The Opportunity

In 2022, The States Project helped gain 10 seats in the New Hampshire State House — making major progress toward our goal of ending unchecked rightwing control of the chamber by 2024. After netting another seat in a February special by winning a seat that was tied in the general election, the margins in the House are now 197-200.

With the margins this narrow in a chamber that almost never has full attendance in session, the minority can block the rightwing’s agenda in the House, and even pass policies that can improve lives.

We need to hold every seat we gained last November and flip two more seats to end rightwing control of the chamber in 2024. 

In the Senate, we’re looking to break rightwing control by tying the chamber. This would give lawmakers the leverage to block harmful policies, and negotiate around enacting good policies. We’re hitting the gas early to lay the groundwork we’ll need to fuel a new House majority and build governing power in the Senate.  

The Stakes

Polling indicates that most New Hampshirites support the current protections for abortion in their state, but this past March a wide range of abortion laws — including both expansions and restrictions —  were put to the vote in the House. 

Because of the razor thin margins in the House, lawmakers we helped elect last November were able to uphold the state’s current abortion thresholds.

Lawmakers we helped elect last November, were able to block extreme abortion bans, and even pass policies in the House to codify abortion access including protections against criminalizing doctors. The rightwing majority Senate voted against these additional protections on party lines, preventing them from advancing.

In the post-Roe era, governing power for state lawmakers committed to protecting personal freedom determines whether patients can access reproductive healthcare. The narrow margins we helped build in the House were critical to lawmakers’ ability to protect their constituents’ personal freedoms in this past session. But governing power in the Senate could help expand protections in future sessions. 

The Landscape

The rightwing holds the majority by two seats in the House. Under the current district maps, we see a path to shifting power in the chamber to prevent a rightwing trifecta in 2024.

• New Hampshire has a 400-member House of Representatives (the largest chamber in the country!) and tiny districts that can have fewer than 2,000 voters that make it a particularly unique body. We helped to design a program that could set us on a path to shifting the balance of power in the chamber by 2024.
• In the critical two weeks leading up to Election Day in the state, Giving Circles fueled a Door Knocking Challenge which incentivizes candidates to spend the majority of their time meeting voters on the doors. 
• Many of the candidates who participated in this Door Knocking Challenge won their seats by narrow margins; that face-to-face contact was game-changing. Four of the participants won their seats by less than 326 votes!
• With such close margins in the House, Democratic lawmakers will have a significant impact on policy and some ability to protect the most extreme rightwing attacks.

• The States Project was early to identify the New Hampshire Senate as the most endangered majority in the country in 2020, after helping to flip it in 2018 by only 300 votes. This time the margin was similar, but with the opposite outcome.
• Just 285 votes changing would have prevented a GOP majority.

 

• In 2018, The States Project helped flip the New Hampshire Senate, fueling five candidates to victory, including four new seats.
• Just 300 votes gave governing power to the new majority.