Republican presidential candidates are kicking off the new year with a series of events in Iowa ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation nominating contest on Jan. 15.
Frontrunner former President Trump holds a 33.6 percent lead over his nearest opponent in Iowa, according to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ Polling Average. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is second, with 18 percent of the vote, followed by former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley at 17.1 percent of voter support.
Trump is holding rallies in the Hawkeye State the next two weekends.
DeSantis and Haley will be at Des Moines’s Grand View University for back-to-back town halls hosted by CNN on Thursday.
DeSantis has focused much of his resources on the state and garnered Gov. Kim Reynolds‘s (R) endorsement.
Haley is spending part of her week in New Hampshire, where she has high hopes amid a polling bump and Gov. Chris Sununu‘s (R) backing.
CNN announced Tuesday that DeSantis, Haley and Trump qualified for its Jan. 10 debate in Iowa. Trump, who has skipped all of the GOP debates this cycle, is slated to instead participate in a Fox News town hall that night.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who qualified for previous Republican National Committee debates but not CNN’s upcoming event, said he’ll participate in a show with conservative media personality Tim Pool in Des Moines the night of the debate.
Ramaswamy has a full schedule of his campaign’s upcoming Iowa town halls and rallies.
