Partisan New Hampshire poll puts Pappas at 36, and our forecast holds at 81

One new poll has landed in the New Hampshire Senate race, and it did not move our numbers. Our model gives Chris Pappas, the Democrat, an 81 in 100 chance of winning the open seat, with a mean margin of D+9.9 and a 5th-to-95th-percentile range running from R+8.6 to D+28.4. The previous run, at 8:32 p.m. ET on September 2, had Pappas at 81 percent and a mean margin of D+9.8. The margin shifted by a tenth of a point; the win probability and the range did not shift at all.

The poll is from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, sponsored by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, fielded August 27-30 among 600 likely voters. It records Pappas at 36 percent and an independent at 1 percent. As the results reach us, the Republican line carries no figure, so there is no number for Scott Brown and no margin to read off the survey. That is a substantial limit on what the poll can tell us about the state of the contest, and it is part of why our estimate barely responded to it.

With 62 days to the election, the wider picture in the payload is unchanged as well. Our generic-ballot average stands at D+6.3 across 27 polls fielded in the last 45 days. In the Senate as a whole, our model gives Democrats a 48 percent chance of winning control and Republicans 52 percent, with a mean of 50.1 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats for control and Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to Republicans. New Hampshire sits on the Democratic side of that arithmetic in our simulations more often than not, and this week's polling did nothing to change how often.