With roughly four months until the Iowa caucuses, Republican presidential hopefuls have flocked to the Hawkeye State this weekend for Saturday’s Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s fall banquet, with hopes of impressing the state’s conservative evangelical activists.
With roughly four months until the Iowa caucuses, Republican presidential hopefuls have flocked to the Hawkeye State this weekend for Saturday’s Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s fall banquet, with hopes of impressing the state’s conservative evangelical activists.
Nearly all the major GOP candidates will address the group with one big exception – former President Donald Trump, who sits comfortably ahead in the polls.
The Des Moines dinner presents an opportunity for the Republican candidates to court an influential voting bloc in Iowa, which holds the first contest of the 2024 race on January 15, and make an impression at an event where the former president isn’t monopolizing the spotlight.
In Iowa, Trump has more than twice the support of his closest competitor among likely GOP caucusgoers, according to the most recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll. But slightly more than half of likely Republican caucusgoers say they could be persuaded to support a presidential candidate besides their current first choice.
