DES MOINES, Iowa—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley appear to be locked in a battle for second place in the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses as former President Donald Trump continues to hold a commanding lead in the polls.
Ms. Haley eclipsed Mr. DeSantis in a pair of polls released last week but continues to trail President Trump by 28 percentage points.
The latest Iowa poll by the Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom, and the last one before caucus night, was released on Jan. 13 showing Ms. Haley pulling further ahead of Mr. DeSantis.
President Trump commands the field with 48 percent, two percentage points less than in recent polls. Ms. Haley clocked in at 20 percent to Mr. DeSantis’s 16 percent. Vivek Ramaswamy jumped up to 8 percent, a 2 percent gain
The former president has campaigned as the prohibitive favorite in the final week before the caucuses, refusing to debate his opponents, holding tele rallies rather than live events, and barring the press from attending.
Yet neither Mr. DeSantis nor Ms. Haley are campaigning as also-rans. Both remain convinced that they will best the other—and possibly President Trump—in Iowa.
“The fact of the matter is, I’m the only one that could possibly compete with Donald Trump in a Republican primary,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters following a campaign event in Ankeny on Jan. 14. “She [Haley] cannot win conservative Republican voters.”
Earlier in the day, Ms. Haley said she would not compete for second place.
“I don’t play for a second,” she said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” when asked about the possibility of becoming a vice presidential candidate. “I’ve never played for a second. I’m not going to start now.
“I’m not interested in being vice president. I’m running to be president and I’m running to win and we will.”
Mr. DeSantis’s campaign fueled speculation that Ms. Haley might accept a spot as the former president’s running mate by launching the site TrumpNikki2024.com, which lists arguments for her dropping out of the race to join the Trump ticket.
“I predict we’re going to resoundingly overperform,” Ken Cuccinelli, former deputy director of Homeland Security told The Epoch Times on Jan. 14. “That last poll is going to look like a lark when it’s all said and done.”
Mr. Cuccinelli founded the Never Back Down PAC, which supports the DeSantis campaign.
Mr. DeSantis’s campaign rallies have appeared to include a significant proportion of undecided voters who are leaning toward caucusing for President Trump.
Some, like Diane Pershing of Cedar Rapids, have been converted to DeSantis supporters during a campaign event. Ms. Pershing told The Epoch Times, “I’m here to listen to [DeSantis] and to make my mind up,” prior to a DeSantis rally in Cedar Rapids on Jan. 14. “I’m having a hard time going between Trump and DeSantis.”
After the event, Ms. Pershing was no longer undecided. “My mind is made up,” she said, “I’m going to caucus for DeSantis.”
Another Trump supporter reported being “on the fence” after hearing Mr. DeSantis. But yet another was unconvinced. Though Mr. DeSantis is optimistic about besting Ms. Haley in the caucuses, it is unclear whether he has persuaded enough undecided voters to do so.
Ms. Haley has also drawn a share of disaffected Trump supporters. “He’s so polarizing,” Amanda Klatt of Polk City said of the former president. “I really appreciate what he did,” she told The Epoch Times on Jan. 11. “But this time … There’s too much around him that would impact the Republican Party negatively.”
On the ground, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has outworked Ms. Haley’s, but that effort has not translated into support as measured by polling.
DeSantis volunteers have knocked on 930,000 doors in Iowa, recruited 1,700 precinct captains, and collected more than 40,000 commit-to-caucus cards. Mr. DeSantis has campaigned in all 99 of the state’s counties.
Ms. Haley has spent less time in the state and has poured millions of dollars into television advertising. Her campaign and its supporting PACs have spent $4.6 million ahead of the caucuses, according to AdImpact.
That’s more than four times the ad buys of the Trump campaign and well more than double what has been spent by Mr. DeSantis and his allies.
After enjoying a bump in the polls and an influx of cash late last year, Ms. Haley redoubled her effort in building an organization in Iowa.
“We’ve organized precinct captains across the state and have a great network of grassroots warriors who are pounding the pavement and getting folks to commit to caucus. We’re confident that her efforts will pay off next week,” AnneMarie Graham-Barnes told The Epoch Times.
Ms. Haley was endorsed in November 2023 by Americans for Prosperity (AFP). Since then, AFP has conducted door-to-door operations for Ms. Haley in Iowa, aiming to reach 200,000 homes before the caucuses.
The Iowa caucuses begin at 7 p.m. CT on Jan. 15.
Mr. DeSantis has already announced campaign events in New Hampshire and South Carolina for the following day.
Iowans have been pounded by two winter storms in the past week, and temperatures on caucus night are expected to be well below zero.
That has caused speculation that voter turnout would be depressed, despite the high interest in this race among Iowans.
“The weather’s really bad,” Mr. DeSantis told supporters on Jan. 14. “There were 186,000 people that participated in 2016. There may be significantly less this time. So, if you’re going to caucus for us and you bring a couple of family members, coworker neighbor, that’s gonna have a huge impact as that’s replicated all across Iowa.”
Iowans appeared unfazed by the weather, however, and some insisted it would not hamper participation on caucus night.
“We’re used to the weather,” Dubuque voter Ben Leifker told The Epoch Times at a Haley campaign event on Jan. 14. “It’s mid-January Iowa weather. We’ve had it before.”
Jackson Richman and T.J. Muscaro contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
