New Hampshire's changing demographics could help Nikki Haley

New Hampshire, with its quality public schools and low levels of gun violence, has far more in common with its New England neighbors than with the red states that define and dominate the Republican Party. (Source: Bloomberg)

The US-Mexico border is a contentious issue as New Hampshire Republicans go to the polls Tuesday to choose a Republican nominee for president. The state’s border with Massachusetts may be an even more pressing issue.

Indeed, when former Republican US Senator Kelly Ayotte announced her campaign for governor in July, she cast the stakes of the 2024 election in most dire terms. "We are one election away from becoming Massachusetts in New Hampshire,” Ayotte said.  In her version of border-war politics, the northern Massachusetts cities of Lowell and Lawrence play the role of Juarez and Tijuana, flooding New Hampshire with fentanyl smuggled across the state line.  

New Hampshire even has a local variant on the “Great Replacement,” the conspiracy theory that casts demographic change as a Democratic plot to obliterate White Americans. Except in New Hampshire, where nine of 10 residents are (still) non-Hispanic White, the invasion is more about space than race.

Median mortgage costs in New Hampshire are about $300 cheaper than in Massachusetts. For years, desperados from Massachusetts have been crossing the border for bigger houses and lower taxes. According to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, fully one-quarter of New Hampshire’s current population was born in Massachusetts.

A  report  released last week by University of New Hampshire political scientists documented how recent population churn has shaped the potential electorate:In the past four years, the state gained 245,000 potential new voters, between newcomers moving to the state and young people reaching voting age. In the same period, 208,000 longtime residents left the state or died. As a result, 22 percent of potential Granite State voters next week were either too young to vote (6 percent) or did not reside in New Hampshire (16 percent) in 2020

The Covid pandemic accelerated longer trends. Nashua, the second-largest city in New Hampshire, is fewer than 50 miles from Boston. Work-from-home employees with incomes tied to Greater Boston will be part of Tuesday’s primary electorate, though it’s impossible to know to what extent.

Thus, the real import of Ayotte’s warning: Too much Massachusetts could be bad for Republicans. That’s likely what former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is quietly hoping — at least regarding a certain type of Republican. After a dismal loss to Donald Trump in Iowa, Haley is hoping to benefit from a more moderate electorate and the prospect of independent voters participating in the GOP primary. New Hampshire is her last chance to slow the MAGA train before it heads south to Fortress Dixie.

Trump has a double-digit lead over Haley in New Hampshire in FiveThirtyEight’s  polling average . She needs a strong showing from new voters and old-time anti-MAGA voters to close that gap. About one-quarter of votes in the 2016 GOP primary went to candidates John Kasich, Chris Christie or Carly Fiorina. Trump won the state with 35 percent.

Of course, many of those once-moderate voters have likely capitulated to the authoritarian movement that now dominates the party. Many recent migrants from Massachusetts are no doubt conservatives themselves. (As political scientists Hans Noel and Daniel Hopkins noted in a 2022 study , “conservative” is increasingly a signifier for “Trumpy.”) Trump received more than one million votes in Massachusetts in 2020 while losing the state to Joe Biden, and some of the New Hampshire towns nearest the Massachusetts border, University of New Hampshire political scientist Dante Scala pointed out to me, are MAGA strongholds.

Massachusetts has loomed large in the GOP imagination ever since the state became identified with brainy liberalism. Ayotte’s Massachusetts warning is a staple of her campaign message and the first sentence in her November essay in the Union Leader. “I’m running for governor because I am worried that New Hampshire is one election away from becoming Massachusetts — from becoming something we are not,” she wrote.

There are worse fates than turning into Massachusetts. Median household income in Massachusetts is about $5,700 higher than in New Hampshire. While New Hampshire has high-ranked public schools, Massachusetts schools typically lead the nation. Massachusetts also leads in the percentage of residents who have health insurance—almost 98 percent —thanks to Obamacare and state efforts.

New Hampshire, with its quality public schools and low levels of gun violence, has far more in common with its New England neighbours than with the red states that define and dominate the Republican Party. For Haley to have a chance on Tuesday, a subtler, less Trumpy, shade of red will have to assert itself. If she somehow, someway, pulls an upset, MAGA will know just who to blame: Massachusetts. 

Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Views do not represent the stand of this publication. 

Credit: Bloomberg