On Monday night, Iowa Republicans will be the first to choose who they want to lead their party in the fight for the White House, gathering at 7 p.m. at over 1,600 precinct locations across the state’s 99 counties with wind chill temperatures expected to be in the -30s.

It’s the first time Iowa Republicans have had their say in a competitive caucus since February 2016.

“You have to get out because we have to send a message most importantly, for November, because we have to beat” President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump said at a campaign event on Saturday. “Especially with weather like this, you just have to get out. And a friend of mine said, ‘they're hearty people in Iowa.’ And they are hearty, I know plenty.”

What You Need To Know

  • The Iowa GOP caucuses are Monday at 7 p.m. CST, the first contest in the Republican presidential primary
  • Polling shows an increasingly authoritarian Trump is expected to win by a large margin — the only question is by how much as he tries to beat back former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to lock up his party’s nomination in the primary’s early days
  • DeSantis and Haley are bitterly feuding while each making the argument they should be Republican Party to move on to a new standard bearer, but time is running short

Already low turnout affairs, the Iowa caucuses this year will be the coldest ever, causing all of the candidates to modify their schedules. The National Weather Service warned of “life threatening wind chills” as low as -45 through Tuesday morning. The Catholic bishop in Des Moines told his diocese they could stay home from Sunday mass.

“You've got a lot of older voters that it's just very difficult for them to get out,” Iowa political operative Eric Woolson, who lead former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s winning 2008 campaign in the state, told Spectrum News. “And the danger that the Trump organization has is that people are going to say, ‘okay, he's up by 30 points. I really don't need to go out.’”

In 2016, Trump lost narrowly to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz before going on to win the Republican presidential nomination. This time, polling shows Trump is expected to win by a large margin — the only question is by how much as he tries to beat back former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to lock up his party’s nomination in the primary’s early days.

“Trump's ahead by a lot. I'm completely confident in that. DeSantis and Haley are sort of close to each other, statistically indistinguishable from each other,” Iowa State pollster Dave Peterson told Spectrum News. “I can't imagine a scenario where Trump doesn't win Iowa. The scenario where he's not the nominee is several bank shots to get somebody else there.”

“The record in Iowa for a competitive caucus is a 12% margin of victory. We need to beat that,” former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, a Trump surrogate on the ground in Iowa, told Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, on her podcast recently. “That would set the tone. Setting a record unprecedented victory margin in Iowa will kick off the primary calendar.”

“I think we can make this a very quick path to the nomination and to a head-to-head with Joe Biden,” he added.

On Saturday, the Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll from highly rated pollster J. Ann Selzer had Trump receiving 48% support from likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers, followed by Haley at 20% and DeSantis at 16%. Last week, the Iowa State University/Civiqs poll had Trump at 55%, with Haley and DeSantis at 14% apiece. Both surveys are aligned with the polling out of Iowa for weeks now and show Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in a distant fourth.

DeSantis and Haley are certainly trying to make the case for themselves over Trump, zigzagging across the state with increasing intensity as the calendar turned to 2024. They both have made their strategies public: a strong second place in Iowa and then disembark, for DeSantis, to South Carolina and, for Haley, to New Hampshire — where recent polling shows her within striking distance of Trump in the state. 

“The goal is to be strong in Iowa, strong in New Hampshire and strong in South Carolina. We won't know what strong looks like until we see where the numbers are,” Haley said on Fox News on Saturday night.  “This is quickly going to become a two person race, I think it's going to be me and Donald Trump going into New Hampshire, and you're gonna see, it's already close, it's gonna get even closer.”

“We’re going to fight this until the very end. We very much see a path,” the former South Carolina governor added.

DeSantis — who is polling in the single digits in New Hampshire, behind the now-dropped out Chris Christie — plans to head to South Carolina on Tuesday after the caucuses and compete in Haley’s home state. First, he needs to beat expectations in Iowa and outpace Haley for second place.

“We're going to do well on Monday. Our voters are very motivated,” DeSantis said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “There's a lot of voters who haven't made a final decision. There's a lot of voters who are deciding between me and Donald Trump. I think these voters appreciate what he did. But they do understand that there's some drawbacks here about nominating him in 2024.”

DeSantis may be right that some Iowa Republicans are still making up their minds, but the polling suggests that may not be good for him. In the Iowa State/Civiqs poll, just 35% of DeSantis supporters said they made up their mind, Peterson said, calling the data “brutal” for the governor. For Haley, 75% of her supporters feel the same. And over 90% of Trump supporters say they’re certain they will caucus for him.

After beginning 2023 within a few percentage points of Trump in primary polls, DeSantis has fallen to even or behind Haley. His campaign and allied groups have been plagued by leadership turmoil and he has struggled to sell himself to Republican voters as a viable alternative to Trump despite tens of millions poured into the state.

“I think if DeSantis is in third, oh man, I don’t see how he keeps going,” Peterson said. “What’s the narrative for his candidacy then? If Haley is in second, it’s momentum, it’s a surprise, going to New Hampshire, hope to build on that.”

“That’s a reasonable strategy. I’m not going to call it a viable strategy, but it’s probably the best possible strategy for either of these two,” the pollster added.

Woolson, the Iowa political operative, said DeSantis’ sprawling and well-funded campaign infrastructure was an asset, but told Spectrum News that “second place for DeSantis is a matter of survival.”

Unlike his rivals, Trump has relied heavily on surrogates — including his adult sons, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, North Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders — and the millions his campaign and allies have poured into advertising and staff in the state.

While he rallied frequently in Iowa in the months leading up to the caucuses, he has spent more time in and out of courtrooms in Washington and New York for various criminal and civil trial proceedings than interacting with Iowans. 

“We’re leading massively in Iowa, we’re leading very big in New Hampshire, because the people understand this stuff,” Trump said at a Manhattan press conference on Thursday after speaking at his business’ civil fraud trial before baseslessly blaming his prosecutions on his Democratic rival: “Every time someone sees me in court, remember Joe Biden and his thugs that surround him did it. They’re trying to get a man in office who can’t get two sentences together and they’re doing that, but so far we seem to be doing very well.”

Seizing on the chaos of Trump’s personality and legal troubles — which include 91 felony criminal counts across four prosecutions — DeSantis and Haley are bitterly feuding while each making the argument they should be Republican Party to move on to a new standard bearer. DeSantis and allied groups have spent $34 million on advertising, including $6.1 million in the final two weeks before the caucuses, according to the political advertising tracker AdImpact. Pro-Haley advertising accounted for $36 million of ad spending in Iowa, including $7.8 million in the last two weeks. Trump spent just $18 million total.

One DeSantis campaign ad running in Iowa the past week calling Haley “Wall Street funded” and accuses her of insulting Iowans, while stating the Florida Republican “embodies and defends Iowa’s values of faith, family and freedom.”

“Donald Trump is running for his issues, Nikki Haley’s running for her donors’ issues. I’m running for your issues,” DeSantis says in the ad, repeating a refrain he uses at nearly every campaign event. 

Haley’s campaign has benefited from better polling and notable endorsements, including former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Sunday. But she still trails Trump by a couple dozen percentage points and Trump is rapidly consolidating Republican support in the state.

On Sunday at a rally in Iowa, he added former primary rival North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to his roster of nine GOP gubernatorial backers. On Friday, Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis brought his Republican Senate endorsements to 22 out of 49. No other candidate left in the race has received an endorsement from the Senate.

“​​As a de facto matter, he's going to have this wrapped up pretty quickly because I don't see any state coming up anytime soon where he's going to start losing,” Lee said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Regardless, Trump has made known his displeasure with Haley’s relative success as he seeks to eliminate his competition from the primary. He’s spread a baseless claim that Haley could not be president because her parents were immigrants, run ads attacking her for proposing a higher retirement age for Social Security benefits, and questioning her ability to manage the job at his rallies.

“I know Nikki very well. She was my ambassador to the United Nations. And she had a lot of weakness, to be honest, she had a lot of weakness,” Trump said at the Saturday campaign event. “I don't think Nikki's strong enough to be president. I know very well. I know better than anybody.”

Haley has hit back that Trump is too old and too antagonizing to lead their party to a general election victory. DeSantis has criticized him for not being willing to articulate a concrete stance on abortion bans and for not completing a border wall. They’ve attacked the primary’s frontrunner have ranged from being too caught up in his own personal grievances and increasing the national debt to being too easily outmaneurvered by congressional Democrats and being too friends with Dr. Anthony Fauci. 

But, at least according to the latest polls, the criticisms appear to be too little, too late, for Iowa. 

“Trump’s staying power defies gravity, defies logic,” Woolson said. “The troubles that he’s had, his supporters have stuck by his side.”

Set to take the first step toward a third presidential nomination on Monday, Trump offered vengeance against their enemies in exchange for Iowans’ support.

“These caucasus are your personal chance to score the ultimate victory over all the liars, cheaters, thugs, perverts, frauds, crooks, freaks and other quite nice people,” he said at a rally in Martindale, Iowa, on Sunday. “Once you set foot in that caucus site, the entire world will be listening to you and I believe that Iowa is going to speak loud and clear.”

Spectrum News’ Taylor Popielarz contributed to this report.