Josh Kraushaar poll: Desantis +8 in Iowa, tied in NH

[Vosem]

Should be noted that Iowa in particular has a caucus format and so is capable of showing results widely differentiated from national totals. (See the most recent Democratic primary, at which it was won by Pete Buttigieg; Iowa also has not backed a GOP winner in a contested primary since 2000, having since voted for Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz).

Anyway, behind the scenes DeSantis has already lined up support from the Governor of Iowa (Kim Reynolds), which is going to matter a lot in a machine-y state, and is thought to be friendly with/likely to get the support of the Governor of New Hampshire (Chris Sununu) -- which is actually likely to matter much less, since Sununu couldn't even get his intended congressional nominees through in 2022. In terms of paid media, DeSantis is also likely to enormously swamp Trump in both states; how much free media Trump will get is still questionable but it seems like it at least won't be at 2016 levels.

But with that said it seems like some of the more wacky NHGOP figures, like Bolduc, are getting plucked by Haley rather than Trump, who I think has not been doing a great deal of reaching-out to possible endorsers even where friendly. Tough to say how much it'll matter but some of the organization that nominated Trumpy congressional candidates in 2022 in NH won't be in his corner.

(NH is frankly questionable; the whole Northeast was very strong for Trump in 2016 and wasn't really part of Cruz's path to victory. But IA is a sine qua non for any anti-Trump effort; if Trump wins IA he's running ahead of his 2016 benchmarks.)