New Hampshire · Governor

Who is running?

Cinde Warmington (Democratic), Kelly Ayotte (Republican), Stephen Villee (Libertarian). The margin below is Cinde Warmington minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

This is the 2026 New Hampshire gubernatorial election, held on November 3, 2026, for a two-year term. The text says New Hampshire has voted Democratic in each presidential race since 2004 and that this is one of two Republican-held governorships, with Vermont, up in a state Kamala Harris won in 2024. Republicans hold a statewide trifecta while the congressional delegation has been entirely Democratic since 2017. The state profile on file records a white non-Hispanic share of 0.9, a college share of 0.4, a median age of 43.2 and a median household income of 95628.0.

Republican governor Kelly Ayotte, who won in 2024 by 9.34%, is seeking a second term; she took the September 8 primary with 91.9%. The Democratic nominee is Cinde Warmington, a former Executive Councilor (2021–2025) and 2024 candidate for governor, who won her primary with 96.4%. Libertarian Stephen Villee is also running.

Every rater listed calls the race R, including the Cook Political Report (September 11, 2025), Inside Elections (August 28, 2025) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 4, 2025). The text's poll average is Ayotte 50.8%, Warmington 38.1% (Ayotte +12.7%). The latest polls listed are New York Times/Siena (September 15–22, 2026), Ayotte 52%, Warmington 41%, and the University of New Hampshire (September 17–21, 2026), Ayotte 47%, Warmington 43%.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: The forecast rows carry no `basis` field, so the input does not say whether the model used the statewide polls listed in the text.; facts.candidates marks Ayotte as incumbent: false, while the text calls her the incumbent Republican governor.; The text gives no fundraising figures for any candidate.; The text gives no presidential margins, only that the state has voted Democratic since 2004 and that Harris won it in 2024.; Ratings are given only as 'R', with no Lean/Likely/Safe detail; three of them date from 2025.; The text's lead still says the primaries 'will take place' on September 8, though results are listed.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as eec8cd2f6789; written by claude-opus-5-5 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 2.4 points toward the Democrats from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.

How likely is each to win?

Monte Carlo error is ±0.1 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.

How wide is the range?

Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -20.6 and -1.9 points. Election day: -20.9 to +1.8. The election-day interval is 4.0 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 7.21 points, made of race-specific polling error 48%, drift to election day 31%, correlated polling error 11%, latent opinion 10%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

What evidence is this built on?

8 polls, most recent 2026-09-21. 38% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Cinde Warmington ahead of Kelly Ayotte. Over 15 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -0.7 points. There were 7 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.

Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls. Of that, +0.00 points came from +0 poll(s), -0.05 from the shorter horizon, and +0.05 from the model specification.

How has this model done before?

Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.

Where did every number come from?

Nowcast run 0d35646f-7485-49e0-9edf-221d1aadf6a2 and election-day run e7669c17-fd10-40c5-9c75-b12fa3b2b1b0, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.