The Associated Press called the Shaheen Sullivan New Hampshire primary at 12:35 in the morning, with 88 percent of the vote counted. Stefany Shaheen took 37.2 percent to Maura Sullivan’s 34.9, and Carleigh Beriont finished third on 22. Because the margin sits above the 1.5 percent threshold at which a losing candidate can request a recount in this state, the result is settled rather than provisional. Republicans had already decided their half of the district hours earlier, and they did it more emphatically. So the first district ran a veteran in each primary last night, and neither one of them won.

Sullivan raised roughly $3.6 million against Shaheen’s $2.4 million. On top of that, VoteVets put $2 million into the race on her behalf and the Servant Leader PAC added another million. Shaheen’s largest outside backer, the anti-Trump No Kings PAC, gave $500,000. Total spending across the primary is expected to pass $12 million, which makes this the costliest congressional primary New Hampshire has ever held.

None of it moved the result. Three late polls put Sullivan ahead, prediction markets had her around 82 percent the day before the vote, and Mikie Sherrill and Chrissy Houlahan had both come to campaign with her. Then the votes came in and she was two points short.

The Union Leader found the detail that stings most. In Manchester, the largest city in the state, Sullivan had the backing of the past three Democratic state senators and Democratic majorities on both the aldermanic board and the school board. Shaheen held her margin there to a few hundred votes. Shaheen also took Rochester, Somersworth, Exeter, East Kingston and Barrington, while Sullivan won Raymond, Hooksett, Fremont, Moultonborough, Rye and North Hampton. That isn’t a candidate being beaten in unfamiliar territory. It’s a candidate being beaten where her own organization was strongest.

That line did a lot of work, and it worked because it was true. And it had worked once before.

Sullivan ran for this exact seat in 2018. She had EMILY’s List behind her and VoteVets behind her. Her haul of nearly $2 million led an eleven-way field, and most of it came from outside the state. She finished second to Chris Pappas, and she spent that campaign answering the charge that she’d only recently moved to the district.

Eight years later the coalition was the same, the money was larger, and the outcome did not change. Only the opponent was new. Sullivan tried to get ahead of it this time by running against the idea of inherited politics, with an advertisement calling Shaheen a fancy last name and accusing her of feeling entitled to the seat. Shaheen answered by going after Sullivan’s donors, pointing at contributors tied to Palantir, a major contractor for immigration enforcement, and to AIPAC. Both attacks landed. Neither had much to do with anyone’s service.

While the Democratic count dragged past midnight, the Republican race had been over since shortly after the polls shut. Anthony DiLorenzo took 51 percent. Hollie Noveletsky finished on 26 and state Representative Brian Cole on 14.

Noveletsky is a veteran and a nurse practitioner who runs a steel fabrication company, and she had contested this seat once before. DiLorenzo owns a chain of car dealerships and has never held office. What he had instead was an endorsement from Donald Trump, and in a Republican primary that turned out to be worth about 25 points.

This is the part we would rather skip past, so we won’t. New Hampshire’s first district has a substantial veteran population. Republican voters there were offered a veteran and a car dealer, and they took the car dealer by a margin that was never in doubt. If military service carried the general appeal we attribute to it, that is not the result you would expect, and it is the second half of a night in which the district’s two veterans finished second in their own primaries.

We flagged this race on 18 August as the case that genuinely hurt. We wrote then that a record which cannot clear a primary against name recognition is not doing what we say it does. That was the right call and we should get no credit for it, because on 3 September we led on three polls showing Sullivan ahead and markets that had flipped to match. The August read was correct. Our September read was wrong, and unfortunately for us it was the more recent of the two.

So here is the finding, without the softening. New Hampshire’s first district ran veterans in both primaries. The Democratic veteran lost by two points after outspending everyone. The Republican veteran, Hollie Noveletsky, lost by 25 to a car dealership owner with a Trump endorsement. Meanwhile the Senate race that will actually decide whether this state sends a Democrat to Washington is between two men who never served, and a University of New Hampshire poll last month had Sununu ahead of Pappas 45 to 43.

The counterargument we usually have to construct for ourselves was supplied last night by the voters. If a service record were doing the work we claim, it should have been worth more than two points against an opponent whose main asset was her mother’s name. Instead it was worth less. Beriont’s 22 percent is part of that story too, since a progressive with far less money took enough of the field to decide which centrist won.

There is a mechanical reading of the result that deserves airing before the broader one. Two candidates left this race in its final fortnight. They pointed in opposite directions. Heath Howard withdrew on 24 August and endorsed Beriont, which kept the progressive lane alive rather than collapsing it. Christian Urrutia withdrew on 6 September and endorsed Shaheen, which added to hers. Beriont still finished on 22 percent. The left never consolidated, and the two centrists split what was left. On that reading Sullivan lost to arithmetic rather than to any judgment about her record.

We don’t find that convincing, and here is why. Sullivan spent $3.6 million of her own campaign money and had $3 million more spent for her, against an opponent working with less. Money on that scale exists precisely to solve name recognition problems. If a Marine Corps record plus the largest budget in the field cannot close two points against a first-time congressional candidate, the arithmetic is not the interesting part. The interesting part is what all that spending failed to buy.

We aren’t going to argue our way out of this. What we will do is narrow the claim, because the evidence supports a narrower one. Service appears to help most in general elections against Republicans, where it takes a standard attack off the table before it is made. It has now twice failed to do a different job, which is beating an establishment name inside a Democratic primary. Those are separate contests, and we’ve been treating them as one.

Shaheen now faces DiLorenzo in a district that changed hands in three consecutive elections before Pappas arrived and steadied it. Republicans think it’s winnable, and the National Republican Congressional Committee spent primary night saying so, with a spokeswoman calling the eventual Democratic nominee dead on arrival in November whichever woman won. Since neither nominee served, the general election here will settle a question about New Hampshire rather than a question about veterans.

The Senate race sits in the same category and matters more. Chris Pappas won his primary comfortably against Karishma Manzur, who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America, and John E. Sununu beat Scott Brown for the Republican nomination, giving Trump and John Thune the candidate they wanted. Sununu has been out of politics for seventeen years, having lost this same seat to Jeanne Shaheen in 2008, and Trump endorsed him despite Sununu having called him a loser during the 2024 campaign. Republicans have not won a Senate race in New Hampshire since 2010 and Kamala Harris carried the state in 2024, yet a University of New Hampshire poll last month had Sununu up 45 to 43. The two sides have already booked $42 million in advertising. Neither man has worn a uniform, and this is the race that decides the state.

The rest of the board is still live, though, and it’s where our argument has to earn its keep. Cait Conley is running in a New York seat that both Cook and the University of Virginia have now moved into the toss-up column, and she has spent the past week running hard against the Pentagon purge. Nancy Lacore, Rebecca Bennett and JoAnna Mendoza are all on general election ballots. Goodlander faces Lily Tang Williams again, in a rematch of their 2024 contest. Those races test service against Republicans, which is the contest we think it is actually built for. Last night tested something else, and the answer was no.