Candidates clash over Trump, China and Israel-Hamas war

That will leave just four candidates on stage tonight, the smallest contingent yet. And the question, with just over five weeks left until the Iowa caucuses, is whether either can use this debate to break away from the other and gain meaningful traction against Trump.

Realistically, only two of them seem to even have the potential to do so. With his stubbornly sky-high unfavorable ratings among Republicans, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is fighting what looks like an ominous ceiling. And while he has attracted considerable attention with his various provocations, Vivek Ramaswamy continues to lag in the low to mid-single digits and risks possible exclusion from future debates if polling remains an important part of the criteria.

That leaves DeSantis and Haley. And each faces a different challenge.

Arguably, DeSantis has the more surmountable of the two. The simple reason: Despite falling far behind Trump, there is no evidence that Republican voters are turning against him personally. In the latest NBC News/Des Moines Register poll, for example, DeSantis had the highest personal favorability rating of any GOP candidate, including Trump. Similar findings are evident in other early state and national polls. It remains the case that DeSantis has broad popularity and appeal to Republican voters; his problem is that they have been telling pollsters for months now that they simply prefer Trump as their nominee.

The DeSantis strategy to reverse this trend, it became clear, was built around Iowa, where in addition to Vander Plaats, he also secured endorsements from Governor Kim Reynolds and several dozen state legislators. Iowa caucusgoers in both parties tend to be particularly engaged, watching the race and often attending campaign events in person. Having dramatic vote swings, as voters decide in the closing days, is not unheard of. After languishing for months in 2011, Rick Santorum surged in the final days of the 2012 caucus campaign and actually edged out Republican front-runner Mitt Romney to win the state.

It’s unclear what exactly DeSantis can do — if he can do anything — to convert his popularity among Republican voters into real support. But that popularity, along with his intense focus on Iowa, the inroads he’s made with influential conservatives in the state, and the history of the caucuses, at least creates an opportunity for him to pull off a surprise in the primary. to make the nation. state. If he fails to do so, his campaign could be essentially over when the caucus votes are counted. Tonight is a crucial opportunity for DeSantis to turn Republicans who like him into Republicans who will vote for him.

Then there’s Haley, and here things get a little more complicated. While she has undeniably moved up in the polls, she still draws the bulk of her support from groups that are a distinct minority in the GOP primary process. For example, in the most recent NBC national poll, she attracts 31 percent of the support of independents who are likely to vote in the GOP primaries, compared to only 10 percent of “core” Republicans — a much larger group.

There is also a college divide within the Republican Party, and again this is now working against Haley. Among those with a college or graduate degree, Haley attracts 22 percent support. But this group only makes up about one-third of the GOP’s primary voters; among the two-thirds who don’t have a degree, she doesn’t even break into double digits. She also performs well with Republicans who don’t like Trump — again, a clear minority within the party.

Haley’s positioning is reminiscent of that of John McCain in his 2000 primary campaign against George W. Bush. Drawing on tremendously positive media coverage, McCain garnered massive support from independent voters and even Democrats in states where they were allowed to vote in GOP primaries. This resulted in a victory for McCain in New Hampshire, a state where independent voters make up an atypically large share of the GOP primary electorate. But it also opened him up to charges from the Bush campaign that he was enjoying success only because of the support of non-Republicans and (in the view of many Bush supporters) the media itself.

The Bush argument resonated with Republican voters, who rallied around him and helped him deliver a quick series of knockout blows to McCain. From the vantage point, it’s not hard to imagine a similar fate for Haley: the better she does with non-Republicans and Trump skeptics, the more the (much larger) core Republican and Trump-friendly wing of the party will regarded her. suspicion.

So her challenge tonight is to dispel this presumption and to deliver a performance that appeals not only to independents and college grads, but also to the vast majority of Republican voters who say they simply like Trump. To have any chance of winning the nomination, Haley needs to win them over — lots of them — and can’t afford to antagonize or alienate them.