Pappas wins New Hampshire Senate seat, becoming the first openly gay man elected to the Senate

Democrat Chris Pappas$ has won New Hampshire's open U.S. Senate seat, holding for his party the seat that retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen$ has held since 2009. The Associated Press called the race for Pappas over Republican John E. Sununu about 20 minutes after the state's polls closed, according to the Valley News, and the Washington Examiner reported that Pappas led by more than 20 points at the time of the call. The 19th reported that Decision Desk HQ also projected the race for Pappas.

Sununu conceded early. "It is not our night," he told about 100 supporters at McIntyre Ski Area in Manchester at 8:15 p.m., the Concord Monitor reported. The Examiner's version of the line was fuller: "This has been an incredible campaign, but this is not our night."

When Pappas takes office in January, he will be the first openly gay man elected to the U.S. Senate. That fact is precise and worth stating carefully. Tammy Baldwin$ of Wisconsin was the first openly LGBTQ person elected to the chamber, in 2012. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who is openly bisexual, was the second. Laphonza Butler of California, a lesbian, served in 2023 and 2024 but was appointed, not elected. The 19th laid out that sequence in its election-night report. So Pappas is the third openly LGBTQ person elected to the Senate and the first gay man.

What the count showed at the call

Vote totals were thin at the time the race was called, and we were not able to load a live results page that displayed raw counts by 9:25 p.m. ET. The partial numbers reported by New Hampshire newsrooms were consistent with each other:

• The Concord Monitor reported that Pappas held about 60 percent of the vote with less than a quarter of ballots counted when Sununu conceded at 8:15 p.m. (Concord Monitor)
• The Valley News reported that the AP called the race at 8:20 p.m. with 20 percent of votes counted and Pappas at 60.6 percent. (Valley News)

One outlet, NTD, published an 8:34 p.m. story that listed Sununu at 60.4 percent and Pappas at 38.1 percent with 21 percent counted, while its own lede said Pappas had won. We treat that as a likely transposition and did not use it. Final margins will move as the rest of the state reports. Readers can follow the certified count on our New Hampshire Senate race page.

Poll figures above are as listed by RealClearPolling and, for UMass Lowell, by the university's release. "LV" means likely voters. We were unable to open the UNH Survey Center's own PDF for its final poll; its toplines here come from RealClearPolling and Ballotpedia, which both list the same field dates, sample and margin. Our earlier story on the final UNH poll has more on that survey.

• Pappas
• Sununu

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

UMass Lowell, Oct 2-19Pappas: 48%Sununu: 41%

Saint Anselm, Oct 19-20Pappas: 50%Sununu: 43%

UNH, Oct 27-31Pappas: 54%Sununu: 42%

AtlasIntel, Oct 28-Nov 1Pappas: 52%Sununu: 44%

Partial count at AP callPappas: 60.6%Sununu: –

UMass Lowell, Oct 2-19Saint Anselm, Oct 19-20UNH, Oct 27-31AtlasIntel, Oct 28-Nov 1Partial count at AP call

Source: RealClearPolling, Valley News

Show the numbers

Poll or count	Pappas	Sununu
UMass Lowell, Oct 2-19	48%	41%
Saint Anselm, Oct 19-20	50%	43%
UNH, Oct 27-31	54%	42%
AtlasIntel, Oct 28-Nov 1	52%	44%
Partial count at AP call	60.6%	–

What the candidates said

Pappas spoke at the Puritan Backroom, the Manchester restaurant his family has run for more than a century. "Whether you're a Republican, an independent, or a Democrat, tonight's victory is for you," he said, according to the Concord Monitor. He framed the result as a national verdict: "Tonight, voters in New Hampshire and all across the country simply have had enough." He closed with, "I'm ready to fight with everything I've got." The Monitor noted that he did not mention the historic nature of his win in the speech, and that he rarely raised it during the campaign.

Sununu, speaking to supporters, said that even with his family name and a swing state, he could not overcome the national tide for Democrats, the Monitor reported in paraphrase.

Neither Shaheen nor Gov. Kelly Ayotte had issued a statement that we could locate by 9:25 p.m. ET. We also found no statement from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, or President Donald Trump on the result. We will update this story if those arrive.

How the race was framed

The campaign ran on cost of living, Trump, and a pair of foreign-policy fights. In the Oct. 28 WMUR debate, Pappas said, "This election is about Team New Hampshire versus Team Trump," and called the war in Iran "an endless war with no easy off ramp that's making things worse for Americans," as NHPR reported. Sununu countered that Pappas "voted for that inflation," a reference to the Inflation Reduction Act, and said of his own record, "I've never hesitated to stand up when I think it's right for New Hampshire." He listed the trade war with Canada and the Iran war among his differences with the president, according to a New York Times account carried by Boston.com. Sununu's closing argument, as quoted by the AP, was that Pappas "has been there for eight years and he hasn't gotten the job done" (AP via KPTV).

Trump endorsed Sununu on Truth Social in February, calling him an "America First patriot" who "has my complete and total endorsement," the Washington Times reported. The Pappas campaign answered the same day that the endorsement "confirms what people in New Hampshire have known for decades: John Sununu will sell out Granite Staters to advance his political career" (Pappas campaign). Sununu kept some distance from Trump during the general election, and the AP noted that he had once called Trump a loser.

A 2010 email from Jeffrey Epstein that said "john sununu, has good stories" surfaced in document releases and in pro-Pappas ads. It is unclear whether it referred to John E. Sununu or his father, former Gov. John H. Sununu. The campaign said neither man met or communicated with Epstein (AP via KPTV).

One unusual endorsement came in mid-October. Don Bolduc, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for this seat in 2022, backed Pappas, according to a Union Leader report summarized by Political Wire and an Axios story cited by Ballotpedia. We could not open the Union Leader or Axios originals, so we do not quote Bolduc's reasoning here.

1. 2025-03-12Shaheen says she will not seek reelection
2. 2025-04-03Pappas announces his Senate bid
3. 2025-10John E. Sununu enters the Republican primary against Scott Brown
4. 2026-02-01Trump endorses Sununu on Truth Social
5. 2026-09-08Primaries. Pappas beats Karishma Manzur, Sununu beats Scott Brown
6. 2026-10-15Don Bolduc, the 2022 GOP nominee, endorses Pappas
7. 2026-10-28WMUR debate in Manchester
8. 2026-11-03Polls close at 7 p.m. Sununu concedes at 8:15 p.m. AP calls the race about 8:20 p.m.

Source: CBS News, Washington Times, NHPR, Concord Monitor

Who the candidates are

Pappas, 46, has represented New Hampshire's 1st District since January 2019. Before Congress he served in the state House, as Hillsborough County treasurer and on the Executive Council, and he is a co-owner of the Puritan Backroom (Wikipedia). He announced his Senate run on April 3, 2025, three weeks after Shaheen said "It's just time" and declined to run again (CBS News). He won the Sept. 8 Democratic primary over Karishma Manzur with about 65 percent.

Sununu, 62, served three House terms (1997–2003) and one Senate term (2003–2009). He beat Shaheen in 2002, 51 percent to 46, and lost to her in 2008, 52 to 45 (Wikipedia). His father, John H. Sununu, was governor and White House chief of staff; his brother Chris Sununu was governor for eight years and declined to run for this seat. He beat former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown in the September primary.

The money

Both candidates filed pre-general reports covering through Oct. 14, 2026. The figures below are from the FEC candidate and committee pages, retrieved Nov. 3, 2026.

Pappas's coverage period runs Jan. 1, 2025 to Oct. 14, 2026 (FEC, S6NH00141). Sununu's runs Oct. 1, 2025 to Oct. 14, 2026 (FEC, C00924092). Both committees reported no debts. The 19th, citing OpenSecrets, put Pappas's fundraising edge at more than $15 million. Outside money flowed the other way. NHPR reported in late September that outside groups had spent "some $50 million to date," mostly to help Sununu or attack Pappas, and that a Trump-aligned PAC, No Going Back, had reserved $10 million in New Hampshire advertising (NHPR). The AP said Republican groups "dominated the airwaves in the final month," citing AdImpact and OpenSecrets.

A note on our funding data: the 567politics snapshot for Pappas pulled from his House candidate ID (H8NH01210) and lists PAC receipts on that committee's Schedule A line through mid-2026, plus three small supporting independent expenditures. That snapshot does not capture his Senate committee totals, which are the figures in the table above. The snapshot was fetched Nov. 3, 2026.

Turnout and the electorate

Secretary of State David Scanlan predicted about 635,000 voters would cast ballots, which would top the 626,931 who voted in the 2022 midterm. He said absentee requests and returns were "similar to the 2022 midterm election," when 58,655 absentee ballots were cast (NHPR). New Hampshire has no in-person early voting, so most ballots were cast on Election Day. Our poll-closing and early-vote guide has the national context.

We did not find a published New Hampshire-specific exit poll from the national networks, AP VoteCast, or the Fox News Voter Poll by 9:25 p.m. ET. The national voter surveys are covered in our exit poll roundup. Pre-election polling gave one hint. Neil Levesque of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics told Boston 25 that Pappas was "winning among independent voters" and that "to some degree the electorate is mad at Donald Trump," while adding that "John Sununu is doing everything right" (Boston 25).

The Senate picture

Democrats entered the night needing a net gain of four seats for control, and New Hampshire was a seat they had to hold. The AP called Illinois for Democrat Juliana Stratton at 8 p.m. ET, the moment polls closed there (AP via KWQC). Stratton will be the sixth Black woman ever to serve in the Senate. CNN reported before the election that her win would bring the number serving at the same time to three, alongside Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester$ of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks$ of Maryland (CNN via AOL). Details are on our Illinois Senate page. Earlier in the evening, Georgia was called for Jon Ossoff$. The running tally is on our Senate control tracker.

What people are saying on X

We searched X between 8:00 and 9:25 p.m. ET for posts about the New Hampshire result from campaigns, journalists, party officials and LGBTQ advocacy groups. Two posts carried the first projections: Decision Desk HQ's call and NBC's call as relayed by NBC correspondent Sahil Kapur. Our verification tool could not retrieve any X post during that window, so we cannot quote their text here, and we did not quote any other post we could not confirm. Reddit listings could not be reached from our reporting environment. X's search ranks posts by engagement rather than time, so the posts a reader sees will differ by account.

View this post on X

View this post on X

Search-engine indexes of X also showed a post from Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, describing Pappas as the "First openly gay man ever elected to the US Senate" (permalink). We could not confirm that wording through our tool, so we report it as indexed, not verified. We will add verified reaction from New Hampshire Republicans and Democrats as we confirm it.

What is still unknown

• The final vote totals and margin. Only about a fifth of the vote was counted at the call.
• Whether the Constitution Party candidate, Edmond LaPlante, draws enough votes to matter in the final margin.
• Formal statements from Shaheen, Ayotte, the DSCC, the NRSC, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer$ and Trump.
• Whether Ayotte wins a second term as governor against Democrat Cinde Warmington. See our governor race page.
• The county-level pattern, including whether Sununu held the GOP-leaning North Country and how Manchester and Nashua voted.
• The full outside-spending total through Election Day.

How we reported this

This story was written on election night between about 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. ET on Nov. 3, 2026. We relied on the Concord Monitor, Valley News, Washington Examiner, NHPR, Boston.com's syndication of The New York Times, the AP as republished by KPTV and KWQC, The 19th as republished by Yahoo, and CNN as republished by AOL. Some pages we tried to open failed: The Hill, Axios, NBC News, the Washington Post results page and the UNH Survey Center's PDF. We opened the FEC candidate and committee pages directly. Our X verification tool returned errors on every post we tried, so no X post is quoted from a confirmed fetch. Polling figures came from RealClearPolling, Ballotpedia, and the UMass Lowell release. Where two outlets gave slightly different wording for Sununu's concession, we gave both. We will update the count, statements and reaction as they become available.

Differing perspectives

What explains Chris Pappas's win in New Hampshire, and what does it signal?

Each position is summarized as its supporters make it, with equal weight and in alphabetical order. A summary is not an endorsement; the evidence for each is weighed in the story above.

• A barrier broken after more than two centuries

  Who holds it: LGBTQ+ Victory Fund (Evan Low, president and CEO; Joe Falk, board chair)

  The Victory Fund treats the result as a milestone for representation. Low said before the election, "In more than two centuries, not one openly gay man has been elected to the United States Senate," and that Pappas "has earned every bit of the lead he holds today." Falk said the seat "matters on every vote, from protecting our families to confirming judges who will uphold our rights." Pappas himself told the group he knew what it "would mean for a young person somewhere in this country to see an out gay man elected to the Senate," while saying the race was about costs and freedoms.

  In their words: LGBTQ+ Victory Fund (Oct. 28, 2026 release) ↗

• A national tide no candidate could outrun

  Who holds it: John E. Sununu and his campaign

  Sununu attributed the loss to the national environment rather than to his campaign. Conceding at 8:15 p.m., he said, "This has been an incredible campaign, but this is not our night," and told supporters that even with his family name and a swing state he could not overcome the national tide for Democrats. During the race he said he had "never hesitated to stand up when I think it's right for New Hampshire" and listed the Canada trade war and the Iran war as differences with Trump. On this view the result reflects a midterm wave, not a rejection of his record.

  In their words: Washington Examiner (Sununu concession remarks) ↗

• A verdict on Washington and Trump

  Who holds it: Chris Pappas and his campaign

  Pappas framed the result as voters rejecting the direction of national politics. In his victory speech he said that "voters in New Hampshire and all across the country simply have had enough," and he cast the race throughout as "Team New Hampshire versus Team Trump." His campaign argued that tariffs and the war in Iran showed Sununu would not check the president, and it described Trump's endorsement of Sununu as proof Sununu "will sell out Granite Staters to advance his political career." On this view the win signals a national swing against the president's party, led by independents who want a check on the White House.

  In their words: Concord Monitor (Pappas victory speech) ↗

• Independents and anger at Trump, in a state that still splits tickets

  Who holds it: Neil Levesque of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics; Joshua Dyck and John Cluverius of the UMass Lowell Center for Public Opinion

  Pollsters pointed to independents and the mood toward the president. Levesque said Pappas was "winning among independent voters" and that "to some degree the electorate is mad at Donald Trump," while adding that "John Sununu is doing everything right" and had localized the election. UMass Lowell's Dyck said Pappas was "holding the line against Sununu" and that New Hampshire was "a state they cannot lose" for Democrats; Cluverius said the state "appears to have the most consistent ticket-splitting behavior pattern in the country." On this view the Senate result does not automatically carry down-ballot.

  In their words: UMass Lowell Center for Public Opinion (Dyck and Cluverius statements) ↗