“If it wasn’t already, it sure came into play last Thursday,” said Jon McHenry, a national GOP pollster who grew up in New Hampshire, referring to the first general-election debate between Biden and Trump.

Republican “reach states,” including New Hampshire, “became more competitive after that performance,” McHenry said. A year ago, the state “absolutely” looked less competitive for Republicans, he said, “whereas now, you go, ‘Hey, that’s on the table.’”

The fresh attention on New Hampshire comes as both campaigns seek to expand the map of key battleground states beyond the six that proved decisive in 2020. Immediately after last week’s debate, for example, Biden campaigned in North Carolina, while Trump traveled to Virginia, each candidate wooing a state he lost four years ago.

New Hampshire has long been a purple state; it currently has an-all Democratic congressional delegation, a Republican governor, and an almost even party split in its state House of Representatives. But not since George W. Bush in 2000 has the state backed a Republican for president — a streak that gives Democrats hope, even as Biden shows increasing signs of weakness.

“We are confident Granite Staters will come together this November to reelect President Biden and reject Donald Trump, just as we did in 2016 and 2020,” said Marisa Nahem, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign in New Hampshire.

Biden carried New Hampshire by seven percentage points in 2020, but his campaign still considers it a battleground state this time around. In 2016, when Hillary Clinton carried New Hampshire, the margin was far closer; she bested Trump by less than one percentage point.

This year’s election could more closely resemble 2016 than 2020, analysts said. And while New Hampshire is just one small state, its competitiveness forewarns of far larger consequences for Democrats.

“If New Hampshire is in play, then Donald Trump is going to win” the general election, predicted Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire GOP chair who opposes Trump. If Trump manages to even compete in New Hampshire, he reasoned, the former president will carry the bigger swing states with more electoral votes.

“All that’s happened in the last six months is Trump’s path has expanded and Biden’s path to winning has become more and more narrow, much more threading the needle,” Cullen added. “He’s clearly been on defense in states that should be solidly in the Democratic column. The trends are all moving in one direction.”

As national Democrats openly discuss the possibility of replacing the president on the ticket this fall, some Biden backers in New Hampshire have been quick to tamp down on such speculation. And supporters dismiss the recent poll showing Trump ahead of Biden, noting that the survey has been proven wrong before and months of campaigning remain before Election Day.

Sure, New Hampshire looks competitive — but that’s nothing new this year, said Kathy Sullivan, the former state Democratic chair who led this year’s write-in effort for Biden in the primary. Biden snubbed New Hampshire by skipping its Jan. 23 primary this year, as national Democrats sought to shift the early contests to states with more diverse populations. But he decisively won the primary as a write-in candidate despite not formally campaigning in the state himself.

Biden has made two trips to New Hampshire since he skipped the primary, attempting to reset his relationship with the state. His campaign and local Democrats have 14 coordinated campaign offices.

Sullivan said Republicans are “getting ahead of themselves” in arguing that Biden’s debate performance will sink him in the state. Sullivan said based on conversations she’s had with canvassers promoting Biden door to door with New Hampshire voters, she is not convinced that the race has tightened since the debate.

“I feel nervous about every election,” Sullivan said. “Fingers crossed, say a Hail Mary, or whatever prayer you might say, or meditate. It’s just going to be like every other election.”

Despite Republican bluster about recapturing the state in a presidential election, Trump has not campaigned in New Hampshire since he won its first-in-the-nation primary in January. A surrogate, his onetime GOP primary rival North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, spoke at a fund-raising dinner in Keene in April.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley told reporters in Arizona this week that as the Trump campaign worked to expand the map of battleground states, “we’ve now started to engage in Minnesota and in Virginia and in New Hampshire.”

But the RNC would not say what that effort entails. Trump campaign senior advisor and RNC chief of staff Chris LaCivita said in a statement that he did not feel “obligated … to discuss the specifics of our strategy, timing and tactics with members of the news media.” But New Hampshire GOP Chairman Chris Ager told the Globe that last month, even before the June 27 debate, the Trump campaign made a “substantial” contribution to the state party to help Republicans on the ground boost the former president’s campaign.

“It’s an indicator when the campaign starts giving money directly to the state party,” Ager said. “It’s a good sign for us that yes, we are a battleground state.”

Ager declined to say how much the Trump campaign had provided, but called it a “significant investment” — the first large chunk of money the party has received directly, and he is expecting more to come.

Before the debate, Ager said he knew New Hampshire would be close, but he wasn’t sure Trump could win it. Now, he said, he is “convinced.”

“I’m usually pretty cautious,” Ager said, “and now I’m like, ‘Oh boy.’”

Emma Platoff can be reached at emma.platoff@globe.com. Follow her @emmaplatoff.

Their dream home has become a place of nightmares.

A New Hampshire family is being terrorized by a homeless encampment that sprouted up behind their historic home, leading to violent encounters with the vagrants, according to a report.

Robin Bach and her husband spent years restoring their 19th-century dream home in Concord to raise their two children, ages 8 and 11 — but have been plagued by the campers living in the woods behind the palatial abode.

They’ve received death threats and have heard gunshots and screams from beyond the tree line. A swingset in their backyard, bought in 2020 during the pandemic, sits untouched by her terrified children, who will only play in the front yard.

“I can’t even use my backyard. My kids can’t go out there,” Bach told the Concord Monitor. “I would like my children to be independent and feel comfortable going outside and playing and they won’t.

“This is the worst it’s ever been, It’s the worst it’s ever been.”

Since purchasing the house in 2018 with grand plans to renovate and raise a family, Bach has called police 37 times, according to police records reviewed by the newspaper. Six calls were for an area check, another six for disturbances as well as domestic violence and criminal trespassing incidents.

During one of their first summers in the house, Bach’s husband found a man, who they had previously seen lurking in the woods near some tents, sitting in their backyard. When he asked the man to leave, the interloper threatened to shoot him.

The man returned several times until Bach filed a restraining order against him — and cops hauled him off in handcuffs as her young children watched, she told the Concord Monitor.

In another incident, she was teaching her son how to do laundry when they heard chilling screams of some yelling, “Get off me, get off me” coming from the encampment, prompting another police call.

A dumpster fire behind a neighbor’s home two doors down sent wailing firetrucks rushing up her street to put out the blaze, the outlet said.

When Bach asked for a quote to install a chain link fence around her property, she was disheartened to learn that it would cost $50,000, she told the Monitor.

“I can’t afford to clean it up. I can’t physically do it myself,” she said about the garbage visible from the house. “So the trash remains.”

What was once just one or two tents when she first moved in, the camp has ballooned to about half a dozen, as New Hampshire experiences one of the largest percentage increases in homelessness in the country, according to the paper.

The encampment on Bach’s property poses a unique challenge because it borders property and train tracks owned by CSX, a freight railroad company.

While Concord police can go and issue no-trespassing orders at any time, CSX also has its own police detail that will sweep the area and arrest people.

Police are able to clear out the camp and have done so a few times and tried to connect them with local programs to find stable housing — but that’s the extent of the city’s involvement on private property, meaning the litter stays.

And, after the police have moved the campers out, they just return in a matter of days, Bach told the Monitor.

“We have a pretty significant homeless problem,” Barrett Moulton, the deputy chief of patrol and police liaison on the city’s homeless steering committee, told the outlet. “They’re going to be somewhere.”

“It’s Whack-a-Mole,” Bach echoed. “You can’t just ask them to leave, they’re going to go somewhere else. You have to give them someplace to go.”

Bach understands that squatters behind her home need assistance and stability. She recently spoke to a man who holds a day job and tries to keep the area around his ten clean.

She and other local leaders believe a solution would be to create a designated campsite for the homeless in the city, where much-needed resources and outreach can be concentrated in one place.

“You can put your tent here, here’s bathrooms, dumpsters,” she said. “They’ve come here and told them to move a million times, they don’t move.”

The Supreme Court ruled last week that homeless people can be ticketed and fined for camping on public property in a landmark decision, which will likely lead to cities across the country to take legal action against the unhoused.

Last year, about 650,000 individuals in the US lacked a permanent place to live, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, a 12% increase from 2022 and the most since tracking began in 2007.

A family has been left terrified after a homeless encampment sprang up in the back yard of their $800,000 historic home.  

Robin Bach and her husband have had to contend with death threats from vagrants living in woods they own just behind their stunning 19th Century Walker House in Concord, New Hampshire. 

And those threats are far from empty, with the Bachs – who have two children aged eight and 11 – hearing gunshots erupting from the backyard encampment.  

‘I can’t even use my backyard. My kids can’t go out there,’ Bach told the Concord Monitor, explaining that they play out in front on the sidewalk. ‘I would like my children to be independent and feel comfortable going outside and playing and they won’t.’ 

The couple bought the gorgeous home in 2018 and treated their sons to a backyard swing set in 2020. But its proximity to the nearby violent vagrant population who refuse to leave has left the children too frightened to touch it.  

Bach has called the police 37 times since she’s lived in this neighborhood to report various encounters with the homeless population living mere feet away from where they all sleep.

Several years ago, Bach’s husband had an unnerving encounter with a man who they saw emerging from the woods in their backyard a few times. When he asked the man to leave, the man threatened to shoot him.

Pictured: Bach’s nearly $800,000 home that’s been overrun with a growing homeless population

This same vagrant returned to their property several times after this, which led Bach to file a restraining order against him.

Her children watched as police took him away for the final time. 

This comes as homelessness is on the rise all throughout the country, especially in New Hampshire where the number of people on the streets in increasing faster than anywhere else, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

The Supreme Court just last week issued a ruling on a case originating out of Oregon – its largest city an epicenter for the homeless – stating that camping outdoors is illegal and cities can enforce bans on it.

Thus far, the city of Concord and the police department have had their hands somewhat tied when it comes to clearing out the encampments near Bach’s and other people’s homes. 

Cops need to work with shelters to make sure certain homeless individuals aren’t on waitlists for housing and services before busting up these makeshift tent cities.

They also have to strike deals with private property owners.

Bach alongside her two children, who have resorted to playing out on the sidewalk in front of the family home

Aerial shots of the New Hampshire State House in Concord at sunrise on a misty morning

‘The city won’t clean up any private property,’ said Barrett Moulton, the deputy chief of patrol and police liaison on the city’s homeless steering committee. 

And even if the homeless are set up on a government owned sidewalk or park, cost to the city is a major factor. 

‘But if it is city land then there is a whole process and it’s often expensive,’ Moulton said.

The Supreme Court’s decision on homelessness won’t do anything about the costs associated with cleaning up trash and disposing of tents put up by homeless people, so it’s unclear how the ruling might affect policy going forward. 

Bach is a progressive who has considerable sympathy for people facing homelessness. And while she’d like them off her property, she says she’s concerned that evicting them will just move the issue elsewhere and turn it into someone else’s problem. 

‘It’s Whack-a-Mole. You can’t just ask them to leave, they’re going to go somewhere else,’ Bach said. ‘You have to give them someplace to go.’

And the problem has only worsened since Bach’s been living at what should be her New England paradise home, complete with five bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths and a well manicured front lawn.

She said when her family first moved in, one or two tents were usually visible in the woods behind her house. 

Now, there are at least half a dozen of them, some with large tarps and structures, she said.

And when police have removed tents from Bach’s backyard, people have moved back in days later and trash just continues to accumulate in the woods along her road.

As recently as June 5, this area was filled with crushed cans, abandoned clothes, shopping carts and broken furniture.

Trash and shoddy living structures litter the woods behind the street Bach lives on in Concord

In front of the garbage, there’s a ‘no camping’ sign on display

Some areas have so much trash that the grass and dirt below are completely obscured

In order to isolate herself from the growing trash, Bach tried to fence in her property until she learned it would cost her a whopping $50,000

Running out of options, Bach recently got a quote to fence in her property.

It would cost her $50,000.

‘I can’t afford to clean it up. I can’t physically do it myself,’ she said. ‘So the trash remains.’ 

Moulton told the Concord Monitor that the sheer amount of trash and waste that’s been piling up has been the main reason people are calling his office.

‘It’s hard to get past that image of these encampments,’ he said. 

‘It’s a bad look. It’s a bad look for the city when you have as beautiful of an area as Concord is, to have it just loaded with trash, it is something that there’s a focus on to right now.

Since there are few, if any, public dumpsters in Concord, the trash issue will likely stick with the town of roughly 44,000.

‘We have a pretty significant homeless problem,’ Moulton said. ‘They’re going to be somewhere.’ 

For the homeless population in Concord, this means camping outside in the variant weather of New Hampshire. 

Winters often bring snow and frigid temperatures as low as 12 degrees Fahrenheit, whereas this weekend will bring highs of over 90 degrees in Concord.

Bach, who’s been forced to deal with the homeless problem quite literally in her own backyard, still has empathy for those without a roof over their head. She’s urging the city to enact a sanctioned camping area so people can get back on their feet. 

The Concord Coalition to End Homelessness is operating the only emergency shelter in the area, and it’s only open from December through March.

The nonprofit is harshly opposed to the recent Supreme Court ruling issuing the following statement.

‘Penalizing the most vulnerable citizens in our community because of this country’s housing shortage is unconscionable, and won’t solve homelessness,’ they wrote. ‘The solution to ending homelessness is housing.’ 

Even though Bach has certainly had some frightening encounters with the people trying to survive behind her home, she has talked to some of them in an effort to understand their struggle.

Most recently, she spoke with a man who said he holds a 9 to 5 job and cleans up his garbage with contractor bags.

She believes it would be better if the city created a sanctioned camping area somewhere away from where she lives, as its become clear to her that these people need a helping hand.

Sporadic enforcement from police, she said, doesn’t address the root cause of homelessness, nor does it permanently get rid of the tents or the garbage or the occasional threats of violence her family has to endure.

‘We never locked our doors. We were pretty casual,’ she said. ‘Now we have a full-on security system.’ 

‘This is the worst it’s ever been.’