U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren returns to woo ever-important New Hampshire voters this week after topping polls in two early states and unveiling an ad campaign worth at least $10 million.
Warren edged erstwhile front-runner Joe Biden in a Monmouth University poll of likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters released Tuesday — with 27% support to his 25%, a 19-point increase for Warren since the university’s last survey in May. She did the same in a Des Moines Register/CNN poll in Iowa days earlier, leading the former vice president by two percentage points, with 22%.
Her campaign announced an eight-figure digital and TV advertising push Tuesday targeting the four early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — with slogans such as “root out corruption” and “why our government won’t act.” She’ll also hire state directors and organizers in states with primaries and caucuses in March, building out a ground game widely considered by political observers to be the strongest in the Democratic field.
“The impressive thing about Warren’s campaign is that it’s been a continuous growth over the calendar year,” said Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political science professor.
But Warren’s surge from the single digits this spring to a top-tier candidate heading into the fall has gone largely without scrutiny, Scala said.
“Now that she is unquestionably in the top tier — you can make the case she’s a candidate to beat — now it’s a different stage,” Scala said. “Now her competition and the media will begin to put her and her campaign under a microscope, and now we get to see how she’ll respond to that.”
Warren’s latest bump comes ahead of the Sept. 30 quarterly fundraising deadline. Warren tripled her lackluster first-quarter donations with a $19.1 million haul in the second quarter. With her staggering ad buy, it stands to reason she’ll post solid numbers this quarter as well.
But other top campaigns aren’t ceding the Granite State. Warren still has to contend with Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders — who topped a Franklin Pierce University-Boston Herald poll earlier this month with 29% to Biden’s 21% and Warren’s 17%.
Sanders’ campaign, which dealt with recent staffing shake-ups in New Hampshire, counted 45 staff and six field offices there earlier this month. He also announced 1 million individual donors overall. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg opened 12 offices in all 10 counties earlier this month.
Biden has 50 staffers in the state, supporter and former Gov. John Lynch said.
“With so many Democratic candidates running, somebody is going to be able to win the New Hampshire primary probably with less than 30% of the vote,” Lynch said. “So that means a strong ground game, that means identifying voters and getting them to the polls, and I think Joe Biden’s campaign is well-equipped to do that.”