Trump Maintains Major Lead in Final Days Before Iowa Caucus: Polls

Supporters awaiting the arrival of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a “Commit to Caucus” rally in Clinton, Iowa, on Jan. 6, 2024. Tannen Maury/afp/AFP via Getty Images

Can anyone beat President Donald Trump in the GOP’s Iowa Caucus?

Less than a week remains until the Republican Party of Iowa’s Jan. 15 caucus, and two new Iowa-only polls show the gap is as wide as ever between the former president and his chief rivals.

A Morning Consult poll published on Jan. 8 shows 58 percent of the Hawkeye State’s likely caucusgoers will support President Trump. Fifteen percent said they will back former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, while 14 percent said they will vote for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Finally, 9 percent said they would pick businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

The poll sampled 181 likely GOP caucusgoers between Jan. 1 and Jan. 7 and carried a margin of error of five to seven percent.

A Trafalgar Group poll, detailed on a Jan. 9 podcast featuring Trafalgar’s Chief Pollster Robert Cahaly, indicated that President Trump holds an authoritative lead with 52.2 percent of support. The survey placed Ms. Haley at 18.4 percent, Mr. DeSantis at 17.5 percent, and Mr. Ramaswamy at 4.5 percent.

The podcast Polling+ did not share the poll’s methodology or its margin of error.

The podcast’s guest, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, said the Trafalgar poll indicates “Nikki (Haley) has a little bit of momentum.”

“It will be a significant morale victory for Haley if she comes in second, and she could. You could imagine her with these numbers ending up at, say, 20 [percent],” Mr. Gingrich said. “The challenge is I don’t know if she has any kind of real ground organization.”

Mr. Gingrich, a longtime congressman from Georgia who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination in 2012, said the outcome of the caucus may well be shaped by the passion of the candidate’s supporters. Bitter cold forecast for the night of the event and snowfall in the preceding week will make participation harder.

Caucuses, unlike a primary, require participants to attend a party meeting before voicing their preference and to vote publicly rather than anonymously. This makes the outcome more complicated to predict and sometimes rewards candidates with superior people skills and political organizations.

A pair of competing events will force voters and spectators to choose between a debate between Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley to be broadcast on CNN and a town hall event featuring President Trump on Fox News. Both events will be held at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

An hour before the debate and town hall, Mr. Ramaswamy will appear on a live podcast with internet personality Tim Pool’s Timcast show, which will be held with a live studio audience in Iowa.

On his X, formerly Twitter, account, he accused CNN of “interfering with the Iowa GOP caucus to prop up corporate candidates” by “artificially excluding” him from the Iowa debate.

Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis, for their part, have held multiple town halls on national television in the closing weeks of the Iowa campaign. Mr. DeSantis has spent much of his campaign in Iowa and is saying he expects to do well in the state.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (L) during the fourth Republican presidential primary debate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Dec. 6, 2023, and former South Carolina Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley at the same event. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Ms. Haley is pitching herself as the most electable candidate in the Republican field and may well be more focused on New Hampshire, where she is polling close to President Trump.

Ahead of the Jan. 10 debate, Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley are ramping up attacks on each other.

President Trump, on the campaign trail and on his Truth Social account, is fixated on his numerous legal proceedings and what he presumes is a November rematch of the 2020 general election contest against President Joe Biden.