and the supply of jobs within the high-tech sector.
Washington has the highest rating for general financial energy, adopted by Utah, California and Massachusetts, in response to WalletHub’s evaluation.
The evaluation identified that U.S. financial development relies upon closely on the efficiency of particular person states, however “some contribute greater than others.”
“California, as an example, is the fifth largest financial system on the planet, boasting a GDP bigger than that of nations just like the U.Ok., France and India,” the report’s authors wrote. “In the meantime, Vermont’s GDP is round 91 instances smaller, at $36.7 billion in comparison with California’s $3.4 trillion.”
MANCHESTER — Vice President Kamala Harris has taken the lead over former President Donald Trump in New Hampshire, two new polls revealed.
Both polls show Harris leading Trump by six points in the Granite State: 50% to 44% in a poll conducted by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, and 49% to 43% in a poll conducted by University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Both polls were released Thursday.
It’s a marked shift from a NHIOP poll released a few days after the first presidential debate in June, which saw Trump taking the lead over President Joe Biden, 44% to 42%. It was a telling result in a state that voted for Biden by a large margin in 2020.
But after Biden exited the 2024 presidential race Sunday, Harris is now the expected Democratic nominee.
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Neil Levesque, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, said Harris would win New Hampshire’s four electoral votes if the election was held today.
“She’s done a very good job in the last, let’s say, four days, in unifying the Democratic Party,” Levesque said. “And as a result, what you had were a lot of voters who were not enthusiastic about Biden, and they could be very liberal identified, or they could just be people that just weren’t enthusiastic, they have now turned around and solidified behind Harris.”
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In the NHIOP poll, Harris saw more support than Biden among Democratic voters, as well as more liberal voters. Her favorability rating was 49%, much higher than Biden’s 39% from the previous poll. While her favorability rating in the UNH poll was lower at 39%, she had higher ratings than both Biden and Trump.
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Another sign of enthusiasm for Harris, Levesque said, is there were “a lot more people willing to take the poll” than the one from after the debate.
The UNH poll revealed that 47% of New Hampshire residents felt relieved after hearing about Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, and 33% felt hopeful. Among Democrats, 78% prefer Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Support for Trump remained the same from the last NHIOP poll, which was followed by an assassination attempt on Trump, the Republican convention, and his vice-presidential running mate choice of Sen. JD Vance.
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“He’s such a known commodity,” Levesque said of Trump. “People either are definitely going to vote for him or they’re definitely not.”
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Republicans may call this polling shift toward Harris a “honeymoon period,” Levesque said. Indeed, in an interview with WMUR the day following Biden’s exit from the race, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said he expected Democrats to get a “four- or five-point bump just because they had the courage to change it out.”
Levesque acknowledged a lot can change in the coming months as the race settles. Harris still needs a vice president and the Democratic National Convention has yet to take place.
But he said the results are still an important “snapshot” of the race as it stands.
“There’s a lot of other states and a lot of different people, but New Hampshire really is a very good bellwether for knowing the mood of the country,” Levesque said. “And so the fact that she’s bounced, she’s clearly taken the lead here in New Hampshire might be indicative to what happens in some of these other key battleground states.”
While Democrats are riding an internal wave of enthusiasm in the wake of switching out presumptive nominees, the chairmen of both major parties in New Hampshire said they expect the presidential race to revert to a close, hard-fought contest.
CONCORD — Out of Joe Biden’s shadow, Vice President Kamala Harris’s historic campaign to become the nation’s first woman president began well here this past week, though she didn’t lack for detractors.
“I think Granite Staters are really excited to have Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket,” said Craig Brown, who was state director of her 2020 presidential run.
“She is someone who has really been a fighter her entire career. … She has what it takes to be president,” Brown said.
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But to win New Hampshire this November, Harris will need a script vastly different from the one that received lousy reviews during her first presidential bid four years ago.
Harris never got to the 2020 presidential candidate filing gate in New Hampshire, dropping out in December 2019, weeks after her campaign said she would “mail” in her candidacy papers rather than show up in person.
“To call that campaign an epic failure is a gross understatement,” said Greg Moore, regional director for Americans for Prosperity, a fiscally conservative group that backed Nikki Haley’s 2024 White House run.
After a successful New Hampshire visit, Harris infamously said on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah that New Hampshire journalists acted surprised that a woman of color would spend so much time campaigning in mostly white New Hampshire.
“The first line of questioning I got was, ‘You’re in New Hampshire, and we heard you’re not going to come to New Hampshire. We thought you weren’t going to compete in New Hampshire,’” Harris said at the time.
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“And what no one said, but the inference was, well, the demographic of New Hampshire is not who you are in terms of your race and who you are.”
Since being elected with Biden in 2020, Harris has been in the state once, for an April 2021 visit that was well-received. Her husband has been here twice.
A wide open race
Pat Griffin, a Republican media strategist who worked on the ground here to help elect both Bush presidents, said, “She truly has been thus far a terrible candidate — the cackle, the prancing around, it’s difficult to watch.
“All that said, she has one important thing Joe Biden did not have. She behaves 24/7 like she’s truly alive, and against Donald Trump, with all the baggage he has, that counts for a lot.”
Academics and political insiders agree Harris has a brief window to cultivate an image that offers a contrast not just to Trump but to her current boss.
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“This race is now wide open both here and nationally,” said Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
“If she takes this moment to sort of change things, it could really have an impact. Whether she does it or not is the question. She is not brand-new, she’s a known commodity, but there is the potential to reshape her image as someone other than a West Coast left-wing liberal.”
As if on cue, a new University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll of New Hampshire voters has Harris leading Trump 49% to 43%, with a solid 45% to 33% edge among independent voters.
In a UNH poll in May, 84% of Democrats were solidly backing Biden. In the new poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday, the party base support for Harris was up to 94%.
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Dante Scala, professor of politics at UNH, believes this quick sprint to Nov. 5 will work in Harris’s favor.
“They don’t have to worry about overthinking it,” Scala said. “So many times we see candidates and campaigns try way too hard. This is going to be all about impulse and instincts. If she has the right ones, this could go real well.”
Scala said her 14th-place showing in the New Hampshire primary after she quit the race won’t matter a whit.
“You remember all that, I remember all that, but most voters don’t even have a memory of her as a presidential candidate,” Scala said. “In that respect, she’s a clean slate.”
Appeal to youth
There’s no disputing that young Democratic-leaning voters are energized by the prospect of nominating Harris, 59, rather than Biden, 81.
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New Hampshire has 11 young delegates going to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, one of the largest groups per capita of any state in the nation.
“Young people know what’s at stake this fall because our rights are on the ballot,” said K.R. Epstein of Manchester, one of those younger delegates. “We also know that young people have the power to sway presidential elections and Vice President Kamala Harris is focused on earning our votes. I know that VP Harris has the ability to take on Donald Trump and win.”
Another young delegate, Prescott Herzog of Claremont, said he’s confident Harris will reunite the Democratic Party.
“This will be my first time voting in a presidential election. and I couldn’t be prouder to cast my vote for Kamala Harris,” Herzog said.
“Her work with President Biden enacting legislation on the issues young voters care about, from climate to gun violence, shows that she will continue the Biden-Harris administration’s effectiveness.”
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After fiercely fighting to preserve the state’s first-in-the-nation primary, Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said he was determined to put together a delegate slate that looked like America. He did it with many minority delegates and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Concord lobbyist Jim Demers, who has been a pledged delegate to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, said this may prove to be his most memorable convention.
“I’ve never been this stoked for a convention before. They are all fun, but this one is one for the history books,” said Demers. “I am really thrilled for the youngest members of the delegation, because this is a great story they’ll be able to tell their grandchildren.”
State Rep. Latha Mangipudi, D-Nashua, a superdelegate to the convention this time and a leader in the state’s growing Indian community, said “it’s long past time” for a woman to ascend to the nation’s highest office.
“We have even had Third World nations that have had women presidents. This is the time, this is the election, this is the candidate,” Mangipudi said.
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Delegate Sumathi Madhure, a physical therapist, said she had doubts there would be a South Asian on the presidential ticket in her lifetime. Now there’s an even shot one becomes president.
“Fairly or not, there was some apathy out there with President Biden at the top of the ticket,” Madhure said during a news conference this past week. “Now, all that is gone and wiped away.”
A surge of energy
Despite her stumbles as a candidate in 2020, Harris had her moments, including her comments at the first presidential debate about Biden’s past support for forced busing.
“I for one can’t wait for that debate or debates with Donald Trump,” said former state House Speaker Terie Norelli, D-Portsmouth, and the first female Democrat to lead the 400-person House.
“What’s most amazing to me was that this surge of energy came flooding in literally in an instant. You can’t manufacture that.”
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Scala believes the election here may be determined by the middle-class male vote, which Trump won decisively in 2016 but Biden securely captured in 2020.
“How they vote will determine if this is a nail-biter like it was for Hillary Clinton (who narrowly won here) in 2016 or a pretty easy ride like it was for Biden four years later,” Scala said.
“Yes, we’re a swing state, but a Democratic-presidential leaning state.”
Griffin, the Republican media strategist, said he just doesn’t know where the small but pivotal number of truly undecided voters will move here and in other swing states.
“I think she’s got a better shot at them because so many have looked at Trump and decided they aren’t eating that dog food,” Griffin said. But, he said, “She has to make a very strong sell.”
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Buckley, the state Democratic Party chair, thinks his party’s secret weapon is its ground game. Democrats have 16 field offices and counting. Trump has a single headquarters and only has started to bring on a few dedicated staffers.
The reality is the Trump team nationally views the Granite State and its four electoral votes as a luxury — one they don’t need to get to the 280 needed to clinch the victory.
“Trump’s not going to play here,” Buckley said.
Scala said the 2024 race is all about Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona.
But New Hampshire still could be telling.
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“Come September, if New Hampshire is still a toss-up, very much in play for Trump, then that’s a very bad look for Harris,” Scala said.