Emerson College Poll: Trump Maintains Lead in Iowa, Haley and DeSantis Essentially Tied for Second

With not quite four weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses, that first-in-the-nation presidential election indicator, former President Donald Trump appears to be holding a comfortable, maybe even overwhelming lead in the polls. On Wednesday, a new Emerson poll has him holding a comfortable 50 percent support among Iowa caucus voters.

A new Emerson College Polling Iowa survey finds half (50%) of Republican caucus voters support former President Donald Trump, while 17% support Nikki Haley, and 15% support Ron DeSantis with under a month until the Iowa Caucus. Eight percent support Vivek Ramaswamy, and 4% support Chris Christie. Six percent are undecided. Since the September Emerson Iowa poll, Trump, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy’s support has increased one percentage point each, while Haley’s support has increased ten points.

A deeper dive into the numbers, though, is worth doing. While Donald Trump is at 50 percent, in May of this year, Emerson had him at 62 percent, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at 20 percent, and Nikki Haley at five percent. At first glance, it would appear that Trump and DeSantis are both losing some support at the margins to Haley. Emerson's analysis would appear to agree.

Spencer Kimball, Executive Director of Emerson College Polling, said: “Haley has carved out a base of support among post-graduate GOP voters where her support has increased by 27 points since September, from 20% to 47%, and she leads Trump among this group by 20 points.” Kimball also notes that “Haley has made inroads with female voters where she trails Trump 47% to 20% (27 point difference) as compared with males who break for Trump 53% to 15% (38 point difference) for Haley.”

But the primary arc of the election doesn't seem to be changing; these are "inroads," perhaps, but the data we have indicates that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are nibbling at the edges of Trump's support, the rest of the GOP field may as well not exist, and the nomination still looks like it's Trump's. As I wrote last week, from the polling, Donald Trump would appear to have an insurmountable lead over the other candidates. As of this writing, the RealClearPolitics average has him polling at 63 percent of the GOP primary vote nationally, with Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley trailing with a bit under 12 percent each.

Here's the interesting bit: This Emerson survey was conducted from December 15th to the 17th, before the Colorado Supreme Court issued its ruling using a weak 14th Amendment argument to remove former President Trump from the Colorado primary ballot. Colorado's primary election is scheduled for Tuesday, March 5th — "Super Tuesday" — and at this moment, it's unknown if the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the case, which, at any rate, is under a stay until at least January 4.

Starting today, we may start to see some post-Colorado decision polling, and it will be interesting to see if Donald Trump will continue his Obi-Wan Kenobi-like return from all the lawfare and personal attacks to become more electable than the Democrats could possibly imagine.