Donald Trump holds a commanding lead in every national poll on the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and a new poll shows the results in Iowa. In an Iowa Poll published by the Des Moines Register on Monday, 42 percent of self-identified likely Iowa Republican Caucusgoers told pollsters they planned to vote for Trump.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis finished a distant second, as the first choice of 19 percent of respondents. Only the two candidates from South Carolina — Sen. Tim Scott and former governor Nikki Haley — and former vice president Mike Pence had a stronger showing than Don’t Know in the poll. Scott attracted support from 9 percent of respondents, while Haley and Pence each received support from 6 percent. Don’t Know was the choice of 5 percent, as was from New Jersey governor Chirs Christie, who focused his efforts on New Hampshire and hasn’t been campaigning in Iowa.
The poll of 406 likely Republican caucus attendees was conducted by Selzer & Co. According to the firm, it has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
At 4 percent, multi-millionaire tech investor Vivek Ramaswamy finished above None of These, which was the choice of 2 percent. Ramaswamy, who had never held or run for public office before declaring his candidacy in February, did receive the first endorsement from a statewide elected official in Iowa on Monday. State Treasurer Roby Smith issued a statement endorsing the first-time candidate, saying Ramaswamy “shares my ideals.” Ramaswamy’s two most notable positions so far are his proposal to eliminate the right to vote of almost American under the age of 25 — which would require amending the Constitution — and his promise to quickly eliminate 75 percent of the federal workforce, which would require repealing civil service protections and would create economic and legal chaos.
Five candidates — Pastor Ryan Binkley, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, radio talk show host Larry Elder, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and Michigan businessman Perry Johnson — ranked at 0 percent support.
The only other active candidate, Texas congressman Will Hurd, received support from 1 percent of respondents. Hurd’s biggest moment in Iowa during this campaign happened at the Iowa GOP Lincoln Dinner fundraiser in July, when he was booed offstage after saying Trump “is not running for president to represent the people that voted for him in 2016 and 2020. Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.”
As that incident made clear, Iowa Republican activists don’t care about Trump’s criminal tendencies. The new poll shows a solid majority of likely caucusgoers feel the same way. Sixty-five percent said Trump has not “committed any serious crimes,” despite his multiple state and federal criminal indictments. The poll was conducted from Aug. 13-17, and Trump’s latest criminal indictments — for felonies committed as part of a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia — was announced on the evening of Aug. 14. Support for Trump among respondents was stronger post-indictment than it was when he was still only facing felony charges in New York and in two federal cases.
It’s possible that there may be a change of heart among Republicans once Trump’s criminal trials begin, but none of them are scheduled to begin before the Jan. 15 Iowa Caucus. But of course, Trump is also facing civil lawsuits in addition to criminal charges, and one of those cases is scheduled to begin the same day as the Iowa Caucus.
Writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against Trump is slated for Jan. 15. In May, a Manhattan jury found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll. She is accusing the 77-year-old former president of continuing to defame her after that verdict.
And on Jan. 29, a class-action lawsuit accusing Trump of defrauding thousands of people through phony get-rich-quick schemes is scheduled to get underway in federal court. If that seems familiar, it’s because Trump was being sued for defrauding people with his “Trump University” real estate program the entire time he was running for president in 2016. The fact that no previous candidate for president had ever been sued for fraud before was not important to Republican voters in Iowa or the rest of the country. Trump finally settled the two Trump University class-action lawsuits for $25 million shortly after the 2016 presidential election and just 10 days before the trial in the first of two lawsuits was scheduled to begin.
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