New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte is maintaining her lead over Democratic challenger Cinde Warmington, with just over six months to go for voters to decide whether to give the first-term Republican incumbent another two years in the corner office, according to polling data released Thursday by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
With strong backing from members of her party and a plurality of support from independents, Ayotte was the top pick for 47 percent of likely general election voters, according to the UNH data. Support for Warmington landed at 39 percent, and another 10 percent of respondents remained undecided.
These numbers are similar to those that the Saint Anselm College Survey Center published in March.
Warmington, who served four years on the state’s five-member Executive Council and finished second in the 2024 Democratic gubernatorial primary, remains largely unknown to New Hampshire voters. Nearly half of those who responded to the UNH survey (47 percent) didn’t know enough about her to form either a positive or negative opinion.
Ayotte is better known, and her net favorability rating (positive 2 percentage points) is significantly higher than Warmington’s (negative 6 percentage points), according to the survey.
Ayotte’s overall approval rating stands at 49 percent, a slight improvement since February, though still significantly lower than that of her predecessor. At this point in his first term as governor, Chris Sununu had an approval rating of 59 percent, per UNH data. That was in April 2018, which coincided with a period of greater optimism about the economy.
Although it’s rare for a New Hampshire governor to lose their bid for reelection to a second term, it has happened twice in the past century, in 1926 and 2004, and Democrats are making the case that Ayotte is beatable.
US Senate
The UNH survey also showed John E. Sununu has continued to widen his lead over Scott Brown in the Republican primary for US Senate. Sununu’s support climbed to 56 percent among likely GOP primary voters, while Brown slipped to 19 percent.
In the Democratic primary, Chris Pappas holds a similar lead over his top opponent. Pappas landed at 61 percent, while Karishma Manzur rose to 18 percent.
Looking ahead to the general election, Pappas outperformed both Sununu (49-42) and Brown (52-38) in hypothetical matchups, signaling his relative strength in the high-stakes race to succeed retiring Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen.
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Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.