Notes on the State of Politics: New Hampshire Senate and Change in Virginia

Table 1: Crystal Ball 2026 Senate rating change

An open Senate seat in New Hampshire

Last week, one of 2025’s apparent political trends continued: one Senate Democratic retirement for every calendar month. This time, it came in New Hampshire, with three-term Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D). The two other Democratic retirements so far have been Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Tina Smith (D-MN), while, across the aisle, former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is likewise not seeking another term in 2026. So far, then, there are four Senate retirements, with the Republican retirement coming in a deeply Republican state and the three Democratic retirements coming in a trio of more competitive states.

In terms of its “surprise factor,” Shaheen’s announcement fell somewhere in between those of her two aforementioned Democratic colleagues, neither of whom could be considered old by Senate standards, and McConnell’s—few envisioned that the 83-year-old would seek an eighth term, especially after some recent health episodes as well as his decision to step down as the GOP’s Senate leader. Though she will turn 80 herself shortly after the next Congress is sworn in, Shaheen had reportedly been sending some signals that she’d seek a fourth term.

The matriarch of Granite State Democrats, Shaheen has been active in political organizing since the 1970s. In 2008, she became the first woman of any state elected to both the governorship and a Senate seat. One of the big “what-ifs” of recent presidential politics is whether she would have been able to push Al Gore across the finish line in the 2000 election had he selected her as his running mate. In 1998, Shaheen won a second term as governor by a better-than two-to-one margin in her traditionally red state. Aside from Florida, New Hampshire was the closest Bush-won state in 2000—so it would not be hard to envision a Gore/Shaheen ticket getting New Hampshire’s 4 electoral votes, which would have been sufficient for a narrow majority in the Electoral College overall.

In any case, much of what we’ve previously written about the New Hampshire race still stands, although we are moving it from Likely Democratic down to Leans Democratic, as, at least for now, the state of the race is a little more uncertain. Though Republicans continue to perform well in state-level races—last year, for instance, former Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) kept the governorship in GOP hands by a larger-than-expected 9-point margin—in federal contests, New Hampshire has largely acted like a blue state for the last decade or so.

Democrats’ strongest potential candidate for this seat would appear to be 1st District Rep. Chris Pappas. Pappas represents a district that includes Manchester and much of the state’s eastern geographic half. During the Obama years, the 1st District had a reputation as some of the nation’s most politically volatile turf, switching between Democrat Carol Shea-Porter and Republican Frank Guinta each cycle from 2010 to 2016. When Shea-Porter retired on her own terms in 2018, Pappas won NH-1 as an open seat and has held it with relative ease since: He won his last two races by identical 54%-46% margins, which is better than what recent Democratic presidential nominees have gotten in the district. It may be worth noting that Pappas’s 2022 opponent has since become more of a nationally-recognizable figure—he defeated President Trump’s current press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.

The other member of the state’s House delegation, Rep, Maggie Goodlander (D, NH-2), declined to rule out a Senate run. Goodlander, who is the wife of former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, would be a less proven option, although she did perform slightly better than Kamala Harris did in NH-2. Though Goodlander is originally from Nashua, she spent much of her career in Washington, D.C.—on the campaign trail last year, she (successfully) argued that her time there bolstered her qualifications for the job, but the “carpetbagger” label that her opponents tried to apply could also be recycled against her in a statewide race. The only instance where both of New Hampshire’s sitting members of the House ran against each other for a Senate seat in the popular vote era was a Republican primary in 1962.

Goodlander’s predecessor, former Rep. Annie Kuster (D), who retired after six terms last year, expressed some interest in the Senate race but is deferring to Pappas. Stefany Shaheen, the senator’s daughter and a former Portsmouth city councilor, has sometimes been rumored as her mother’s successor, although her name has not really surfaced in more recent media reports. Considering that Portsmouth is located in NH-1, the younger Shaheen trying to replace Pappas in the House would seem like a possibility.

National Republicans, meanwhile, would love to see former Gov. Chris Sununu (R) run for Shaheen’s seat. After earning generally high approval ratings throughout his time as governor, Sununu declined to seek a fifth two-year term in 2024; he visibly supported Ayotte, and her win in the open-seat race was evidence of his popularity. But Sununu, despite expectations to the contrary, passed on a Senate run in 2022. At the time, when Sununu announced his 2022 intentions, he cited the slow pace of the Senate as a key factor in his decision. Considering the nature of the Senate as an institution hasn’t changed since then, it’s not too surprising that Sununu still does not seem especially enthusiastic—as of Tuesday, he said that the “door is open” but “not open a lot.”

Sununu running would make this race a Toss-up in our ratings, and we suspect he would lead polls to start. Sununu’s enthusiasm for Elon Musk’s government-slashing “DOGE” efforts might at first blush be a good fit for a state that has traditionally had a strong fiscally conservative streak. However, Musk himself tends to poll worse than DOGE or Trump, so he could also turn into a liability in what is, still, a light blue state at the federal level.

Though other names may emerge, Republicans’ most obvious not-Sununu option may be former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA). Brown held Shaheen to a 3-point win in 2014—after being out of government for a few years, Brown served as Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa during Trump’s first term. Although Shaheen had incumbency, part of the reason why we continue to favor Democrats here is that Brown, a credible candidate, still couldn’t close the deal in a basically perfect political environment for Republicans. From a political science perspective, though, another Brown run would be an insightful experiment: in 2014, his worst county against Shaheen was Coos County, in the extreme northern part of the state—in other words, the county furthest away from Massachusetts. In the Trump era, northern New Hampshire has become more Republican-leaning, so we suspect regionalism may take more of a backseat to partisan polarization in 2026. Though this could cut both ways as, we’d also point out that several populous towns in southern New Hampshire that backed Brown in 2014 went for Harris last year.

With our rating change there, New Hampshire joins Minnesota as our only two races in the Leans Democratic category. Going back 24 years, when this Senate map was last up in a Republican midterm, both states played a part in George Bush’s strong 2002 result. That year, then-former Saint Paul Mayor Norm Coleman became the last Republican that Minnesota has sent to the Senate. Coleman’s opponent, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D), died in a plane crash just days before the election. Democrats were criticized for turning Wellstone’s funeral into a campaign rally, and Coleman seemed to benefit from the backlash. In New Hampshire, Republicans prevented Shaheen—instead of seeking a fourth term as governor, she ran for the Senate—from getting to the chamber six years earlier than she actually did. Then-Rep. John Sununu (R, NH-1), the older brother of the aforementioned governor, defeated incumbent Sen. Bob Smith in the GOP primary. President George W. Bush, whose popularity was high following 9/11, made several trips to the state on behalf of Sununu, which probably aided Sununu. Shaheen would then unseat John Sununu in the better (for Democrats) political environment of 2008.

Both states have gotten more Democratic over the past 20 years, but the 2002 example shows that, if enough stars align for Republicans, history could repeat.

On an administrative level, one change that could be on the horizon has to do with New Hampshire’s primary—and no, not its famous first-in-the-nation presidential primary, which it will probably never give up. Typically held in September, New Hampshire has one of the last down-ballot primaries in the nation. Legislators are considering moving the primary to an earlier month in the summer. Part of the thinking seems to be that, with the primary being so late, candidates who emerge from contested primaries have a harder time pivoting to an abbreviated general election. This dynamic probably worked against Republicans in the state’s last two Senate races and Democrats in last year’s gubernatorial race.

One last note on Shaheen: it would be hard to bring her up without mentioning one of her more recent votes. Last week, she was among the nine members of the Senate Democratic caucus that followed Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s lead in allowing a Republican-backed CR to reach the Senate floor; fellow Granite State Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) was also in that group. Since the vote last Friday, Schumer has, to say the least, struggled to justify his position to the satisfaction of many within the Democratic coalition—to those in his party eager to push back on Trump, Schumer was seen as capitulating.

Though we’ll have to see what this frustration means for Democratic primaries more broadly, the fallout may be relatively limited on the Senate side of the Hill. By the time the CR came up in the Senate, Shaheen had already announced her retirement. With that, Illinois’s Dick Durbin is the only pro-cloture Democrat whose seat is on the ballot and who has not made his 2026 intentions clear—although we suspect that Friday’s vote may push Durbin, who is 80 and who got to Congress in Ronald Reagan’s first midterm, towards retirement.

Getting to +8.93% in Virginia

Towards the end of last year, we gave a little extra attention to our home state, examining some of Virginia’s long-term voting patterns. With Virginia being one of the few states that will hold a major election this year, we will be giving it even more focus in the coming months.

The April 3 major party candidate filing deadline is approaching, and both parties’ frontrunners, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R) and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D), have already submitted their petition signatures for ballot qualification. Earle-Sears has recently attracted a couple of primary challengers who will be running to her right if they make the ballot, former state legislators Dave LaRock and Amanda Chase. Aside from the three statewide races that will be on the ballot this fall, the entire House of Delegates will also be up. Since 2019, the chamber has changed hands every two years, and Democrats are going into the 2025 cycle defending their slim 51-49 majority. (The state Senate, where Democrats hold a 21-19 lead, is not up again until 2027.)

As longtime Crystal Ball readers may have picked up on by now, a favorite pastime of the author is breaking statewide races down by district—although we usually stick to the congressional districts, this can also easily be applied to legislative districts.

Something that we noticed when browsing through statewide toplines on Dave Leip’s Election Atlas was that the 8.93% margin that Sen. Tim Kaine (D) was reelected by last year matches exactly with the 8.93% margin that now-former Gov. Ralph Northam (D) won 2017’s gubernatorial race by.

With that type of continuity over only 7 years, the breakdowns had to be pretty similar, right?

Well, actually, as Map 1 shows… not exactly.

Map 1: 2017 vs 2024 partisan loyalty of Virginia House of Delegates districts

All 56 light blue districts that Northam carried in 2017 went on to back Kaine in 2024, while the 38 light red ones supported both of their Republican opponents, Ed Gillespie and Hung Cao, respectively. However, despite the same topline margin, Kaine flipped six Gillespie-won districts, which are darker blue—Kaine also came within about 30 votes of flipping a seventh, the Virginia Peninsula’s HD-69. Gillespie-to-Kaine districts include HD-22, in Prince William County, HDs 64 and 66, which include parts of Interstate 95 in the Fredericksburg area, and the trio of HDs 57, 73, and 75, which are in the Richmond area. Meanwhile, there were no Northam-to-Cao districts.

Despite being the current minority party in the House of Delegates. Republicans are probably more exposed than Democrats—they hold all six Gillespie-to-Kaine districts and five straight-party Democratic seats on Map 1. Of course, if Spanberger wins this year’s gubernatorial race by less than 9 points (or if Republicans win the race outright), legislative Democrats may have a harder time targeting those seats, although Harris’s 6-point margin was enough for her to carry 4 of the 6 dark blue districts on Map 1.

Map 2 considers those same two statewide races, although it looks at the marginal change in each district. Aside from carrying six additional districts, Kaine actually outperformed Northam in more than 60 of the chamber’s 100 seats. In the blue districts on Map 2, Kaine performed better than Northam, while the reverse is true in red ones.

Map 2: Virginia change from 2017 gubernatorial to 2024 Senate

As the table shows, the top four districts that swung most Democratic over the last seven years were in the Richmond metro area. The fastest blue-trending seat on the map is HD-58, which is held by Democrat Rodney Willett and takes pieces of Richmond proper and some closer-in suburbs. After that, the aforementioned trio of HDs 57, 73, and 75 are nearby and saw similar blue swings—HD-57 includes Short Pump while 73 and 75 take in parts of Chesterfield County.

As a bit of an aside, the strong blue movement in some still very Republican southwestern districts stood out as a somewhat against-the-grain finding. At first, we were tempted to chalk it up to Kaine taking a visible role in the cleanup following Hurricane Helene. But the hurricane’s worst impacts appear to be a little east of the darkest blue districts. A more straightforward answer may have to do with media markets: localities within the Bluefield, WV and Bristol, TN markets tended to shift bluer more acutely than other southwestern localities. So, perhaps Kaine just dedicated more resources to those markets than Northam did (and the 2017 gubernatorial race was more hotly contested than the 2024 Senate race despite the races producing the same margin).

Meanwhile, none of the top 10 most red-swinging districts are realistically competitive for Republicans: the least blue district on the right table on Map 2, eastern Loudoun County’s HD-27, backed Kaine by nearly 24 points. In fact, in January, eastern Loudoun County saw a pair of special elections: one was for the adjacent HD-26 and the other was for Senate District 32, which covers both House districts. Though these racially diverse seats swung markedly towards Trump in 2024, Democratic candidates held both seats by close to 25 points apiece.

Another way to quantify how Kaine’s coalition was more efficient for Democrats is by looking at the theoretical majority-maker seat. Only considering Northam’s result by district, HD-89, a southeastern district that he carried by 5.6%, would have been his 51st-best district. But using Kaine’s numbers, seat number 51 for Democrats would be HD-57, which Kaine carried by just over 10 points. So in Northam’s race, the majority-making seat for Democrats would have voted a few points less Democratic than the state as a whole, while in 2024, that seat voted a little bit more Democratic than the state. That’s why we say the Kaine coalition is more “efficient.”

Still, even if Northam’s result was less advantageous for Democrats at a legislative level, there were a few competitive seats where he outperformed Kaine. Such seats include HD-21 (Haymarket), HD-41 (Blacksburg), and HD-82 (Petersburg), all of which were decided by a few points two years ago. Democrats hold HD-21 while Republican incumbents in the other two could face rematches with their 2023 opponents.

We would also note that, although some parts of the state are clearly drifting bluer, Democratic legislative candidates in areas that swung to Kaine may not be able to replicate the senator’s appeal. So, barring a truly huge blue wave in November, we’d expect Republicans to still hold some districts that are more Democratic up the ballot.

As a final note, Virginia Public Radio’s Michael Pope recently highlighted two key GOP-held Richmond-area districts, HDs 75 and 82, that we mentioned here.

J. Miles Coleman is an elections analyst for Decision Desk HQ and a political cartographer. Follow him on Twitter @jmilescoleman.

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