NH Legislature 2026

Data sources

Every file the model reads, where it came from and when it was retrieved, followed by the data audit that lists what could not be obtained.

Every file the model reads, with where it came from and when it was retrieved. Raw captures are kept under data/raw/ in the repository; gaps and caveats are in each folder's NOTES.md and in the data audit below.

2026 candidates (Ballotpedia, compiled from Secretary of State filings)

Current membership and vacancies (General Court, House Clerk)

Election returns by town and ward (OpenElections transcription of NH Secretary of State tabulations)

2026 polls (Wikipedia tables with links to each pollster's release)

2022 and 2024 polls and results tables (backtests)

Pollster ratings

Boundaries (Census Bureau)

District compositions (RSA 662, General Court)

Data audit: what exists and what is missing

Data audit: what exists for a New Hampshire Legislature 2026 forecast (as of 2026-11-02)

Checked every item in the brief against the live source. Verdicts: OK (official or official-derived, usable as is),

PARTIAL (usable with a documented workaround), GAP (not available from here; the site says so).

1. Election returns by town and ward, 2020-2024

ItemVerdictFinding
NH Secretary of State results pagesGAP (direct)sos.nh.gov returns HTTP 403 to every non-browser request and the in-app browser is blocked from the domain by organisation policy. No Wayback snapshot exists for the 2024 results page or any 2026 general-election candidate page (only the 2026 primary pages and the 2026-election-details stub were archived).
OpenElections openelections-data-nhOKTown/ward-level CSVs transcribed from the SoS tabulations for every 2022 and 2024 general-election race (president, governor, US Senate, US House, Executive Council, State Senate, State Representative) plus one combined 2020 general file (president, governor, US Senate, US House, State Senate, State House). Statewide sums match the certified totals to within a few votes (2024 president D 418,488 / R 395,523 vs certified 418,496 / 395,523; 2024 governor 360,149 / 436,122; 2022 governor 256,766 / 352,813; 2022 US Senate 332,490 / 275,631). Cities are reported by ward (Manchester 12, Nashua 9, Concord 10, Dover 6, Rochester 6, Keene 5, Laconia 6, Lebanon 3, Portsmouth 5, Somersworth 5, Franklin 3, Claremont 3, Berlin 4).
OpenElections quirks foundPARTIAL(a) The 2020 file carries county-subtotal and TOTALS rows that must be dropped (they double the statewide sum). (b) Unincorporated places are spelled differently across years (Atk. & Gilm. Ac. Gt. vs At. & Gil. Academy Grant vs Atkinson & Gilmanton Academy Grant); a name-normalisation table is needed. (c) State Representative files label Dover Ward 3 as Strafford 15 in both years; by statute Dover Ward 2 is Strafford 15 and Dover Ward 3 is Strafford 16, so the row is relabelled. In 2022 the Dover Ward 3 Democratic candidate's votes appear under Scatter (1,766 votes). (d) 2022 state-rep rows carry surnames only; 2024 rows carry full names. (e) Party codes include suffix noise (JR., R); last token is the party. (f) Floterial districts are suffixed F (e.g. Belknap 8F). With the Dover fix, the aggregated 2024 seat split reproduces the official 222 R / 178 D and 2022 reproduces 201 R / 199 D to within one or two seats before recount adjustments.
MIT Election Data + Science Labnot neededPrecinct returns exist for 2020 and 2022 but add nothing beyond OpenElections for NH (towns are the precincts); kept as a cross-check reference only.

2. District compositions (towns and wards -> districts)

ItemVerdictFinding
RSA 662:5 (House)OKThe statute text at gencourt.state.nh.us lists all 203 districts by county with their towns/wards and seat counts; parsed total is exactly 400 seats (Hillsborough 45 districts, Rockingham 40, Merrimack 30, Strafford 21, Cheshire 18, Grafton 18, Belknap 8, Carroll 8, Sullivan 8, Coos 7). Floterials are the higher-numbered districts whose towns repeat earlier districts.
RSA 662:3 (Senate)OKAll 24 districts by town; three cities are split by ward (Nashua wards 1,2,5 in SD-12 and 3,4,6,7,8,9 in SD-13; Manchester ward 1 in SD-16, 5-9 in SD-18, 2,3,4,10,11,12 in SD-20).
Redistricting Data Hub / Dave's Redistrictingnot neededBlock-equivalency files require an account; the statutes are the legal definition and match OpenElections' district labels.

3. Boundaries for the map

ItemVerdictFinding
Census TIGER 2024 SLDL/SLDUPARTIALSLDL has 165 polygons = the 165 base (non-floterial) House districts; floterials are absent and must be built as unions of their towns. SLDU has the 24 Senate districts (plus one water/undefined polygon).
Census cartographic county subdivisions 2024OK259 towns, cities and unincorporated places for a town-level map; cities are single polygons (no wards).
Census 2020 VTDsOK (caveat)326 voting districts including every city ward, so the map can show wards; ward lines are the 2020 vintage and a few cities adjusted wards in 2021-22. Used for display only, never for vote aggregation.

4. Current membership and vacancies

ItemVerdictFinding
General Court downloads/Members.txtOKTab-delimited roster with party, county, district, status (Incumbent / new / Former). Senate: 16 R, 8 D in 24 seats. House rows are incomplete (366 sitting members listed vs 382 qualified).
House Clerk RDSE.pdf (Aug 27, 2026)OKOfficial vacancy list: 211 R, 170 D, 1 independent, 18 vacancies (19 resignations, 2 deaths, 3 special elections since Dec 2024). This is the authoritative "current numbers" figure; the brief's "roughly 222 to 178" is the post-2024 count.
Wikipedia 2026 NH House pageOKPer-district table of every seat's incumbent with party (220 R / 178 D listed at the seat level), used to assign each seat's holder; cross-checked against RDSE.

5. 2026 candidates

ItemVerdictFinding
SoS general-election candidate listGAP (direct)Blocked as above and not archived.
Ballotpedia chamber pagesOK (secondary)Both chamber pages carry a complete general-election candidate table by district with party columns, seat counts, incumbent (i) marks, an Other column and notes such as (unofficially withdrew) and Did not make the ballot. Ballotpedia compiles these from the SoS filings.
Wikipedia 2026 Senate pageOKPer-district nominees and incumbent status; used to cross-check Ballotpedia.

6. Polling

ItemVerdictFinding
NH legislative generic ballotOK (one poll)UNH Survey Center, Sept 17-21 2026, 1,418 LV: NH House control D 49 / R 39, NH Senate D 51 / R 41. The only direct legislative generic ballot found.
2026 governor (Ayotte v Warmington)OK17 head-to-head polls on Wikipedia with source links, including UNH Oct 27-31 (48-48), National Public Affairs (R) Oct 25-29, Rasmussen Oct 20-23, Saint Anselm Oct 19-20.
NH-01 and NH-02 general-election pollsOK (thin)NH-01 Shaheen v DiLorenzo: 2 polls (Saint Anselm Oct, UNH Sept). NH-02 Goodlander v Tang Williams: 11 polls. Plus two statewide "which party for Congress" polls (Saint Anselm Oct 19-20 D 52-43; NYT/Siena Sept 15-22 D 52-43).
National generic ballot 2026OKIndividual polls (about 700 rows) on Wikipedia's 2026 United States elections page with links.
Pollster ratingsPARTIALFiveThirtyEight's final (2024-methodology) ratings archive on GitHub; Silver Bulletin's current ratings are behind Datawrapper embeds. UNH, Saint Anselm and Emerson are all rated.
2022 backtest pollsOKWikipedia tables: governor Sununu v Sherman (28), US Senate Hassan v Bolduc (35), NH-01 and NH-02 (7 each) and NH congressional generic (6-7).
2024 backtest pollsOKPresident Harris v Trump in NH (21), governor Ayotte v Craig (16), NH-01 (8), NH-02 (7).
National generic ballot 2022/2024 for backtestsGAPNo Wikipedia poll list with URLs survives for those cycles and the FiveThirtyEight CSVs are offline; backtests use NH-specific polls only and say so.

7. Not found / not used

Consequences for the model

1. Town-level baselines are exact for every district (towns and wards are the atoms of NH districts), including floterials, for 2024 president, 2024 governor, 2022 governor, 2022 US Senate and 2020 president.

2. Candidate data rests on Ballotpedia's transcription of SoS filings rather than the filings themselves; the site discloses this on every page that uses it.

3. There is one direct legislative generic-ballot poll, so the statewide environment leans on the governor race (with a large personal-vote correction for Ayotte, who ran 12 points ahead of the 2024 presidential result), the two congressional districts, the statewide congressional preference and the national generic ballot.

4. House 2022 incumbency for the backtest comes from Wikipedia's per-district incumbent column, since 2020 results are on the old map.