Former President Trump expanded his lead over the GOP field in Iowa just weeks before the caucuses, with a new poll showing him topping Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by 32 points.
The NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll released Monday found that 51 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers say their first-choice candidate is Trump — an 8-point jump from October. DeSantis received 19 percent of support from likely GOP caucus attendees, up 3 points since October.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was stable at 16 percent support.
The poll results still show a close race for second place between DeSantis and Haley, as no other candidate received more than 5 percent support as a first-choice candidate.
While Trump maintains a comfortable lead in the new poll, many likely caucusgoers said they are still considering voting for DeSantis or Haley; 30 percent of respondents said DeSantis is their second-choice candidate, with another 18 percent saying they are actively considering him.
Seventeen percent selected Haley as their second-choice candidate, with an additional 19 percent saying they are considering her.
J. Ann Selzer, the Iowa pollster who conducted the survey, told NBC that “the field may have shrunk, but it may have made Donald Trump even stronger,” adding that the former president’s lead is “commanding.”
Five percent of likely GOP caucusgoers said Vivek Ramaswamy was their first choice, 4 percent chose former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and 1 percent selected former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
More Republican caucusgoers — 49 percent — have their minds made up in this poll compared to the 41 percent in October. Another 46 percent in the latest survey said they can still be persuaded to vote for someone else.
Trump’s supporters are unlikely to change their votes, with 70 percent of his supporters saying their minds are made up. In comparison, just 30 percent of DeSantis’s supporters and 34 percent of Haley’s supporters said their minds were made up.
The poll was conducted among 502 likely Republican caucusgoers from Dec. 2-7 and has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.