A recent survey indicates a decisive victor in the 2028 Republican primary if the New Hampshire primary occurred today, and the margin is significant, with Vice President JD Vance defeating his rivals.
For the Republicans pining for a return to the George W. Bush era and desperate to steer the party away from Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, the latest numbers from the Saint Anselm College Survey Center at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics make one thing painfully clear: they’ve got an uphill battle ahead of them.
Results were based on online surveys of “2112 New Hampshire registered voters. Surveys were collected between November 18th and 19th, 2025, from cell phone users randomly drawn from a sample of registered voters reflecting the demographic and partisan characteristics of the voting population.”
It has “an overall margin of sampling error of+/- 2.1%,” it noted.
Dominant: New Hampshire Poll Shows JD Vance Towering over 2028 Field https://t.co/lXNGXksBuP
— Steve Ferguson (@lsferguson) November 25, 2025
The survey found:
Vice-President JD Vance leads the Republican presidential field with 57% support, while Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom continue to lead among Democratic primary voters.
The survey asked:
Looking ahead to the next Presidential election in 2028, if the New Hampshire Presidential Primary were held today, for whom would you vote?
• Ted Cruz
• Ron DeSantis
• Tulsi Gabbard
• Nikki Haley
• Vivek Ramaswamy
• Marco Rubio
• JD Vance
• Glenn Youngkin
• Other
• Unsure
The results indicate that Vance has garnered 57 percent of the votes, while the closest Republican contender, Secretary of State Rubio, has 9 percent. All other candidates receive 7 percent or lower, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) with just 1 percent and the notably popular Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, with 4 percent.
Who do the Democrats want?
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and California Governor Gavin Newsom continue to lead the field in the Democratic Presidential Primary. Buttigieg (28%) has opened up a small lead over Newsom (24%).
Even though President Donald Trump won’t be on the ballot, it would be prudent for potential GOP candidates to heed the counsel recently offered by James Blair, who served as Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff, in a recent discussion with Politico.
“If you’re a Republican that wants to run in 2028 right now, you need to focus on keeping Republicans in power for 2026. I think the number one thing everybody can do is focus on the team and helping their team and not focus on themselves,” Blair said.
“Voters will sniff out anybody who has seemed to be sort of focused on themselves,” he added.
