Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Sunday he plans to stay in the 2024 GOP presidential primary even if he were to place third in Monday’s Iowa caucuses.
“Last month, you said you were going to win in Iowa. What happens if you finish third? Is that the end of your campaign?” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked the Florida governor.
“We’re going to do well on Monday. Our voters are very motivated,” DeSantis said. “We’ve got a huge number of people that have committed to caucus, and we expect these are the people that turn out. So there’s a lot of excitement on the ground. We’re in this for the long haul; we understand that you’ve got to win a majority of the delegates.”
The Florida governor then pointed to his post-Iowa campaign plans, saying he’ll be in New Hampshire for a town hall on Tuesday and has other events scheduled in South Carolina and Nevada shortly after.
“My view would be if you’re in it to win it, you’ve got to compete for every single delegate,” DeSantis said. “And so especially when you have the proportional, you’ve gotta be out there. So yeah, we’re gonna be out there winning delegates in Nevada as well.”
Turning to Trump, DeSantis argued that pollsters and the media have “set very high expectations for his performance on Monday” without accounting for “a lot of voters who haven’t made a final decision” about who they’ll back.
“There’s a lot of voters who are deciding between me and Donald Trump,” he explained. “I think some of these voters appreciate what he did, but they do understand that there’s some drawbacks here about nominating him in 2024. So I actually think you’re gonna see a lot of folks that are going to go to the caucus without 100% [of their] minds made up.”
Political watchers have said DeSantis’s campaign strategy relies heavily on a win in Iowa, where his campaign and unaffiliated political action committee have invested millions in resources.
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He has visited all 99 counties in the state, known as a Full Grassley, in honor of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). He secured the coveted endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA), who has been campaigning across the state for him alongside his wife, Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis.
Still, it may not be enough for the Florida governor to irk out a first-place finish, with polls showing Trump holding double-digit leads.
