Sununu and Pappas win New Hampshire primaries for Jeanne Shaheen's open Senate seat

Former senator John E. Sununu won the Republican primary for New Hampshire's open U.S. Senate seat on 8 September. Representative Chris Pappas won the Democratic primary the same night. They will compete in November for the chair Jeanne Shaheen is leaving after three terms.

The Associated Press called both races shortly after polls closed. Early statewide figures published by NBC News, with about 28 percent of the expected Republican vote counted, gave Sununu 23,951 votes, or 69.2 percent, against Scott Brown's 8,835 votes, or 25.5 percent. On the Democratic side Pappas had 38,531 votes, or 62.5 percent, to scientist and first-time candidate Karishma Manzur's 21,794 votes, or 35.4 percent. Those shares can move as the rest of the small state's towns report. They are already large enough to describe the shape of each contest.

Sununu had the endorsement of President Trump and of Senate Majority Leader John Thune. He raised $4.1 million to Brown's $2.1 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings cited in pre-election coverage. He declined to debate Brown. Brown, who won Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts seat in a 2010 special election and later moved to New Hampshire to lose to Shaheen in 2014, finished a distant second in a field that also included Sky Danley.

A seat both men have already lost to Shaheen

Sununu beat then-governor Shaheen for this Senate seat in 2002 and lost the rematch in 2008. Brown lost to her in 2014. Pappas has never run statewide for Senate. He is a three-term House member from the First District and one of the few openly gay members of Congress from New England. Manzur's 35 percent, against a well-funded incumbent congressman, is the figure Democratic officials will study. It is not a win. It is not a rounding error either.

Shaheen's retirement opened one of the few Senate maps on which Republicans can point to a plausible pickup. The chamber sits at 53-47 Republican. New Hampshire has voted Democratic in recent presidential races and has split tickets for governor and Congress. An August University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll had Sununu and Pappas essentially tied in a hypothetical general election, while Pappas led Brown by five points. A Saint Anselm College poll in the same window had Pappas up seven on Sununu and twelve on Brown. The RealClearPolitics average after the primary still showed Pappas with a two-point edge and more than 10 percent undecided.

Sununu's statement after the call was short. He said the job was to "stand up for the people of New Hampshire every single day" and named the economy, jobs and affordability. Pappas spent the primary months treating Sununu as the opponent and Manzur as a lesser threat, the same posture Sununu used toward Brown. That habit will now meet an electorate that has watched both families for decades. Sununu is the son of a former governor and the brother of another. Pappas owns a family restaurant in Manchester. Neither man is a stranger in Concord.

What November turns on

The national parties already have the state on their targeting lists. Independent expenditure groups that backed Sununu in the primary will stay. Democratic committees that treated Pappas as the presumptive nominee will now have to spend in a state they have held for eighteen years. The war in Iran, the Canada trade bans that landed on the same night, and household prices will all be on the table. New Hampshire's primary calendar gives the rest of the country an early look at whether Trump's endorsement still clears a Republican lane in a New England suburb, and whether a House Democrat with a restaurant and a voting record can hold a seat that a popular three-term senator is vacating.

The remaining uncounted Republican ballots are not expected to change the order. They may change the margin. For the next eight weeks the only number that matters is the one that prints after the first Tuesday in November.