Two new polls this week in New Hampshire, home to the only competitive gubernatorial election this year, indicate a close race in the battle to succeed popular Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.

And the surveys suggest that former President Donald Trump’s Granite State poll position in the White House race may be a drag on down-ballot Republicans.

According to a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll released Thursday, Democratic gubernatorial nominee and former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig holds a razor-thin 47%-46% edge over former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, the Republican nominee.

And a poll released earlier this week from the Saint Anselm College Survey Center also indicated a coin-toss race, with Ayotte holding a slight three-point edge over Craig.

Ayotte, thanks to her tenure as a state attorney general and especially due to her six years as a U.S. senator, is a household name in New Hampshire and enjoys far greater name recognition than Craig. Ayotte also has a sizable campaign cash advantage over her rival.

Craig narrowly topped executive councilor Cinde Warmington to capture the Democratic gubernatorial nomination while Ayotte trounced former state Senate president Chuck Morse to win her party’s nomination in this month’s state primary.

So why is the race basically tied?

Working against Ayotte is an avalanche of negative ads that have been running against her all summer, courtesy of Democratic groups that have shelled out over $10 million.

The attacks have helped to raise Ayotte’s negative ratings in both the UNH Survey Center and Saint Anselm College polls.

But the new surveys also suggest Trump may be doing Ayotte no favors.

“Kelly’s very popular, but I do think Trump’s a burden,” longtime Granite State-based GOP consultant and former state attorney general Tom Rath said.

In his 2016 presidential election victory, Trump came close to carrying New Hampshire. He ended up losing the state by less than 3,000 votes to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. But four years ago, President Biden topped Trump by over seven points to capture the state’s four electoral votes.

The UNH poll indicates Trump is down by 11 points to Vice President Kamala Harris, who two months ago replaced Biden atop the Democrats 2024 ticket. And the Saint Anselm College survey points to an eight-point lead for Harris.

“If this were a straight-up election without the presidential race on it, I think Kelly would have a lead outside the margin of error,” argued Rath, who stayed unaffiliated in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race and served as a top adviser to Trump rival and then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the 2016 GOP nomination battle.

A Granite State-based Republican consultant pointed to meager involvement and resources in New Hampshire coming from some top national Republican groups. The consultant, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, argued that Trump’s poor poll numbers in New Hampshire and his perceived lack of enthusiasm in the state is “dragging the whole ticket down.”

Sununu, who decided against running for re-election this year after winning four straight two-year terms in the corner office, didn’t appear to be affected by Trump’s upper single-digit defeat in New Hampshire four years ago. Sununu ended up winning re-election in a landslide in 2020, thanks in part to Granite Staters’ tradition of ticket-splitting.

The governor endorsed Ayotte earlier this summer as she ran for the nomination. Ayotte has repeatedly praised Sununu and pledged to further his agenda if elected in November.

Ayotte was a Republican Party rising star in 2016 with a burgeoning profile on national security as she was running for her Senate re-election.

But just ahead of the 2016 election, she withdrew her support for Trump over the “Access Hollywood” controversy, when Trump made crude comments about grabbing women without their consent.

“I cannot and will not support a candidate for president who brags about degrading and assaulting women,” Ayotte said at the time.

Ayotte lost re-election by a razor-thin margin of just over 1,000 votes to then-Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan.

Ayotte stayed neutral this year in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, but she endorsed Trump in early March, right after he clinched the GOP nomination.

Pointing to Ayotte’s backing of Trump this year, Rath said “her position, which was to embrace him and not create space, I understand why she’s made it.”

But he added, “you take the consequences of it … if that’s the top of the ticket, and you’re the next level down, it’s really hard to get around that problem in a race.”