To do well in the Iowa caucuses, a candidate must at least do two things: spend gobs of time visiting town halls and diners in all 99 counties and get people to show up on caucus night.
Less than a week ahead of the Jan. 15 caucuses, leading Republican candidates are finishing the 18-month Hawkeye marathon by collectively making hundreds of campaign stops and unleashing armies of volunteers to turn out the vote on caucus night.
Both are crucial.
In this state, voters get to hear each candidate speak in person, possibly shake his or her hand, and maybe even sit down with the candidate for a cup of coffee. A frequent stop is at a Pizza Ranch, of which Iowa has 72.
Caucuses aren’t like primary elections, in which voters can stop by a polling station any time on election day. They’re held at a specified time in the evening and require an hour or more. That makes it difficult for some voters to attend.
Even so, some insiders have said that caucus attendance this year will be robust.
State Republican Party officials won’t comment on expected turnout, but some county leaders have told The Epoch Times that they anticipate above-average participation.
Opinion polling of likely Republican caucus attendees indicates that the real race is for second place.
President Donald Trump has been the consistent favorite with 50 percent of respondents saying they would caucus for him, according to an average of recent polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight on Jan. 8.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is at 18 percent, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley at 16 percent, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy at 6 percent.
The challenge in Iowa, according to some observers, isn’t necessarily to win but to do better than expected.
“There are multiple tickets out of Iowa,” Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, told The Epoch Times in July. “There could be three, possibly four people that can come out of Iowa with a boost.”
Here’s a look at what the major GOP candidates are doing to get a positive result in Iowa.
Former President Donald Trump, now campaigning for the Iowa caucuses for the third time, arguably has the strongest ground game after applying lessons learned in previous campaigns.
In making direct contact with voters, President Trump has held fewer campaign events in Iowa than have some of his rivals. But Trump events tend to be much better attended, according to Iowa state Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, a senior adviser for President Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Therefore, the former president may have had contact with more potential voters.
“The president has spent a significant amount of time here, and Iowans are pleased,” Mr. Kaufmann told The Epoch Times.
At each of 10 rallies, at least a quarter of the attendees raised their hands to signify they would be first-time caucus-goers, he said, calling that proportion “remarkable.”
President Trump has made eight stops in Iowa since Jan. 1 and has dispatched a host of surrogates to other venues. Those include his son Eric Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.), and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
The campaign has enlisted some 2,000 precinct captains who commit to bringing at least 10 people with them on caucus night, Mr. Kaufmann said. There are more than 1,700 precincts in Iowa, but many caucuses share locations; there are 728 caucus sites.
Volunteers have also collected more than 50,000 “commit-to-caucus” cards, nonbinding declarations of a voter’s intent to support President Trump in the caucuses.
The number is significant because it approaches the total number of votes that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) received when he won the Iowa caucuses in 2016. Then-candidate Trump went on to win the nomination.
President Trump himself is making an appeal for voters to show up on caucus night during his rallies.
“Forget polls that show we’re 35 points up,” he told supporters in Mason City last weekend. “Pretend we’re one point down.”
Mr. DeSantis has campaigned aggressively in Iowa since last summer and has made stops in each of Iowa’s 99 counties. He entered the home stretch with a New Year’s Eve event in West Des Moines featuring the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds.
The Florida governor, whose ground campaign has been managed by the super PAC Never Back Down, has held events in the Hawkeye State weekly this year, sometimes as many as four per day.
The candidate has held more than 160 events in Iowa, according to campaign staff. That includes a televised town hall in Iowa on Jan. 4, his second in two months.
Never Back Down has been active in the state for nearly a year organizing events and knocking on doors to contact every potential caucusgoer multiple times.
“We are extremely optimistic and constantly hear from Iowans at our events that they are excited and committed to caucus for us and bring all of their friends and neighbors to do the same,” Bryan Griffin, press secretary for the DeSantis campaign, told The Epoch Times.
Of the four leading candidates, Mr. DeSantis may have the most to lose in Iowa. He began the race as a much closer second to President Trump but faltered early. Since then, Ms. Haley has gained momentum.
More Critical of Trump
In the runup to the caucuses, Mr. DeSantis has been increasingly willing to criticize President Trump for perceived failures while in office.“We need a change agent in Washington,” Mr. DeSantis said at the Dec. 4, 2023, town hall meeting. “We need somebody who’s going to go in there and actually unwind the bureaucracy, which Trump promised to do and didn’t do.”
As evidence, Mr. DeSantis cited the unfinished border wall, the dip in the number of deportations of illegal immigrants under President Trump, and his failure to designate Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
“Donald Trump had an opportunity to do that,” he said. “He didn’t do it.”
The DeSantis campaign is working hard to get its supporters to the caucuses, according to Mr. Griffin.
“We have 1,500 precinct captains and will have speakers at hundreds of caucus sites. Nobody will outwork or out-organize Ron DeSantis,” he said.
Mr. DeSantis has maintained that opinion polls are inaccurate and that he’s likely to do better on caucus night than the polling results would indicate.
For Ms. Haley, a second-place finish in Iowa could be as good as a win. That result would catapult her ahead of Mr. DeSantis heading into the New Hampshire contest.
She has concentrated a good deal of effort in the Granite State, where she trails President Trump by 13 percentage points.
Given that, a strong showing in Iowa could position her as the alternative to President Trump.
In Iowa, Ms. Haley 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.
Ms. Haley has held more than 80 town hall meetings in Iowa, according to campaign spokesperson AnnMarie Graham-Barnes.
“Just this week, she’ll talk to voters everywhere from Waterloo to Waukee and Cedar Rapids to Council Bluffs. She’s answering every question and shaking every hand,” Ms. Graham-Barnes told The Epoch Times.
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.
“It’s ground game,” Ms. Haley told The Des Monies Register. “We’re making sure that every area is covered.”
Ms. Graham-Barnes said, “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.”
Ms. Haley was endorsed in November 2023 by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), an organization funded by conservative megadonors Charles Koch and the late David Koch. Since then, AFP has conducted door-to-door operations for Ms. Haley in Iowa, aiming to reach 200,000 homes before the caucuses.
Mr. Ramaswamy has been unable to break out of single digits in the polls despite aggressive campaigning in Iowa.
He discontinued television advertising in the state in December 2023, citing their lack of effectiveness. Instead, the campaign has turned to a data-driven approach to reach the candidate’s core constituents.
The 38-year-old has continued to pound the pavement too, completing his second run through all 99 counties on Jan. 2.
That technique, known as “the full Grassley,” originated with Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who has held public meetings annually in each county since 1981.
“Over these almost 10 months of campaigning, we have identified Vivek voters. So we need to hyper-target those people,” Tricia McLaughlin, communications director for the campaign, told The Epoch Times.
She noted that the campaign has experimented with YouTube videos, social media advertising, and phone calls to identify strategies to which its core constituents will respond. That includes political campaign standbys such as door-knocking, direct mail, and phone banking.
“We’re seeing what drives a lot of young people and what drives disaffected Democrats, independents to see how we can actually reach those people,” Ms. McLaughlin said.
Ramaswamy voters tend to be younger and aren’t typical caucusgoers, so the campaign is working to educate them on the caucus system.
“There’s an educational piece,” Ms. McLaughlin said, “all the more when your voters are first-time caucusgoers and first-time voters as well.”
Based on the size and composition of the crowds at Mr. Ramaswamy’s rallies, Ms. McLaughlin predicted an outsized result on Jan. 15.
“We’re getting people who are not your traditional caucusgoers who get polled,” she said. “If we can get those people out ... I think he really has a chance to shock the world, maybe even win the Iowa caucus.”
The Iowa caucuses begin at 7 p.m. on Jan. 15.
