Before Monday’s Iowa caucuses, a final poll conducted by the Des Moines Register, NBC News, and Mediacom shows that former President Donald Trump continues to lead by a significant margin among likely GOP participants in the state.
Overall, 48% of prospective caucus attendees say they would pick Trump as their first option, 20% mention former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley, 16% mention Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and less than 10% mention any other candidate. In the DMR/NBC poll conducted in December, Trump had a 51% approval rating; in the poll conducted in October, his main competitors were in their teens.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had 23% of the vote, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida had 15%, and Trump had 28% of the vote in the last Iowa Register poll of 2016. In the end results of the Iowa Caucuses that year, Cruz defeated Trump 28% to 24%, with Rubio coming in at 23%.
A random sample of 705 likely Republican caucus attendees participated in the DMR/NBC/Mediacom telephone survey, which was conducted from January 7–12. The error margin for the results for the entire sample of probable caucus attendees is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.