With just five days to go until the Iowa caucuses, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley are set to meet on a debate stage in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday in a final sprint to pitch themselves as an alternative to the race’s frontrunner, former President Donald Trump.

Trump will not be on the debate stage, opting instead for a live Fox News town hall at the same time elsewhere in Des Moines. Citing his significant polling lead, he has yet to attend a Republican debate this cycle.

“I'm up 64 points and they're having debates. And they hit me at the debates, although mostly they’re hitting each other,” Trump said in an interview with former Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs in his new online talk show that aired on Monday. “The party should be unified. The party shouldn't be having debates. You have a 64-point lead.”

Trump’s polling lead in Iowa is closer to 30 percentage points, according to the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight. But his lead has only grown since the beginning of 2023, with just over half of Iowa Republicans saying they would support him at the caucuses. DeSantis sits around 17% and Haley around 16%, per the FiveThirtyEight average.

The debate hosted by CNN at Drake University will air at 9 p.m. ET and be moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. While the Republican National Committee previously barred candidates from participating in unsanctioned debates, they have ended that requirement and have no future debates publicly scheduled.

If the weeks leading up to it are any preview, DeSantis and Haley will be on the offensive on the debate stage on Wednesday. Both candidates, along with their campaigns and surrogates, have increased their attacks on one another in both frequency and ferocity, in addition to criticizing Trump.

“DeSantis is desperate. He's lying, because he's losing,” Haley said at a Fox News town hall in Des Moines on Monday night. 

“I think she's had a lot of problems, just conducting herself on a daily basis without sticking her foot in her mouth,” DeSantis said on a conservative Iowa radio show on Monday, referring to Haley’s remark last week that New Hampshire voters “correct” the results out of Iowa. Haley, who recent polling has shown is rapidly approaching Trump in the state, later said it was a joke.

The Florida governor has emphasized he “embodies Iowa’s values of faith, family and freedom” -- as his campaign put it in one recent ad -- while painting Haley as gaffe-prone and dishonest. Haley is racing around the state, framing DeSantis’ campaign as flailing and asserting the race is between just her and Trump.

“The way I view the primary is this: Donald Trump's running for his issues, Nikki Haley's running for her donors' issues, I'm running for your issues, your family's issues and the issues that are affecting his country,” DeSantis told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto over the weekend.

With the debate stage shrinking to just two candidates, DeSantis and Haley will have more time than they’ve had previously to make their case to Iowans, and Republicans nationally, why they should be entrusted to lead their party in November.

“They’re not going to be competing for time because they know as soon as the other one’s done, they get to talk. You’re not going to have other candidates just trying to throw spaghetti against the wall to get attention,” Tapper told Vanity Fair in an interview published Monday.

“On some issues that are not just about the two of them, but are illustrative of some really deepening divides within the Republican Party, elected officials, candidates, and the electorate as well,” his fellow moderator Bash added in the interview. “Ukraine, that’s a perfect example. Ron DeSantis is much more of an America First guy and Nikki Haley still wears her U.N. hat and is much more old school, the kind of Republican that we’re used to covering.”

The war in Ukraine -- an issue on which Haley has relied on her foreign policy credentials to attack DeSantis for once referring to the conflict as a “territorial dispute” -- is not the only policy area the pair disagree on. Tapper said they planned on getting at those disagreements, putting them on full display on Wednesday night.

On the southern border and immigration, DeSantis and Haley have tried to outpace one another. DeSantis has called for lethal force to be authorized at the border and has said he would deputize state and local officials to combat illegal immigration, despite a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that prevents the federal government from doing so.

Meanwhile, Haley has pledged to build a border wall, dramatically increase deportations, authorize an influx of border patrol agents at the border and to strip federal funding from cities with laws prohibiting local law enforcement from working with federal immigration officials.

“When Donald Trump was still a Hillary Clinton-supporting liberal, Nikki Haley passed one of the toughest anti-illegal immigration laws in the country,” Haley’s communications director Nachama Soloveichik said in a statement over the weekend. “This is clearly a two-person race between Trump’s debunked lies and Nikki’s vision for a strong and proud America.”  

And on abortion, DeSantis backed a six-week abortion ban in his state and said he would support a federal ban, while Haley has argued a more moderate approach is needed for Republicans to win nationwide.

“The only way a federal ban will pass is if you have a majority of the House, 60 Senate votes and a signature of a president. We haven't had 60 senators in over 100 years, we may have 45 pro-life senators,” Haley said at the Fox News town hall on Monday. “So instead of demonizing this issue, the fellas just don't know how to talk about it. “

There are other candidates still in the race, but who did not qualify for the debate stage on Wednesday. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will be in New Hampshire doing three town halls in a bid to boost his anti-Trump campaign that has received little traction in Iowa and earned him a distant third in New Hampshire polls.

And entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will be in Iowa where he plans to participate in two rallies, an event with the right-wing education group Moms for Liberty and four town halls, including one with right-wing media personalities Candace Owens and Tim Pool in the hours before the debate. During the debate, the trio will hold a meet and greet event at his Des Moines campaign headquarters.

“Snowstorm or not, I don’t care if it’s four people that show up today or 400, we’re going to actually meet these voters where they are because I report to you, not to the business class, not to the Republican establishment,” Ramaswamy said during a virtual town hall he hosted in his car as he drove through the Iowa snow from one event to the next. “I think we’re going to deliver a shock to the Iowa caucus.” 

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is also still in the race, but is polling at or under 1% in Iowa.

"I expect that we're going to beat expectations, we'll probably define those later," he told reporters last week. “I joke that we've intentionally kept expectations low here in Iowa so we can outperform those."

ABC News and the radio channel WMUR will host another debate in New Hampshire on Jan. 18 in Manchester. And CNN has another scheduled for Jan. 21 in New Hampshire.