A new Republican poll focuses not on voters nationwide but on those in Iowa, though the results are the same: Former President Trump leads by a mile. The more interesting wrinkle is the battle for second place, with Nikki Haley surging into a tie with Ron DeSantis, according to the NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll released on Monday. The survey of likely GOP caucusgoers has Trump at 43%, followed by Haley and DeSantis at 16%. Haley is up 10 points from August, while DeSantis slipped 3 points. Trump gained a single point. The New York Times notes that Haley's gain is fueled by likely caucusgoers who identify as independent. Her support among them rose from 10% to 22%, behind Trump's 33%, but well ahead of DeSantis' 12%.
"You just have (Haley) rising," says J. Ann Selzer of Selzer & Co., which conducted the Iowa poll. "You have DeSantis kind of holding on for second place. But both of them are on ground that you could only describe as shaky compared to the solid ground that Donald Trump stands on." After the top three came Tim Scott (7%), Vivek Ramaswamy (4%), and Doug Burgum (3%), with the rest of the pack below that. The poll was conducted before Mike Pence dropped out, and he scored only 2% anyway.
The poll suggests that barring an unforeseen turn of events, Trump will easily win Iowa's Jan. 15 caucuses. The former president said so himself over the weekend while campaigning in the state, notes Politico. "I go around saying of course we're going to win Iowa," he said. "My people said you cannot assume that." (Haley caught the Florida governor in a recent national poll as well.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
