Nikki Haley appears poised to benefit from Chris Christie suspending his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, especially in New Hampshire, where the former New Jersey governor focused much of his efforts on wooing opponents away from Donald Trump.
But pollster John McLaughlin, whose firm works with Trump's campaign, told Newsmax on Thursday that might not be the case, even though the FiveThirtyEight average of polling shows Haley trailing Trump by just 11.8 percentage points in the Granite State. Trump leads the Republican field overall by 48.3 points.
"In New Hampshire, [Trump] is doing well,'' McLaughlin told "The Chris Salcedo Show." "Two polls came out recently, and one of them had [Trump's lead] at single digits. And that was CNN. But The Boston Globe poll came out the same day and had Trump up 20 points. ... It was a much better designed poll.
"We're doing well right now."
Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, has crowed recently about a Wall Street Journal poll last month that showed her 17 points ahead of President Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup. But McLaughlin said Haley is misleading the public about that poll.
"She said she's up 17 points, but it's not true," McLaughlin said. "She's losing to Joe Biden in a poll that came out today [from] Rasmussen Reports. ... She's been falling like a rock when people found out she wants to cut Social Security [and] raise the [retirement] age.
"She has a history of raising taxes, and she opposed Trump on the border and other immigration policies.
"This primary is going to be hard-fought, and we expect to win."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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