Iowa caucuses 2024: Trump projected to win, DeSantis 2nd

It's not just the polls that say Trump is the overwhelming front-runner for the GOP nomination; endorsements bode well for him too. Through Sunday, Trump had been endorsed for president by nine governors, 24 senators and 116 representatives, including House Speaker Mike Johnson. He had a 660-to-51 lead over DeSantis in our endorsement tracker, which weights endorsements by how high of an office the endorser holds.

The candidate with the most endorsement points on the day before the Iowa caucuses has won 11 of the 17 incumbent-less nominating contests since 1972. That's an even stronger track record than the national polling leader on the day before the Iowa caucuses, who's won 10 of those times.

But actually, Trump's odds are even better than that. He doesn't just have the most endorsement points; he has a historically large number of them. In fact, he has captured 33 percent of the total endorsement points that are available. Only four other non-incumbents since 1972 have done that at this point in the cycle: Hillary Clinton in 2016, George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000 and Bob Dole in 1996. All four won their party's nomination.

With close to tundra-like temperatures in Iowa in recent days, candidates are relying on their ground game to both convince voters to turn out and to convince them to back their chosen candidate once they get there.

Given the intricate rules of the Iowa caucuses, which aren't at all like traditional primaries, ground organizing could be an important factor in the results.

Trump has more than 2,000 "precinct captains" — which is at least one person for the 1,657 caucus precincts where votes will be cast. His campaign has hosted more than 400 caucus trainings across the state over the months of campaigning and has collected more than 50,000 caucus commitment cards. His team also plans on having at least one speaker represent it at each of the precincts, a testament to the more professional organization Trump has put together this cycle versus his first run in 2016.

DeSantis, meanwhile, has more than 1,700 precinct captains, and Never Back Down, the main super PAC supporting him, has held 85-plus precinct captain trainings. Never Back Down has also knocked on more than 935,000 doors and collected almost 40,000 caucus commitment cards. DeSantis and Never Back Down combined have made Iowa a top priority, investing heavily in an extensive campaign infrastructure — though one that hasn't been able to stop his slide to third in some polls.

Haley, meanwhile, has not disclosed how many precinct captains her campaign has. She has largely let groups linked to the Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity establish a supportive campaign infrastructure in Iowa.

Vivek Ramaswamy has nearly 1,000 precinct captains. He, too, has made Iowa a huge priority — visiting each of its 99 counties twice, though he still remains in a distant fourth in most surveys in the state.

Which way will Iowa’s evangelical voters go in the caucuses? Trump has spent the last several years wooing those voters, and is currently winning them in Iowa — 51 percent of evangelicals support him, according to a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll from December. It’s a sign of how far he’s come with these voters after closely losing to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a more traditional religious conservative, in 2016. But an influential evangelical leader, Bob Vander Plaats, endorsed DeSantis in November, hoping to unseat Trump’s leadership in the state.

Since that endorsement, and despite it, DeSantis has been falling in the polls, in the state and nationwide. But Vander Plaats stands by it, telling Politico that DeSantis stands the best chance of ultimately beating Biden and saying he doesn’t believe the polls that show Trump winning. Vander Plaats’s endorsees have won Iowa in the past, including Cruz in 2016.

But Trump has been courting evangelicals in Iowa, and those across the country have remained solidly behind Trump. Tellingly, even Vander Plaats’s statements endorsing DeSantis tend to include the disclaimer that he isn’t endorsing "against'' Trump and that he’s long been "friends" with the former president — a sign that Vander Plaats is well aware of Trump’s popularity with evangelicals and Iowans broadly. Trying to win the evangelical vote in Iowa might be DeSantis’s best chance at overperforming in the state, but if Trump wins, it’ll show he still has the group locked down.

Polling suggests that when it comes to choosing a nominee, Iowa Republicans aren’t interested in a moderate candidate, or one with bipartisan appeal. According to a September survey from YouGov/CBS News, 56 percent of likely Iowa caucusgoers say it’s more important for their nominee to motivate conservatives and the Republican base to turnout than to appeal to moderate and independent voters. And in a December survey by Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research/Fox Business that asked likely caucusgoers what candidate qualities were important in deciding who they’d support, only 41 percent said it was extremely important to have a candidate who will work across party lines, less than all but one candidate quality tested.