New Hampshire Politics Winners And Losers, 2026 Edition

By NH Journal

After Tuesday’s blowout election, picking the 2026 winners and losers might look like an easy job: Democrats winners, Republicans losers. Done.

But is that really the accurate picture? For example, did Republicans lose all of the federal races because they were lower-quality candidates? Or because it’s New Hampshire, which doesn’t elect Republicans to federal office?

Did Democrats win a record majority in the New Hampshire House and sweep the Executive Council because of a brilliant strategy boosting quality candidates, or because of the Dem +14 wave?

And then there are the unexpected benefits and unintended consequences of a once-in-a-generation election like this. Sometimes, as that great political philosopher Clint Eastwood said in “Unforgiven,” “deserves got nothing to do with it.”

With all that in mind, here’s NHJournal’s scorecard of winners and losers from Tuesday’s election. Please feel free to send your nominees to News@InsideSources.com or post them on Twitter tagged @NewHampJournal.

2026 GENERAL ELECTION WINNERS

(CREDIT: Jeffrey Hastings/Frame of Mind Photography)

Gov. Kelly Ayotte

For the second election cycle in a row, Ayotte is New Hampshire’s biggest political winner. In part, it’s because she’s the one candidate who clearly earned her victory. For months, as polls showed her comfortably ahead, Ayotte made the strategic decision to stay on offense. Polls showed her favorability suffered for it, but as the Blue Tsunami blasted the Granite State GOP, the decision paid off.

Then there’s the magnitude of her victory. Check the numbers: There is a 17-point gap between John Sununu’s share of the vote and Ayotte’s. Between Anthony DiLorenzo and Ayotte, it’s 18 points, and between Lily Tang Williams and the governor, it’s a 24-point spread.

Ayotte had to defy gravity to get her four-point win, and she did.

And she did it in an election cycle when Republicans have very little to celebrate across the country. National Republicans have taken note.

House Democrats

There’s nothing particularly shocking about New Hampshire Democrats controlling the House. They had a majority just six short years ago, before losing it in 2020 (the only state in America to flip legislative chambers from Dem to GOP that year). What makes them big winners this year is sheer magnitude.

The number of House Democrats surged from 178 seats after the 2024 election to an estimated 292 today, an astonishing avalanche of success. When the win is that big, everyone gets some of the credit, and that includes legislative election underachiever Ray Buckley, chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. Also among the winners: the five Democrats who will serve on the Executive Council beginning in January, the first time in history their party has had unanimous control of the body.

Andrew Smith and the UNH Survey Center

After years of being bashed by political pros and obnoxious pundits — including here at NHJournal — Andy Smith delivered the most accurate poll predicting Tuesday’s Democratic surge. Other polls had the margin in the NH-01 race in the low single digits or showed Ayotte with a double-digit lead. But the UNH Survey Center had Ayotte tied with Democrat Cinde Warmington and Stefany Shaheen 13 points ahead of DiLorenzo.

The Property Tax Cap

Democrats and teachers unions launched a wave of lies, many of them paid for with public school budget dollars, trying to convince Granite State voters to “Vote No on Two.” They claimed (falsely) that it was a “budget cap.” They claimed (falsely) that it would cut revenues, rather than merely slow the rate of income growth. They claimed (bizarrely) that letting local people vote on their local school property taxes was somehow an attack on local control.

But New Hampshire voters saw through the spin, and they remain tax-averse. As a result, 65% of voters — the same voters who cast their ballots for Pappas, Shaheen and a state House supermajority for Democrats — voted to cap their property taxes. The measure passed in blue communities like Bow and Concord by more than the required 60%. As bad as the GOP curb-stomping was Tuesday, it likely would have been worse without the turnout from the property tax cap.

Rep. Maggie Goodlander

The 2026 cycle was very good for the first-term congresswoman. In a massive wave when nearly every Democrat did well, she won by the biggest margin, and it wasn’t close. And for an ambitious candidate who is likely to run for U.S. Senate in 2028 (whether Sen. Maggie Hassan likes it or not), it’s also nice to know that you’re likely to face only token GOP opposition at best. After watching what happened to John Sununu, what Republican is going to sign up for a U.S. Senate run in 2028 — particularly if Vice President JD Vance is at the top of the ticket?

With the huge Democratic House majority, Goodlander is almost certain to get a subcommittee chairmanship somewhere.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

The Shaheen Dynasty

When Anthony DiLorenzo said Stefany Shaheen wouldn’t be in the NH-01 race if her last name weren’t Shaheen, he was right. And as Billy Shaheen would reply (OK, maybe not out loud), “You say that like it’s a bad thing!”

WMUR’s Debate Performance

Adam Sexton and the gang at Hearst Media made major improvements between the train wrecks of the primary debates and the far more well-executed general election faceoffs. One complaint: 9 p.m. on the Thursday before Election Day? Really?

2026 GENERAL ELECTION LOSERS

President Donald Trump

Only the most die-hard MAGA voters are denying that Donald Trump is responsible for this GOP disaster. His policies drove up costs (tariffs), sent energy prices soaring (Iran) and fed growing concerns about political corruption (you pick ’em) that fueled the Blue Wave. In Republican towns where Republicans turned out, Democrats still won because disgusted GOP voters wanted to send Trump a message. The only question is, did he get it?

Cinde Warmington

Democratic candidate for governor Cinde Warmington holds a press conference on ethics issues, Oct. 28, 2026.(CREDIT: Leonard Robinson)

It is a sign of just how huge Trump’s loser vibes are that Cinde Warmington got bumped from the top spot by President Trump. The question out-of-state politicos were asking NHJournal all day Wednesday: In a race where House Democrats picked up more than 100 seats and Pappas won by more than 13 points, how the heck did Warmington lose?

There are many reasons, from her fundraising failure (her last two weeks of TV ads were reportedly self-funded) to her utter lack of warmth as a candidate. But the biggest wound was self-inflicted: Rather than addressing the “opioid lobbyist” issue right out of the gate, Warmington waited, then wavered. If she had held an open presser early on and let reporters ask her every question they could think of about her work for Oxy and the infamous “pill mill,” she could have put that issue to bed.

The final twist of the knife? Putting her on stage Tuesday night with all the Democrats celebrating double-digit wins. What genius came up with that idea? (According to sources, it was Cinde Warmington.)

Grassroots Campaigning/Door-Knocking

Boxer Mike Tyson greets voters in Manchester on Election Day 2026.

State representative candidates will always work the doors in their districts, and maybe some first-in-the-nation candidates will want some front-stoop photo ops. But the inability of Americans for Prosperity and Turning Point USA to hold off the Blue Wave, even with millions of dollars spent on canvassers and a thousand or more paid workers on the ground, was embarrassing. The surprise, last-second appearances by celebrities like Rob Gronkowski and Nicki Minaj merely highlighted that, whatever these grassroots groups were doing, it wasn’t working.

HONORABLE MENTION

The ‘Sununu’ Brand

Having a Sununu as the GOP nominee may have helped get millions of GOP campaign dollars dumped into New Hampshire, but it had no measurable impact on the outcome. John Sununu performed just one point better than Anthony DiLorenzo, and he got a smaller share of the vote than Don Bolduc in 2022. Would the margin have been significantly different without a Sununu in the race?

The State Supreme Court

A group of Democratic activists, with the encouragement of former Executive Councilor Andy Volinsky, has been leading a political attack on the four current members of the state Supreme Court. Thanks to the departure of the disgraced Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald, Democrats believe they can somehow force the justices to resign en masse or recuse themselves when the Claremont/Rand case regarding state education funding comes before them, etc., etc. Now that there is a 5-0 Democratic majority on the Executive Council, the intensity of this political attack is certain to increase.

The real question: Will Gov. Ayotte nominate a chief justice before the new Executive Council takes office? Or, to put it another way: Why wouldn’t she?

NH Secretary of State Dave Scanlan announces the date of the FITN primary (January 23, 2024) at a presser in the Hall of Flags at the NH State House, November 15, 2023.

From the Collateral Damage Department: Secretary of State David Scanlan.

Under fire from President Trump, the DNC and progressive opponents of voter ID mandates (not to mention the election-denier holdouts who still populate dark corners of the GOP), Secretary Scanlan has, by all accounts, done a good job. He’s handled one high-turnout election after another with a minimum of problems.

But the one force he can’t overcome: partisan politics in the New Hampshire Legislature. Now that Democrats have a state House supermajority, they can accomplish what they tried to do in 2022 when he was first elected and install a partisan hack to oversee the state’s election system. Scanlan has worked hard to avoid showing any partisan preference, but the immutable truth about politics remains: No good deed goes unpunished.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.