The polls might show former President Donald Trump with a commanding lead heading into the Iowa caucus Jan. 15, but it has not discouraged Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis one bit as he seeks to shake up the 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign with an upset victory in The Hawkeye State.
"People think that people have already decided, when in reality there's a lot of fluidity with this," DeSantis told Newsmax's Bianca de la Garza in an interview that aired in part on his family's Christmas special on the network.
"Traditionally, the thing really takes shape seven to 14 days out, and I think that's what you're going to see," DeSantis said. "Once the calendar turns, a lot of those folks are going to be starting to make final decisions.
"But we were able to rustle up some more support in there."
The FiveThirtyEight average of polling shows Trump with a 50% to 18.4% advantage over DeSantis in Iowa. Overall, Trump has a 62% to 11.9% lead over DeSantis.
"You think about someone [who is] a very committed activist, you think they would have made a decision months ago, right?" DeSantis said. "But that's just not the way it is. There are a lot of people that can be swayed."
DeSantis said a lot of campaigning in Iowa is knocking on the doors of undecided caucusgoers. He said it reminded him of when he first ran for Congress in 2012, when he and his wife, Casey, would do something similar in their congressional district in Florida. He said his wife is very convincing when reaching out to undecided caucusgoers.
"When she shows up at someone's door, she has a very high percentage of converting," DeSantis said. "But it's just funny because I remember back in 2012, when I first ran for Congress, she and I would knock on doors, people would always come up to me and still do for years, ‘Your wife knocked on my door, you knocked on my door.'
"So those are, I think those personal interactions, they're very meaningful for folks. And if you have a primary where maybe you're deciding between two or three candidates and you met one of them, that can be the deciding factor."
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