Buttigieg Leads New Hampshire as Democrats Eye 2028

The 2028 Democratic presidential primary is still two years out, but candidates are already competing for early support.

The latest RealClearPolitics Polling Average of the 2028 New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, compiled from February 12 to June 25, finds Pete Buttigieg leading polls at 23%, 8 points ahead of his nearest competitor. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Gavin Newsom trail at 14.7% and 12.7%, respectively. Fewer New Hampshirites prefer Harris, who sits at 7.3%.

New Hampshire tends to reward retail politics – small events, door-knocking, and voter relationships that take months to build. Buttigieg ran that kind of campaign in 2020, narrowly winning the Iowa caucus and finishing second in New Hampshire before dropping out after South Carolina. He has since made repeated visits to New Hampshire.

Asked by a WMUR reporter during his February visit to New Hampshire whether he would run in 2028, Buttigieg said, “I’m a long way from any kind of decision.”

By April, his language had shifted. At the National Action Network convention in New York, Rev. Al Sharpton asked him directly whether to reserve a table at Sylvia’s – the Harlem restaurant where the two had dined during Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign.

“You save me a seat. I’ll be there,” Buttigieg replied.

At the same convention, Harris was coy when Sharpton pressed her on a potential White House run.

“Listen, I might, I might. I’m thinking about it,” Harris said.

The latest RealClearPolling national average of the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, compiled from May 24 to June 29, finds Harris leading Democratic primary preference polls at 27.8%, with Newsom second at 16.8% and Buttigieg third at 11.2%. Ocasio-Cortez trails at 8.8%.

The polling comes as the party’s left flank notched a series of recent wins. All three congressional candidates backed by Democratic Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their June 24 primaries, with former City Comptroller Brad Lander defeating incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman by more than 30 points. AOC cruised to her own primary victory the same night.

“People who do not support the Democratic Socialists of America wring their hands at cocktail parties while the DSA is organizing,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, the co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, told Axios.

Polymarket, a betting market that aggregates wagers on political outcomes, places Newsom as the likeliest Democratic nominee at 20.5%, followed by Ocasio-Cortez at 11% and Ossoff at 10.2%, ahead of Harris at 6.3% and Buttigieg at 4%, as of July 1.

In February, Buttigieg drew a 600-person crowd to the Concord City Auditorium in New Hampshire. “A day will come, sooner or later, when Donald Trump no longer dominates American politics,” he told the audience. “I’m asking you to picture that day in order to ask all of us a very challenging question: Then what? Then what? What are we going to do?”