HOLLIS, N.H. — Standing before a small crowd packed inside a winery, Ivanka Trump made an earnest case Thursday for why the country would be better off in the hands of her father, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

During the 30-minute Town Hall-style event, Trump’s daughter talked about issues that affect female voters — the joys and hardships women in business face, the need for more affordable child care, pay equality, work/life balance — all without once mentioning her father’s rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton. The marked contrast in volume and content to her father’s raucous campaign rallies could not escape notice.

“She sounded like a closet Democrat,’’ Mark Ferrin, 66, of Keene, said when the event concluded. “She spoke to a lot of things that were closer to the middle. I would rather vote for her than her father.’’

Cheryl Mailloux of Brookline, agreed, saying she almost wishes Trump’s daughter were on the ballot instead of her father.

“I think she comes across in a positive manner. She’s just not crazy,’’ Mailloux, 48, said before the event. On another occasion when Ivanka Trump had spoken, Mailloux had taken a photo of the speech from her computer screen, “and I posted it on Twitter saying, ‘She should run for president.’ ’’

Mailloux said Donald Trump, whom she voted for via absentee ballot, made her nervous early in the campaign, with his divisive rhetoric about women, minorities, and immigrants.

However, his business acumen finally persuaded her to vote for him, she said.

As the campaign moves into the final days, New Hampshire will be awash in surrogates — and the candidates themselves — as the race between Clinton and Trump narrows to a dead heat in the swing state. According to new poll by Suffolk University and The Boston Globe conducted Monday through Wednesday, Clinton and Trump are tied at 42 percent each. Trump is scheduled to visit New Hampshire Friday and Monday, and President Obama is scheduled to stump for Clinton on Monday.

Just a week ago, Clinton held strong leads in both national polls and swing states, but Trump began to pick up speed after FBI Director James Comey told Congress that his agency was looking into newly found e-mails possibly related to Clinton’s private server.

But there was no mention of polls — or any of the controversies that have dogged both candidates — inside Fulchino Vineyard on Thursday. Instead, there was a thoughtful, concise discussion of issues between Ivanka Trump and Jennifer Horn, chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. No questions were taken from the crowd of about 150.

Horn’s first question: “How do we continue to create opportunities and open the pathways so that more women can start to achieve what it is they dream of?’’

Trump responded by saying that while the country has made great strides to ensure gender equality, “we’re not quite there yet as evidenced by a lack of female presence in boardrooms across this country.’’

“But we’re getting there,’’ she continued, “and I’m confident that under a Trump presidency, we will make radical leaps toward eliminating wage inequality.’’

One of the ways that will happen, she said, is by ensuring families have access to affordable child care. With stagnant wages and increasing child-care costs, families are struggling, she added, citing a statistic she said she had discussed with her father and his policy team.

Motherhood, she said, “is the cause of the greatest discrepancy in wage inequality even over gender. A married mother is making 81 cents on a man’s dollar whereas a single woman without children is making 94 cents on a man’s dollar.’’

This is one of the few policy discussions that Trump, a 35-year-old mother of three, said she’s waded into.

“Generally, I’ve avoided discussion of policy through the course of this election because I thought, as a daughter, I prefer my father to relay his politics, and obviously I’m not the candidate,’’ she said.

But on Thursday Trump touched on education, saying her father would repeal Common Core, and proposed $20 billion in federal grants for families to have greater education options, be it with charter, religious, or traditional public schools. She said small businesses are struggling to keep pace with federal and state regulations, calling that the antithesis of the country’s entrepreneurial spirit.

Trump said she constantly hears people talk about their entrepreneurial spirit being stifled by countless regulations.

“You pay thousands of dollars to lawyers to open a restaurant and then you wait in line for six months while they process the paperwork,’’ she said.

Akilah Johnson can be reached at akilah.johnson@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @akjohnson1922.