A top non-partisan political handicapper predicts that New Hampshire’s U.S. Senate race in 2026 is already shaping up to be a very competitive contest.

The Cook Report this week rated the race in New Hampshire, where former governor and three-term Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is up for re-election but hasn’t indicated if she will be running, as “Lean Democrat.”

That’s one step away from “toss up,” the rating the Cook Report gave races in the battlegrounds of Michigan - where Democratic Sen. Gary Peters announced two weeks ago that he wouldn’t seek re-election in 2026 - and Georgia - where Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff faces a rough road to securing a second six-year term in the Senate.

President Donald Trump flipped Michigan in last November’s election en route to his White House victory, when then-U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin narrowly edged Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in the race to succeed longtime fellow Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow. In Georgia, which Trump also flipped after losing the state in his 2020 election loss to former President Biden, the Cook Report calls Ossoff “the most endangered incumbent overall.”

Trump narrowly lost New Hampshire last year to now-former Vice President Kamala Harris, but made major gains compared to his 7-point defeat in the Granite State in the 2020 election. And while the Democrats won both of New Hampshire’s U.S. House elections in November, former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte kept the corner office in GOP hands in the race to succeed former Gov. Chris Sununu, and Republicans captured a supermajority in the state Senate and made major gains in the state House.

“New Hampshire begins in Lean Democrat after voting for Harris by just 2.8 points and keeping a Republican as governor. But Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is still on the retirement watch list, so an open seat here could give Democrats another headache,” Cook Report editor Jessica Taylor said in explaining her rating.

Shaheen, who turned 78 last month, has yet to say if she’ll run again in 2026.

Six years ago, she announced her 2020 re-election campaign in late January of 2019, in an appearance on WMUR-TV.

Shaheen earlier this year became the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – the first woman in history to hold one of the top two positions on the powerful panel. And sources in her political orbit point to her extremely busy schedule conducting Senate business right now as they note that Shaheen will make a re-election decision “when the time is right.”

Grabbing a ton of attention as political prognosticators try to gauge what Shaheen will do is her fundraising. The senator raised a meager $170,000 in the fourth fundraising quarter of last year and had just $1.5 million in her campaign coffers heading into 2025.

Shaheen’s modest fundraising figures are comparable to Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Collins, who will likely also face a difficult re-election in 2026 in the blue-leaning state, brought in $295,000 during the final quarter of last year, with $2.6 million in the bank.

But Shaheen’s numbers pale compared to Ossoff, who raked in roughly $2 million last quarter, with $5 million cash on hand heading into 2025.

Sources in Shaheen’s political orbit caution not to read much into the senator’s fundraising figures. They note that the October-December quarter included the final month of the 2024 election cycle, when Shaheen fundraising was a very low priority compared to the more immediate showdowns, as well as the two months after what turned out to be a brutal showing by the Democrats nationwide.

People in Shaheen’s wider circle who are very familiar with how the Shaheen operation works said the senator hasn’t completely decided about her 2026 political plans but appears to be moving in the direction of a run. They also add that Shaheen, a veteran of three gubernatorial campaigns and four high-profile and expensive Senate campaigns, often doesn’t set up her apparatus until it’s “go time.”

Scott Brown, the former senator from neighboring Massachusetts and 2014 Republican Senate nominee in New Hampshire, who later served four years as U.S. ambassador to New Zealand in Trump’s first administration, is seriously considering a 2026 run for the seat.

Brown’s been meeting since last November’s elections with various Republican and conservative groups in New Hampshire, as well as in the nation’s capital.

The former senator and former ambassador said he’s doing his “due diligence, meeting with anybody and everybody. So you’ll be seeing me a lot around.”

Brown jumped in late in the 2014 campaign, just seven months before Election Day, and ended up narrowly losing to Shaheen.

This time around, it’s shaping up differently.

“I have a long runway. I didn’t have that obviously the first time, and I’m going to do what I have been doing for almost a decade now, going around, meeting with people participating in the process,” he said.

Taylor noted that Republicans haven’t won a Senate election in New Hampshire since Ayotte’s victory in 2010 and that “Shaheen has survived tough reelection races before,” including her 2014 victory over Brown.