Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in two NH polls: Experts weigh in on what it means

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.

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.”

More: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, in NH, touts Kamala Harris and 'new sense of energy'

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.

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.

Flipping the (election) script: Now it's Trump facing questions about age, mental acuity

“He’s such a known commodity,” Levesque said of Trump. “People either are definitely going to vote for him or they're definitely not.”

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.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in two NH polls: Experts weigh in