A new survey out from Iowa's polling guru J. Ann Selzer shows Donald Trump dominating the first-in-the-nation caucus much like he’s dominating the national landscape.
The Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll conducted by Selzer Aug. 13-17 shows:
- Donald Trump: 42%
- Ron DeSantis: 19%
- Tim Scott: 9%
- Nikki Haley: 6%
- Mike Pence: 6%
- Chris Christie: 5%
- Vivek Ramaswamy: 4%
The top second-choice candidates were Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 20%, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina at 15%, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy at 12%, and Trump at 10%.
This matters more in a caucus state since people are sometimes forced to go with their second choice if their first choice doesn't meet the threshold of support in their precinct.
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In the combined first/second choice/actively considering metric DeSantis actually fares much better against Trump, with 61% saying he is either one of their top two candidates or they are actively considering him, while 63% said the same of Trump. At 53%, Scott is the only other candidate who clears a majority threshold in the metric.
While the survey was in the field, Trump racked up his fourth criminal indictment—the expansive racketeering charge filed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Instead of hurting Trump, it boosted his stature from an 18-point lead over DeSantis pre-racketeering charge to a 25-point margin after Willis filed the charges in Georgia.
Republican tribalism is running particularly hot right now, with 65% of Iowa Republicans saying they don't think Trump committed serious crimes.
Nationally, a Marist poll conducted Aug. 11-14 found 44% of Republicans still say Trump has done "nothing wrong" when they are asked more generally about the indictments he is facing.
But as The Washington Post's Aaron Blake noted recently, drilling down on each specific case suggests a greater sense of angst among Republican voters. An AP-NORC poll released last week tested voters' views of the four criminal cases filed against Trump: the Manhattan business fraud case, each of the federal indictments stemming from Trump's mishandling of classified documents, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and Trump's attempt to interfere in Georgia's vote count (although the Georgia racketeering charge hadn't dropped yet).
Looking at the combined polling on each individual case, just 16% of Republicans said Trump did "nothing wrong" in every instance.
So deep down, nearly all Republicans know Trump did something wrong, but they just don't care. He's still their guy, and the Republican nomination is still his to lose.
Did anything happen while we were all taking a well-deserved break? Something about Donald Trump being indicted not once, but two times! Also in the news: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign collapse. So much is happening!
