Trailing Republican contenders are devoting their time, resources, and finances to the Iowa caucuses as former President Trump maintains his lead in national and state polling throughout the GOP primary.
This past week, contender and Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) declared that “Iowa or bust” for his presidential campaign. At the same time, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis moved a lot of his campaign’s personnel to Iowa to try to get some early momentum in order to keep his strained presidential candidacy alive. Nikki Haley, who used to be governor of South Carolina, is making progress in Iowa as the votes get closer.
The January 15 caucuses are getting closer, but the most recent studies show that Trump is still very popular with voters in Iowa as their first presidential pick.
An Iowa State/Civiqs poll of 425 potential caucusgoers found that Trump was the top choice of 55% of them. DeSantis came in at 17%, Haley at 11%, tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy at 5%, and Scott at 4%. When people were asked to pick their second choice, DeSantis got 22% of the vote, more than Haley (18%), Ramaswamy (16%), Scott (13%), and Trump (8%).
The most current poll from the Des Moines Register as well as NBC News showed that Trump’s edge in Iowa was not as big. The poll, which took place from October 22–26, revealed that 43% of caucusgoers chose the former president to be their top pick. DeSantis and Haley matched at 16%, which the pollsters called a big win for Haley, who was the United States ambassador to the U.N. Independents gave Haley a big boost in the poll; 22% of them chose her as their top pick, while only 12% chose DeSantis. Independents (33%) say Trump is their first choice.
The study showed that most people’s second choice was DeSantis, with 27% of potential caucusgoers saying the Florida governor was actually their second choice and 17% saying Haley was their second pick.
In the Des Moines Register/NBC News survey, almost two-thirds of GOP caucusgoers who chose Trump said they were sure they would vote for him as their top choice. This turned out to be good news for Trump. Only 30% of DeSantis followers and 26% of Haley voters claimed they were sure they would vote for them as their first-choice contender. On the other hand, 70% of DeSantis followers and 74% of Haley followers said they could still be swayed to vote for a different candidate.
