Say what? Maggie Hassan had supposedly saved herself from political oblivion by employing Claire McCaskill’s Akin strategy — promoting the least electable Republican in the primary into the nomination. Democrats went heavy to get Don Bolduc into the general election as a way to salvage what had looked like a very vulnerable Senate seat.

And now, according to St. Anselm College’s latest poll, Hassan and the Democrats may end up putting Bolduc into the Senate:

SENATE
Don Bolduc (R): 48% (+1)
Maggie Hassan (D-inc): 47%

GOVERNOR
Chris Sununu (R-inc): 54%(+17)
Tom Sherman (D): 37%

NH-01
Karoline Leavitt (R): 51% (+6)
Chris Pappas (D-inc) 45%

NH-02
Ann Kuster (D-inc): 50% (+8)
Robert Burns (R): 42%https://t.co/cobdBRcGIo

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) November 1, 2022

Buoyed by a strengthening partisan environment and a shift among undeclared voters, Bolduc and Leavitt have moved on the ballot test and now lead the incumbents. Bolduc edges out Hassan, 48%-47%, while Leavitt has built a solid lead at 51%-45%. …

At the top of the ticket, Governor Chris Sununu is riding his popularity to probable re-election. New Hampshire Institute of Politics executive director Neil Levesque stated, “Sununu is by far the most popular elected official in New Hampshire, with a 62%-36% favorable image. Only 60% of voters have an opinion of Sherman, putting him in a difficult position as he tries to persuade voters in the closing days of this election.”

Incumbents Senator Maggie Hassan and Congressman Chris Pappas have seen their favorability decline since late September. Hassan now stands at 45%-54% favorable, down from 48%-51%; Pappas has fallen from 47%-48% to 44%-51%. Bolduc has rebounded from a 10-point favorability deficit (41%-51%) to 46%-49%, and is now viewed slightly more favorably than the incumbent. Leavitt is now above water at 46%-44%, up from 39%-45%, and thus poses a threat to Congressman Pappas. Although less popular, Congresswoman Annie Kuster enjoys a sizable lead over her poorly-known challenger.

Is this an outlier? Well, it’s the only poll in this race showing Bolduc with any kind of lead, so yeah, it may well be an outlier. On the other hand, the polling trend as captured by RCP has shown the race narrowing rapidly all month, which is also what St. Anselm found as well. And if you’re a fan of RCP’s still-unproven pollster weighting methods, it’s possible that Bolduc went into the lead last week:

Another point in St. Anselm’s favor is the sample size, which has 1541 likely-voter respondents. It’s the largest so far in the field, although the progressive pollster Data for Progress had nearly as many two weeks ago (1392 LVs) and came up with a Hassan +6 result.

For what it’s worth, the St. Anselm result for the gubernatorial race practically spikes the ball on the polling consensus. The +18 gap is on the outer edge of that consensus, but the 55/37 result pretty much parallels the RCP average of 53.8/39.5. If St. Anselm is pulling that close to consensus on the more-stable gubernatorial race, it stands to reason that their Senate polling is likely close to the current status for Bolduc and Hassan.

If so, though … hoo boy. A Bolduc win in NH would indicate a red wave of tsunamic proportions next week. This and other polling would have Democrats worried more about limiting the scale of their loss in the Senate rather than clinging to control, an outcome that seemed outlier-ish just a month ago.

And more significantly and hygienically, it might finally put an end to Akin Strategies and Operations Chaos, and so on. Democrats got roasted for dumping millions into Republican primary fights to support supposed “extremists” in order to set up easy general-election wins. They deserve to get burned for it, in New Hampshire and elsewhere, to heavily discourage that kind of game-playing in the other party’s attempts to select candidates that truly represent the primary electorate.

That’s reason enough to cheer for Bolduc — and for New Hampshire voters to send that message to both parties. But it may well be that New Hampshire voters are supporting Bolduc to send other messages to the current establishment in Washington, the media, and everyone else. If so … that’s even better.

Andrew Malcolm and I discuss the polling, and much more, in the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast. It’s now up, and it features:

• The media aren’t biased — they’re bought. A stunning new report from The Intercept exposes a DHS/FBI program to pressure and incentivize social media platforms into suppressing speech and dissent, in large part covertly.
• Andrew Malcolm and I discussed that shortly after the story broke, plus I return to it in my roundup for today. And that’s more than the Washington Post, New York Times, or CNN has bothered to do.
• Midterm Election Chatter Has Been All Yada-Yada, Until Here and Now
• MOTR Ep. 33: Our DC Leaders Are Too Old, I Said THEY’RE TOO OLD

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!