Iowa Republicans announce 2024 presidential caucuses date

Iowa Republicans voted unanimously Saturday to hold its presidential caucuses on Jan. 15, 2024, making it the earliest Hawkeye State Republicans will cast their primary votes since 2012.

Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said he “feels very secure right now” about the state’s first-in-the-nation status after conversations with Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

“I obviously checked with the RNC, with RNC legal, with Ronna herself, who certainly set Iowa up to be first in the nation again by naming me chair of that commission,” he said. “And so I feel very, very secure right now, that there will be no states [that] attempt to do that.”

The announcement comes after months of Republican candidates campaigning heavily in Iowa, a strategy experts tell ABC News is more important than ever.

“Ultimately it’s the candidates that have decided this,” Kaufmann told reporters. “When they started coming to Iowa last year in droves, for all practical purposes, they made Iowa first-in-the-nation a done deal.”

Pressed about the selection of Martin Luther King Jr. Day for the caucus date, Kauffman said, “​​January 15th was the earliest, most natural date” for Iowa but that “good questions” about its occurrence on a federal holiday were asked.

“I think the fact that it is a federal holiday and I think the fact that as Republicans, we see this as honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King in terms of having a caucus here, certainly both of those advantages were a part of our conversation.”

A date for Iowa's 2024 Democratic presidential caucuses has not yet been set after state Democrats opted to break from tradition, overhauling its primary calendar so that South Carolina Democrats will be the first in the nation to cast their votes for the Democratic presidential nominee.