A top conservative pollster says Nikki Haley is deluding herself if she thinks she’s going to scoop up supporters of Gov. Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire, now that the Florida leader is out of the presidential race.
Jim McLaughlin of McLaughlin & Associates, which has been affiliated with former President Donald Trump, told Newsmax on Monday that DeSantis supporters in New Hampshire will swing 2-1 for Trump.
That will allow Trump to coast in the next Republican primary.
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“There weren’t that many DeSantis voters, especially in South Carolina and New Hampshire, when it was all said and done,” McLaughlin told host Chris Salcedo.
“It’s one of the reasons why he got out. But what you’re seeing in our polling, also what you’re seeing in some of these other polls that have come out in New Hampshire, the DeSantis voters go to Donald Trump by about a 2-to-1 ratio, sometimes even better,” McLaughlin continued.
“They are conservatives, and the DeSantis voters and Donald Trump, they have a lot in common.”
“Unfortunately for Nikki Haley, the two-person race isn’t going to be what she asked for,” McLaughlin added. “It is a two-person race right now, but it’s not between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump. It’s a two-person race between [President] Joe Biden and Donald Trump.” McLaughlin also touched on Haley’s willingness to sound like a Democrat when she’s trying to appeal to Republicans.
This was something DeSantis repeatedly hammered Haley for.
His campaign pointed out, for example, how she had argued for censoring people on social media and banning anonymous accounts for being prone to disinformation; how she refused to condemn gender-transition procedures for children; how she held up Hillary Clinton as a role model who inspired her to enter politics.
Haley’s latest gaffe came when she tried to play the race card and claim that she had been bullied as a child growing up in the South for “being brown,” referring to her Indian ancestry.
“This doesn’t sell in Republican primaries,” McLaughlin told Newsmax. “The whole, ‘I am woman, hear me roar, I am brown’ — this is the kind of stuff that Republicans just despise. They want Americans to be united. They want Americans to be together.”
“This is the kind of messaging, to be perfectly honest with you, that just backfires with Republican primary voters,” he added. “They don’t like it. They don’t like it when Joe Biden plays this card, and they’re not going to like it when Nikki Haley plays it.”
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