Republican senators expect former President Trump to win the Iowa caucuses by a large margin, giving him plenty of momentum to take the New Hampshire primary and cruise to the presidential nomination.
GOP lawmakers, including those who support Trump and those who want the party to find another standard-bearer in 2024, view Trump as the overwhelming favorite, though they think former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley still has a slim path to challenging for the nomination.
Republican senators have largely written off Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s chances after he burned through tens of millions of dollars. DeSantis is hoping to rally in Iowa, where he has long seen a strong result as imperative.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Trump’s biggest critic in the Senate GOP conference, is hoping a perfect storm will come together to slingshot Haley past Trump but he doesn’t think it’s likely to happen.
Romney, who ran for president in 2008 and 2012 — and won the GOP nomination in 2012 —predicts Trump will win by a large margin in Iowa, giving him even more momentum heading into the following primaries.
“Trump will win by a big margin,” Romney when asked to predict the results.
“I think Nikki Haley will probably win the second-place crown” in Iowa and “has a good shot of winning in New Hampshire,” he added.
Recent polls show Trump leading Haley by an average of 35 points in Iowa. She and DeSantis are neck and neck in the Hawkeye state.
New Hampshire’s primary will rapidly follow Iowa on Jan. 23. The candidates will then compete in the Nevada caucuses Feb. 8 and South Carolina primary Feb. 24.
Trump has a smaller lead over Haley in New Hampshire, where Haley is hoping to get a boost from former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s exit from the race. Trump’s lead over Haley has narrowed to 11 points in the polling aggregate kept by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ.
But Romney said even if Haley manages to win New Hampshire, there’s “a very small chance of her becoming the nominee.” He described Trump as being “in the catbird seat.”
Other GOP senators see the race breaking the same way but are even less optimistic about Haley’s chances in New Hampshire if Trump wins Iowa by a big margin.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who endorsed Trump last month, said a big win for Trump in Iowa doesn’t mean he’ll win New Hampshire but predicted that Haley won’t be able to sustain any momentum she might develop in the first two contests.
If Trump does win Iowa and New Hampshire, however, the race will be over, Cramer said.
He expressed his hope that Trump can win early so the party can “consolidate its support around the nominee” quickly.
Cramer said even if Haley wins New Hampshire, she’s likely to lose her home state of South Carolina, which would be difficult to come back from.
“Her state’s next, and if she can’t win her own, I do think that’s a tough hill to climb,” Cramer said.
An Emerson College poll of 1,046 South Carolina voters conducted Jan. 2-3 found Trump leading Haley by 30 points, 52 percent to 22 percent.
DeSantis came in a distant third, with 11 percent of the vote.
The Hill/Decision Desk HQ average shows Trump with a 28-point lead over Haley.
If Trump beats Haley on her own turf, Cramer said, “At that point, Donald Trump’s the nominee, and we ought to just accept it and get behind him.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has also endorsed Trump, said the former president is the overwhelming favorite to win South Carolina.
And Graham said he’s looking for Trump to win Iowa by a historically large margin.
“Anything over 13 points would be historic — the largest margin of victory in the history of the caucus, I think, is 13. If he exceeds that, he has a lot to be proud of,” Graham said.
Then-Sen. Bob Dole’s (R-Kan.) margin of victory over evangelist Pat Robertson in 1988 in Iowa was 12.8 percentage points, the biggest gap between first and second place in the contest’s history. Despite that impressive performance, Dole lost the GOP nomination that cycle to eventual president George H.W. Bush.
Asked about Haley’s chances of carrying momentum from New Hampshire to South Carolina, Graham said Trump has a “commanding lead.”
But he acknowledged, “you never know. Let’s see what happens in New Hampshire.”
Former New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg (R), who also served as the Granite State’s governor, presented the bullish scenario for Haley winning New Hampshire and then marching to wins in other primary states.
He said it’s important she finishes in second place in Iowa, which would put pressure on DeSantis to drop out of the race, making it a two-person contest in New Hampshire, South Carolina and the 15 states that vote on Super Tuesday, March 5.
“My view is that if Nikki Haley runs second [in Iowa], and hopefully a reasonable second, that’s a big plus for her. I think everyone expects Trump to win Iowa handily,” he said.
He argued that if Trump does win Iowa, that doesn’t mean he’ll win New Hampshire.
“I really don’t think what happens in Iowa carries a whole lot of weight with the New Hampshire electorate,” he said.
Gregg said Trump’s announced plans to hold a rally in Atkinson, N.H., on Jan. 20 is “a sign he’s worried about New Hampshire.”
“And he should be. Nikki Haley’s moving aggressively with Christie dropping out. None of those votes are going to Trump,” he said of Christie’s 12-percent support in the polls in New Hampshire. “If it’s a two-person race, [Trump] may have very serious problems in New Hampshire.”
Haley is also helped by the New Hampshire rules that allow independents to vote in the GOP primary.
Trump won the New Hampshire Republican primary with 35 percent of the vote in 2016, but the GOP opposition to Trump was divided by five other candidates: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — all of whom earned double-digit support — and Christie.
Gregg argued that if Haley can do well enough in New Hampshire to generate enough momentum to take her to Super Tuesday, she could wind up doing well in Democratic leaning states such as California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont, which vote on March 5.
“You get to Super Tuesday, a lot of those states are not Southern states. Trump will do well in the Southern states, no question about it. But in states that are Midwestern or Western or Northeastern on Super Tuesday, if it’s one-on-one, Trump is going to have problems,” Gregg predicted.
But Gregg acknowledged that Haley needs to have strong performance in Iowa by running “a strong second.”
“If DeSantis finishes second in Iowa, that would not be helpful to Haley,” he said.
Nineteen Republican senators have endorsed Trump, and none have endorsed Haley, a sign of where they think the race is headed.
Senate Republican Conference Chair John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) – the No. 3-ranking leader – last week became the highest-ranking member of the Senate GOP leadership to endorse Trump.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his top deputy, Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), have held off from endorsing Trump, however.