(The Center Square) – And then there were two – former President Donald Trump and former U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley will duke it out in the first-in-the-nation primary on Tuesday.
Sunday’s final polling before the primary by CNN/University of New Hampshire had Trump ahead 50%-39%.
The sampling of 2,348 with margin of error +/-2.8% was taken Tuesday through Friday of last week, ahead of Sunday afternoon’s announcement by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis he was dropping out and endorsing Trump.
Trump was well ahead in registered Republicans; Haley commanded a lead among the independents.
There are 22 delegates to the Republican National Convention up for grabs, and awarded proportionally. New Hampshire, which picks presidential winners about 80% of the time since the turn of the 20th century, had 10 candidate names on the 2016 primary and Trump bested them with more than 35% of the vote after having run second to Sen. Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucuses.
In November, he was a loser to Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Haley has invested heavily in New Hampshire, crisscrossing the state with Gov. Chris Sununu, who endorsed the former ambassador back in mid-December. During Sununu’s endorsement speech, he predicted the battle would ultimately come down to Trump and Haley.
“This is a race between two people. Nikki Haley and Donald Trump. That’s it … with all due respect to the other candidates,” Sununu told the crowd at a time when the field was more than a half-dozen.
Sununu has urged voters to support Haley, hoping the combined support could be enough to dethrone Trump.
Haley’s home state of South Carolina is next in the primary schedule, on the first Saturday in February. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who got engaged Saturday, gave an endorsement to Trump this weekend.
In The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll taken Jan. 2-4, Trump’s 61% easily beat challengers Haley (12%), DeSantis (11%) and Vivek Ramaswamy (7%). Ramaswamy dropped out after Iowa.