Republican wins NH special election for State House

Last week we highlighted a special election to fill a New Hampshire open house seat for Rockingham County District 9 which consists of the Town of Epping. What makes this election interesting is that the Town of Epping is a swing district. Epping is admittedly a very small town of ~7,000 people but it voted for Obama over Romney in 2012 and then for Trump over Clinton in 2016. Similarly, in the state house elections in 2018, District 9 elected one Democrat (first place) and one Republican ( second place) for state representative. Note that Epping is allocated two representatives to the State House so both parties nominated two candidates and voters could select two candidates out of the four. The Republican representative resigned from office in 2019 setting the stage for the special election.

Given that this is a battleground district, we thought the special election race would be close and it was. Today’s Union Leader (the largest newspaper in New Hampshire) reports that the Republican candidate Michael Vose narrowly defeated the Democratic candidate Naomi Andrews by a vote of 880 (52%) to 806 (48%). In retrospect, Voss may have been a slight favorite given that he had previously served in the House, came in 3rd place in 2018, and probably had slightly better name recognition. Still, Andrews was a well spoken candidate who had run unopposed in the Democratic primary, whereas Vose had to win a primary race.

Bottom Line: Republicans can celebrate a win in a swing state district. As is customary for a special election, turnout was down significantly compared to 2018 (58%) and 2016 (43%). Accordingly, we should not read too much into a single election. Still, it is a positive sign for Republicans that they can win a swing district in a state like New Hampshire, even when the Washington establishment is in the middle of an impeachment inquiry. We will profile a number of interesting state races between now and Nov 5 when most of them will take place.

For now, it’s Republicans I and Democrats 0 in our featured races!