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A spokesperson for former President Donald Trump has hit out at a poll showing Nikki Haley closing the gap between her and Trump in the New Hampshire Republican primary.
A poll of 600 likely GOP primary voters, conducted by American Research Group (ARG) between December 27 and January 3, shows Trump leading Haley, the former South Carolina governor and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in New Hampshire by just four points, 37 percent to 33 percent. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is third with 10 percent, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has 5 percent. The survey's margin of error is 4 points.
While Haley still lags far being Trump, the GOP front-runner, in national polls, the ARG poll shows Haley has kept campaign momentum after its December poll showed her trailing the former President by 4 points.
But the news has not worried the Trump campaign. Steven Cheung, the former president's spokesperson called the poll "garbage" and said Trump would beat Haley.
"It means any reporter who actually believes this garbage poll will lose all credibility once President Trump crushes the competition," he told Newsweek.
Newsweek has reached out to representatives for Haley by email for comment.
The survey follows a December 17 CBS poll which showed that Haley had narrowed Trump's lead in the state to 15 points (44 percent to 29 percent) and a national Rasmussen Reports survey in the same month of 792 likely Republican voters that put Haley in second place at 13 percent.
That was an increase of four points from the 9 percent she recorded in a previous Rasmussen poll in November. The November poll put Trump at 50 percent, increasing to 51 percent in December.
However, Haley is still a long way behind the former president in Republican primary national polls, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight. With 11.2 percent of the vote share, Haley is polling behind DeSantis—who early on was seen as Trump's biggest challenger but has lost momentum—at 12.1 percent and Trump at 61.8 percent.
Even if Haley makes gains in New Hampshire, Trump is still leading in all the other states FiveThirtyEight has polling data for, and in many states Haley is in third place, behind DeSantis.
The primary season will determine which candidate will run in the 2024 general election. It begins with the Iowa caucuses on January 15, and the New Hampshire primary is on January 23. The final primary will take place in September.
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About the writer
Kate Plummer is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. politics and national affairs, and ... Read more