DES MOINES, Iowa — Heading into Monday night's GOP Caucuses here in the Hawkeye State, the question is no longer who will win but how large the gap will be separating Donald Trump from the other Republican candidates.
The final Des Moines Register NBC News poll put the former president far ahead of the pack, but in the past month former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has moved from third place to second, pulling ahead of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
"This is actually about being able to get a ticket out of Iowa, and particularly that’s true for Ron DeSantis," NBC News Chief Political Director Mark Murray told KARE.
"A third-place finish for him here in Iowa would just be detrimental to his campaign. He has the endorsement from Iowa’s sitting governor Kim Reynolds, he visited all 99 Iowa counties, has a great organization."
The final poll of likely caucus-goers puts Donald Trump at 48%, Nikki Haley at 20%, Ron DeSantis at 16%, and tech magnate Vivek Ramaswamy at 8%. The same poll showed that more Trump and DeSantis supporters describe themselves as deeply enthusiastic.
That will matter given the bitterly cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills sweeping across the Iowa plains.
"Turnout is the name of the game, and you just want to be the candidate who has the most intense supporters rather than the ones who are a little squishy because those ones might not come out in the cold," Murray explained.
Minnesotan Preya Samsundar said she's felt growing enthusiasm for Haley, despite what the poll shows.
"We have seen it on the ground, we’ve seen it in the crowd size, we’ve seen so many people that have come out to her events," said Sumsundar, who is working with SFA Fund Inc., the super PAC supporting Haley.
"A question she asks fairly often at her events is, 'How many of you, is this the first time that you’ve heard me speak before?' and the entire room, the hands go up."
Sumsundar said she didn't expect Republican caucusgoers to be put off by poll results showing that Haley does better with independent voters.
"I think it really just shows what a coalescer she is, the fact that she can reach out to folks across the aisle who are independents, even soft Democrats who are tired of Joe Biden."
DeSantis told reporters Sunday that his ground game will prove itself Monday night, saying that he has "built an army" in Iowa. DeSantis has also spent heavily on advertising in Iowa, attempting to paint Haley as too liberal on LGBTQ rights.
"For Nikki Haley that second place finish ends up meaning that momentum she’s had over the past month is real," NBC's Murray remarked.
"Even though she’s playing with a little house money here because she hasn’t campaigned as much, third place would be disappointing because it would kind of belie the momentum she seemed to have."
Murray also pointed out that evangelical Christians have come to support Trump primarily, after being cool to him eight years ago in January and February of 2016.
One of the reasons the weather is such a factor here is because caucuses, unlike an election, require you to show up in one place at 7:00 p.m. Monday if you want to have a voice. There's no mail-in option for Republicans.
Democrats, by contrast, will be doing their presidential primary straw poll by mail in February. That's to respect the DNC's decision to make South Carolina the first primary this year. That's also why President Biden didn't register as a candidate in New Hampshire, leaving the field wide open for intraparty challengers including Minnesota's Dean Phillips.