It’s Election Day in New Hampshire, and, well, not many shocking developments tonight, as everyone projected to win has clinched their respective races. Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte won her primary, as did Chris Sununu for Senate. Yet progressive candidate Karishma Manzur was seen as another litmus test for the rise of the far-left within the Democrat Party. If she’d won, this race likely would’ve been a walk in the park for Republican Chris Sununu, but Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas won the race (via Decision Desk):
Can progressives pull off one last major breakthrough in the 2026 primary season? That’s the question surrounding New Hampshire’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. There, Rep. Chris Pappas has been his party’s all-but-presumptive nominee since entering the race in April 2025, just after three-term Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen announced her retirement. The four-term congressman has collected a whopping $15.4 million for his campaign as of Aug. 19, far and away the most of any contender, while attracting support from a who’s who list of Democratic politicians and left-aligned groups.
But scientist Karishma Manzur, who belongs to a local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, has roused this sleepy primary in its final weeks. Manzur has raised just $415,000, but we’ve seen other left-wing candidates defeat or run very close to more establishment-oriented Democratic aspirants despite major financial disadvantages. Manzur has been well positioned to benefit from Democrats’ increasingly negative views toward Israel. In a recent debate against Pappas, she repeatedly criticized the actions of the Israeli government, and she’s highlighted Pappas’s support from donors aligned with the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Now, it’s unclear just how close this race actually is. A late August poll from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center raised eyebrows when it found Pappas only leading Manzur by 13 percentage points, 47%-34%, down from a 53%-29% lead in June. That survey prompted a response from Pappas’s campaign, which released an internal poll conducted around the same time that painted a far different picture: In that survey, Pappas led by 56 points, 71%-15%.
But money talks, so it may be a tell that two pro-Pappas groups felt the need to fork out $175,000 in the closing days for get-out-the-vote calls and texts supporting the congressman. Defend the Vote made a $100,000 outlay, while pro-LGBTQ Equality PAC spent $75,000 (if elected, Pappas would become the first openly gay man to serve in the Senate).
The purple-tinted Granite State has had a light-blue lean in recent federal elections, last voting for a Republican for Senate in 2010 and a GOP presidential contender in 2000. But that recent UNH poll also found Pappas narrowly trailing GOP frontrunner, ex-Sen. John E. Sununu, 45%-43%. To be clear, this was Sununu’s best recent poll result, and the Decision Desk HQ forecast gives Democrats about a 4 in 5 shot of winning the seat. Still, Democrats are more concerned about holding this seat.
The Sununu name is part of the path to a plausible Republican victory in what otherwise looks like a Democratic-leaning year. A former U.S. senator and representative, Sununu won this very Senate seat in 2002 versus Shaheen before losing a rematch against her in the blue-wave year of 2008. Despite that defeat, Sununu remains a prestigious brand name in New Hampshire politics. In January 2025, John’s popular young brother Chris finished off an eight-year run as governor before deciding against his own bid for Senate. Their father, John H. Sununu, served as New Hampshire’s governor for three two-year terms in the 1980s and then as President George H.W. Bush’s first chief of staff.
Now, 18 years after losing this seat, John E. Sununu looks to take the next step toward a comeback in Tuesday’s GOP primary. His main opponent is Scott Brown, another former senator. Brown famously won a 2010 special election for Senate in deep-blue Massachusetts to fill the seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, then lost reelection in 2012 to now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The Bay Stater then shifted his political career to the Granite State, where his family had a vacation home, and challenged Shaheen in 2014. But Brown lost to the Democratic incumbent despite that cycle’s red-wave electoral environment.
I was really hoping Manzur would win.
Karishma Manzur refuses to tell voters her positions.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 8, 2026
NBC: Do you consider yourself a socialist or a capitalist?
MANZUR: “I’m a scientist!”
NBC: "You won't answer a specific yes or no?"
MANZUR: "It's only the media that are asking the questions"
NBC: "Well that is our job." pic.twitter.com/xSkk6sGWKg
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