Semi-Swings: Virginia and New Hampshire

When we refer to swing states, Virginia and New Hampshire are not often part of the equation. Both states were safely blue in 2020 and, though the margins were relatively tight in 2016, Donald Trump has not won either state in all his years campaigning for president. Yet recent polls suggest a tightening race in both Virginia and New Hampshire as a dynamic landscape shakes up the 2024 presidential election.

September polling out of Virginia placed Kamala Harris up 8 points (The Hill/Emerson) and 11 points (Christopher Newport University) on Trump, healthy margins in a state President Joe Biden won by 10.1 points in 2020. But a recent survey from Rasmussen Reports placed Harris up just 2 points on Trump, 48%-46%, narrowing her lead in the RCP Average to 5.8 points. 

Trump has long insisted that he has “a really good chance to win Virginia” even though the state “hasn’t been won in decades by a [Republican] presidential candidate.” Numbers suggested that Trump truly did have a good chance at winning Virginia when Biden was his opponent – polls showed Trump tied with Biden before Harris became the Democratic nominee in August. While those dreams of victory looked dashed for a time, it appears Virginia may be verging on purple once again.

Neither candidate nor their running mates have made a campaign stop in Virginia since Harris’ ascension to the top of the ticket, suggesting they feel the fate of Virginia’s 13 electoral votes has long been sealed. Still, Trump is making a stop in the Old Dominion this Saturday, a noteworthy last-minute play for the state just three days before voting closes. 

Another state that looks increasingly purple is New Hampshire, where recent polling from Emerson College placed Harris up just 3 points on Trump, 50%-47%. Trump’s showing in the recent survey is an impressive gain since the beginning of the month, when he trailed by 9 points (50%-41%), according to data from UMass Lowell. Harris’ lead in New Hampshire has, in turn, narrowed to 6.3 points, according to the RCP Average. 

With just four electoral votes, New Hampshire hasn’t been a major focus of either candidate this cycle. Biden handily won the state in 2020 by 7.3 points, a much more convincing margin than Clinton’s 0.4-point victory in 2016. The Granite State has gone blue in seven of the last eight presidential elections, but its competitive margins make it a sneaky battleground – and Trump appears to be within striking distance once again.

Virginia and New Hampshire, then, appear to be following suit of the other battlegrounds in their trend toward Trump. The former president leads by an average of 0.9 points in the battlegrounds, according to RCP Average.