Ron DeSantis's Big Bet on Iowa Risks Not Paying Off

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

64% : Trump hopes to rack up big victories in the first voting states, to secure the nomination as early as March.
52% : An Iowa result that seriously wounds DeSantis -- if he finishes third -- could set the stage for a more viable Haley challenge to Trump.
46% : Needing a strong performance in Monday's Iowa caucuses, the first nominating contest of the 2024 Republican presidential primary race, the Florida governor has made the state his beachhead -- even if his goal is to come in second place behind Donald Trump.
41% : A Suffolk University poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers released Thursday showed her ahead of DeSantis, 20% to 13%, with Trump at 54%.
40% : "He picked the lane that Donald Trump is in."
39% : She has been rising in polls and is particularly competitive against Trump in New Hampshire, which votes eight days after Iowa.
37% : Hurt by strategic stumbles, a sometimes awkward campaign presence and -- perhaps most important -- the rallying by Republicans around Trump as the former president's criminal indictments mounted, the 45-year-old governor has been stuck in the same gear, unable to realize a one-on-one fight with the front-runner.
37% : "If the polls are right, every other caucus-goer or every other person in my base would tell me, 'I'm voting for Donald Trump' -- and that's just not true," said one of Iowa's leading religious leaders, Bob Vander Plaats, who has endorsed DeSantis.
32% : Nikki Haley has replaced DeSantis as the top alternative to Trump in many national and early-state GOP surveys.
32% : DeSantis's own campaign also has seen several shake-ups, and some of his donors were put off by his decision to run to the right of Trump.
26% : "For someone who won a landslide re-election in 2022 and entered 2023 regarded as a legitimate threat to Trump, it has been a humbling fall to this place.

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