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      43% vs. 43%: Why Trump and Biden Are Tied in Our New Poll

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      Rikki Novetsky, Stella Tan, Clare Toeniskoetter and Liz O. Baylen and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWith Donald Trump facing charges in three different criminal cases, the biggest questions in American politics are whether that creates an opening for his Republican rivals in the presidential race — and whether it disqualifies him in the eyes of general election voters.A new set of Times polls has answers to those questions. It shows the president and the former president still tied among registered voters, each at 43 percent.Nate Cohn, The New York Times’s chief political analyst, talks us through the first Times/Siena polling of the 2024 election cycle.On today’s episodeNate Cohn, chief political analyst for The New York Times.Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are tied, each at 43 percent, among registered voters in our first Times/Siena poll of the 2024 election cycle.Pete Marovich for The New York Times; Scott Morgan, via ReutersBackground readingCan the race really be that close?The first Times/Siena poll of the Republican primary shows Trump still commands a seemingly unshakable base of loyal supporters.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Nate Cohn More

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      The Republicans Who Could Qualify for the First Presidential Debate

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      At least seven candidates appear to have made the cut so far for the first Republican presidential debate on Aug. 23. Trump(may not attend) Trump(may not attend) The latest polling and fund-raising data show that the playing field is narrowing for the Republican presidential debate scheduled for later this month. Although former President Donald J. […] More

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      Biden and Trump Are Tied in a Possible 2024 Rematch, Poll Finds

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      A Times/Siena poll suggests a slight Biden edge among voters who don’t like either candidate.Will they stick with the same candidates in 2024?Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesAfter Democrats fared well against MAGA candidates in the midterms last year, it might have been reasonable to think that President Biden would have a clear advantage in a rematch against Donald J. Trump.Yet despite the stop-the-steal movement, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the numerous investigations facing Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are still tied, each at 43 percent, among registered voters in our first Times/Siena poll of the 2024 election cycle.The possibility that criminal indictments haven’t crippled Mr. Trump’s general election chances might come as a surprise or even a shock, but the result is worth taking seriously. It does not seem to be a fluke: Our Times/Siena polls last fall — which were notably accurate — also showed a very close race in a possible presidential rematch, including a one-point lead for Mr. Trump among registered voters in our final October survey.Mr. Trump’s resilience is not necessarily an indication of his strength. In most respects, he appears to be a badly wounded general election candidate. Just 41 percent of registered voters say they have a favorable view of him, while a majority believe he committed serious federal crimes and say his conduct after the last election went so far that it threatened American democracy.But Mr. Biden shows little strength of his own. His favorability rating is only two points higher than Mr. Trump’s. And despite an improving economy, his approval rating is only 39 percent — a mere two points higher than it was in our poll in October, before the midterm election. At least for now, he seems unable to capitalize on his opponent’s profound vulnerability.Democrats can’t necessarily assume the race will snap back into a clear Biden lead once people tune into the race, either. The 14 percent of voters who didn’t back Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump consisted mostly of people who volunteered — even though it wasn’t provided as an option in the poll — that they would vote for someone else or simply wouldn’t vote if those were the candidates. They know the candidates; they just don’t want either of them.As I mentioned to my colleague David Leonhardt for The Morning newsletter, it’s reasonable to believe that Mr. Biden has the better path to winning over more of these voters. They dislike Mr. Trump more than they dislike Mr. Biden, and the political environment, including promising economic news, seems increasingly favorable to Mr. Biden. But it hasn’t happened yet.And the upside for Mr. Biden among the dissenting 14 percent of voters isn’t necessarily as great as it might look. He leads by a mere two points — 47 percent to 45 percent — if we reassign these voters to Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden based on how they say they voted in the 2020 election. And Mr. Biden still leads by two points, 49-47, if we further restrict the poll to those who actually voted in 2020 or 2022.A two-point edge is certainly better for Mr. Biden than a tie, but it’s not exactly a commanding advantage. It’s closer than his 4.5-point popular vote win in 2020, and it’s well within a range in which Mr. Trump can win in the key battleground states, where he has usually done better than he has nationwide.The survey suggests that the electorate remains deeply divided along the demographic fault lines of the 2020 presidential election, with Mr. Trump commanding a wide lead among white voters without a college degree, while Mr. Biden counters with an advantage among nonwhite voters and white college graduates.To the extent the survey suggests a slightly closer race than four years ago, it appears mostly attributable to modest Trump gains among Black, Hispanic, male and low-income voters. The sample sizes of these subgroups are relatively small, but we’ve seen signs of Trump strength among these groups before. In some cases, like Hispanic and lower-income voters, they’re groups that have already trended toward Republicans during the Trump era. It would hardly be a surprise if those trends continued. Here again, it’s a story worth taking seriously.Of course, this doesn’t mean it’s “predictive” of the final result, certainly not with 15 months to go. What it means, however, is that Mr. Trump doesn’t appear to have sustained disqualifying damage — at least when matched against a president with a 39 percent approval rating. For now, it suggests that the Biden campaign can’t necessarily count on anti-Trump sentiment alone; it may need to do some work to reassemble and mobilize a winning coalition. More

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      Biden Shores Up Democratic Support, but Faces Tight Race Against Trump

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      A New York Times/Siena College poll found that President Biden is on stronger footing than he was a year ago — but he is neck-and-neck in a possible rematch against Donald Trump.President Biden is heading into the 2024 presidential contest on firmer footing than a year ago, with his approval rating inching upward and once-doubtful Democrats falling into line behind his re-election bid, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.Mr. Biden appears to have escaped the political danger zone he resided in last year, when nearly two-thirds of his party wanted a different nominee. Now, Democrats have broadly accepted him as their standard-bearer, even if half would prefer someone else.Still, warning signs abound for the president: Despite his improved standing and a friendlier national environment, Mr. Biden remains broadly unpopular among a voting public that is pessimistic about the country’s future, and his approval rating is a mere 39 percent.Perhaps most worryingly for Democrats, the poll found Mr. Biden in a neck-and-neck race with former President Donald J. Trump, who held a commanding lead among likely Republican primary voters even as he faces two criminal indictments and more potential charges on the horizon. Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump were tied at 43 percent apiece in a hypothetical rematch in 2024, according to the poll.Mr. Biden has been buoyed by voters’ feelings of fear and distaste toward Mr. Trump. Well over a year before the election, 16 percent of those polled had unfavorable views of both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, a segment with which Mr. Biden had a narrow lead.John Wittman, 42, a heating and air conditioning contractor in Phoenix, is a Republican but said he would vote for Mr. Biden if former President Donald J. Trump were the Republican nominee. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times“Donald Trump is not a Republican, he’s a criminal,” said John Wittman, 42, a heating and air conditioning contractor from Phoenix. A Republican, he said that even though he believed Mr. Biden’s economic stewardship had hurt the country, “I will vote for anyone on the planet that seems halfway capable of doing the job, including Joe Biden, over Donald Trump.”To borrow an old political cliché, the poll shows that Mr. Biden’s support among Democrats is a mile wide and an inch deep. About 30 percent of voters who said they planned to vote for Mr. Biden in November 2024 said they hoped Democrats would nominate someone else. Just 20 percent of Democrats said they would be enthusiastic if Mr. Biden were the party’s 2024 presidential nominee; another 51 percent said they would be satisfied but not enthusiastic.A higher share of Democrats, 26 percent, expressed enthusiasm for the notion of Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee in 2024.Mr. Biden had the backing of 64 percent of Democrats who planned to participate in their party’s primary, an indicator of soft support for an incumbent president. Thirteen percent preferred Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and 10 percent chose Marianne Williamson.Among Democratic poll respondents who have a record of voting in a primary before, Mr. Biden enjoyed a far wider lead — 74 percent to 8 percent. He was ahead by 92 percent to 4 percent among those who voted in a Democratic primary in 2022.The lack of fervor about Mr. Biden helps explain the relatively weak showing among small donors in a quarterly fund-raising report his campaign released two weeks ago.A common view toward Mr. Biden is illustrated in voters like Melody Marquess, 54, a retiree and left-leaning independent from Tyler, Texas. Ms. Marquess, who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 as “the lesser of two evils,” was not happy about his handling of the pandemic, blaming him for inflation and a tight labor market. Still, she said she would again vote for Mr. Biden, who is 80 years old, over Mr. Trump, who is 77.“I’m sorry, but both of them, to me, are too old,” she said. “Joe Biden to me seems less mentally capable, age-wise. But Trump is just evil. He’s done horrible things.”More Democrats Support Biden As Nominee Than a Year AgoDemocrats who think their party should renominate Joseph R. Biden in 2024 More

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      More Republicans Say Trump Committed Crimes. But They Still Support Him.

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      The share of Republicans saying the former president has committed “serious federal crimes” has grown modestly, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College.Donald J. Trump famously marveled during his first presidential campaign that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and he would not lose any support.He now seems intent on testing the premise of unwavering loyalty behind that statement.The federal charges against the former president seem to have cost him few, if any, votes in the 2024 election, even as the number of Republicans who think he has committed serious federal crimes has ticked up.He continues to hold strong in a hypothetical general election matchup, despite the fact that 17 percent of voters who prefer him over President Biden think either that he has committed serious federal crimes or that he threatened democracy with his actions after the 2020 election, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.“I think he’s committed crimes,” said Joseph Derito, 81, of Elmira, N.Y. “I think he’s done terrible things. But he’s also done a lot of good.”Despite his distaste for the former president, Mr. Derito said he was likely to vote for Mr. Trump again. The alternative, he said, is far less palatable.“I used to lean toward the Democratic Party because they were for the working middle class,” he said. Now, he added, “I don’t like Trump, but I like the Democrats a lot less.”Voter Attitudes About the Trump InvestigationsThinking about the investigations into Donald J. Trump, do you think that he has or has not committed any serious federal crimes? More

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      Why Trump Is So Hard to Beat

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      The first Times/Siena poll of the G.O.P. primary shows he still commands a seemingly unshakable base of loyal supporters.In the half century of modern presidential primaries, no candidate who led his or her nearest rival by at least 20 points at this stage has ever lost a party nomination.Today, Donald J. Trump’s lead over Ron DeSantis is nearly twice as large: 37 points, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll of the likely Republican primary electorate released Monday morning. More

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      Trump Crushing DeSantis and GOP Rivals, Times/Siena Poll Finds

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      The twice-indicted former president leads across nearly every category and region, as primary voters wave off concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy.Former President Donald J. Trump is dominating his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, leading his nearest challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by a landslide 37 percentage points nationally among the likely Republican primary electorate, according to the first New York Times/Siena College poll of the 2024 campaign.Mr. Trump held decisive advantages across almost every demographic group and region and in every ideological wing of the party, the survey found, as Republican voters waved away concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy. He led by wide margins among men and women, younger and older voters, moderates and conservatives, those who went to college and those who didn’t, and in cities, suburbs and rural areas.The poll shows that some of Mr. DeSantis’s central campaign arguments — that he is more electable than Mr. Trump, and that he would govern more effectively — have so far failed to break through. Even Republicans motivated by the type of issues that have fueled Mr. DeSantis’s rise, such as fighting “radical woke ideology,” favored the former president.Overall, Mr. Trump led Mr. DeSantis 54 percent to 17 percent. No other candidate topped 3 percent support in the poll.Below those lopsided top-line figures were other ominous signs for Mr. DeSantis. He performed his weakest among some of the Republican Party’s biggest and most influential constituencies. He earned only 9 percent support among voters at least 65 years old and 13 percent of those without a college degree. Republicans who described themselves as “very conservative” favored Mr. Trump by a 50-point margin, 65 percent to 15 percent.Republican voters are apparently not concerned about Donald J. Trump’s increasing legal peril.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesStill, no other serious Trump challenger has emerged besides Mr. DeSantis. Former Vice President Mike Pence, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina each scored 3 percent support. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, each received support from just 2 percent of those polled.Yet even if all those candidates disappeared and Mr. DeSantis got a hypothetical one-on-one race against Mr. Trump, he would still lose by a two-to-one margin, 62 percent to 31 percent, the poll found. That is a stark reminder that, for all the fretting among anti-Trump forces that the party would divide itself in a repeat of 2016, Mr. Trump is poised to trounce even a unified opposition.The survey comes less than six months before the first 2024 primary contest and before a single debate. In an era of American politics defined by its volatility, Mr. Trump’s legal troubles — his trials threaten to overlap with primary season — pose an especially unpredictable wild card.For now, though, Mr. Trump appears to match both the surly mood of the Republican electorate, 89 percent of whom see the nation as headed in the wrong direction, and Republicans’ desire to take the fight to the Democrats.“He might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife’s underpants and you can’t be a man anymore,” David Green, 69, a retail manager in Somersworth, N.H., said of Mr. Trump. “You got to be a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump’s my guy. He’s proved it on a national level.”Both Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis maintain strong overall favorable ratings from Republicans, 76 percent and 66 percent. That Mr. DeSantis is still so well liked after a drumbeat of news coverage questioning his ability to connect with voters, and more than $20 million in attack ads from a Trump super PAC, demonstrates a certain resiliency. His political team has argued that his overall positive image with G.O.P. voters provides a solid foundation on which to build.But the intensity of the former president’s support is a key difference as 43 percent of Republicans have a “very favorable” opinion of Mr. Trump — a cohort that he carries by an overwhelming 92 percent to 7 percent margin in a one-on-one race with Mr. DeSantis.By contrast, Mr. DeSantis is stuck in an effective tie with Mr. Trump, edging him 49 percent to 48 percent, among the smaller share of primary voters (25 percent) who view the Florida governor very favorably.In interviews with poll respondents, a recurring theme emerged. They like Mr. DeSantis; they love Mr. Trump.“DeSantis, I have high hopes. But as long as Trump’s there, Trump’s the man,” said Daniel Brown, 58, a retired technician at a nuclear plant from Bumpass, Va.Stanton Strohmenger, 48, a maintenance technician, said he was supporting Mr. Trump.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“If he wasn’t running against Trump, DeSantis would be my very next choice,” said Stanton Strohmenger, 48, a maintenance technician in Washington Township, Ohio.A number of respondents interviewed drew a distinction between Mr. DeSantis’s accomplishments in Tallahassee and Mr. Trump’s in the White House.“Trump has proven his clout,” said Mallory Butler, 39, of Polk County, Fla. “And DeSantis has, but in a much smaller arena.”The truly anti-Trump faction of the Republican electorate appears to hover near one in four G.O.P. voters, hardly enough to dethrone him. Only 19 percent of the electorate said Mr. Trump’s behavior after his 2020 defeat threatened American democracy. And only 17 percent see the former president as having committed any serious federal crimes, despite his indictment by a federal grand jury on charges of mishandling classified documents and his receipt of a so-called target letter in the separate election interference case being brought by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith.“I think Donald Trump is going to carry a lot of baggage to the election with him,” said Hilda Bulla, 68, of Davidson County, N.C., who supports Mr. DeSantis.Yet Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is so strong, the Times/Siena poll found, that in a head-to-head contest with Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump still received 22 percent among voters who believe he has committed serious federal crimes — a greater share than the 17 percent that Mr. DeSantis earned from the entire G.O.P. electorate.Mr. DeSantis has made taking on “woke” institutions a centerpiece of his political identity. But when given a choice between a hypothetical candidate who prioritized “defeating radical woke ideology” or one who was focused on “law and order in our streets and at the border,” only 24 percent said they would be more likely to support the candidate focused on fighting “woke” issues.Equally problematic for Mr. DeSantis is that those “woke”-focused voters still preferred Mr. Trump, 61 percent to 36 percent.G.O.P. Primary Voters See Trump as Stronger, More Electable Than DeSantisTell me if you think this word or phrase better describes Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis:

      Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of the likely electorate in the Republican primary, conducted July 23-27, 2023. Figures are rounded.By Christine ZhangThe ability to defeat Mr. Biden and to enact a conservative agenda is at the core of Mr. DeSantis’s appeal to Republicans. He has warned that Mr. Trump has saddled the party with a “culture of losing” in the Trump years and has held up his resounding 2022 re-election in the once purple state of Florida as a model for the G.O.P. As governor, he has pushed through a sweeping set of conservative priorities that have sharply reoriented the state and promised he would bring the same policymaking zeal to the White House.Yet these arguments do not appear to be working. A strong majority of Republicans surveyed, 58 percent, said it was Mr. Trump, not Mr. DeSantis, who was best described by the phrase “able to beat Joe Biden.” And again, it was Mr. Trump, by a lopsided 67 percent to 22 percent margin, who was seen more as the one to “get things done.”Mr. DeSantis narrowly edged Mr. Trump on being seen as “likable” and “moral.” Interestingly, the share of Republicans who said Mr. Trump was more “fun” than Mr. DeSantis (54 percent to 16 percent) almost perfectly mirrored the overall horse race.“He does not come across with humor,” Sandra Reher, 75, a retired teacher in Farmingdale, N.J., said of Mr. DeSantis. “He comes across as a — a good Christian man, wonderful family man. But he doesn’t have that fire, if you will, that Trump has.”Sandra Reher of New Jersey plans to support Donald Trump over Ron DeSantis. Of Mr. DeSantis, she said, “he doesn’t have that fire, if you will, that Trump has.”Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesIncreasingly on the trail, Mr. DeSantis is calling attention to his “blue-collar” roots and his decision to serve in the military as reasons voters should support him as he runs against a self-professed billionaire. But the poll showed Mr. Trump lapping Mr. DeSantis among likely Republican primary voters earning less than $50,000, 65 percent to 9 percent.As of now, Mr. DeSantis’s few demographic refuges — places where he is losing by smaller margins — are more upscale pockets of the electorate. He trailed Mr. Trump by a less daunting 12 points among white voters with college degrees, 37 to 25 percent. Among those earning more than $100,000, Mr. DeSantis was behind by 23 points, half the deficit he faced among the lowest earners.The fractured field appears to be preventing Mr. DeSantis from consolidating the support of such voters: In the hypothetical one-on-one race, Mr. DeSantis was statistically tied with Mr. Trump among white college-educated voters.On a range of issues, the poll suggests it will be difficult for Mr. DeSantis to break through against Mr. Trump on policy arguments alone.In the head-to-head matchup, Mr. Trump was far ahead of Mr. DeSantis among Republicans who accept transgender people as the gender they identify with, and among those who do not; among those who want to fight corporations that “promote woke left ideology,” and among those who prefer to stay out of what businesses do; among those who want to send more military and economic aid to Ukraine, and among those who do not; among those who want to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are, and among those who want to take steps to reduce the budget deficit.Mr. Trump leads Mr. DeSantis among Republicans who believe abortion should always be legal, and among those who believe it should always be illegal.Mr. DeSantis signed a strict six-week abortion ban that Mr. Trump has criticized as “too harsh.” Yet Mr. Trump enjoyed the support of 70 percent of Republicans who said they strongly supported such a measure.Marcel Paba, a 22-year-old server in Miami, said he liked what Mr. DeSantis had done for his state but didn’t think the governor could overcome the enthusiasm for Mr. Trump.“There are just more die-hard fans of Trump than there are of Ron DeSantis. Even in Florida,” Mr. Paba said. “I don’t see people wearing a Ron DeSantis hat anywhere, you know?”Camille Baker More

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      Trump and DeSantis Collide for First Time in Iowa, as Fortunes Diverge

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      A contest once viewed as a two-man race between Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis has settled into a new dynamic: Mr. Trump versus everyone else.When former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida shared the same stage at an Iowa Republican Party dinner on Friday, their appearances seemed to capture the basic dynamics of the 2024 presidential primary.Mr. Trump played headliner. Mr. DeSantis was reduced to an opening act.Even as Mr. Trump has been hit with two criminal indictments, with more possibly coming, he has only consolidated support in recent months, flashing the same resilience in Iowa that he has nationally.Mr. Trump’s rivals have long circled Iowa as the early state where Mr. Trump, who finished a disappointing second in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, might be most vulnerable in 2024. But although some influential leaders have signaled their eagerness for an alternative, Mr. Trump arrived on Friday for one of his episodic visits as the undisputed front-runner, as Republicans look past his political and legal liabilities.His mere appearance generated some of the evening’s loudest applause. Like the 12 other candidates who spoke, he entered to snippets of “Only in America” by Brooks & Dunn. The lyrics that blared as he took the stage were:One could end up going to prison. One just might be president.Mr. DeSantis arrived in Des Moines after a two-day bus tour that was aimed at stabilizing his campaign amid two successive rounds of staff cutbacks and demonstrating his investment in the state, which comes first on the nominating calendar. There were public displays of humility — small-town stops, shopping for snacks at a gas station (he bought a protein bar), taking questions from voters and reporters — that were previously missing from the governor’s once higher-flying campaign.Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, speaking at the dinner on Friday night after a more humble bus tour of Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York Times“Six months ago, you would have said there were two tiers: Trump and DeSantis, and then everyone else,” Craig Robinson, an Iowa Republican strategist, said. Now, he said, “you have Donald Trump in a tier by himself and you have everyone else trying to be the alternative to Trump.”While Mr. DeSantis is stuck trying to reset his campaign, former Vice President Mike Pence is facing the possibility of not even qualifying for the first debate next month. The rest of the field is straining for voters to pay any attention at all.Mr. Trump has certainly provided openings for his rivals in Iowa. Against his own team’s wishes, he criticized the popular Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, this month. (He did not mention her on Friday.) And in a state that has often rewarded frequent visits, Mr. Trump has campaigned only sporadically.On Friday, Mr. Trump stayed for an hour after his speech to shake hands and take pictures with supporters. Mr. DeSantis mingled with a crowd down the hall with a Coors Light in hand.Mr. Trump’s growing strength in national polling — he has surged above 50 percent in many surveys — has reinforced an emerging dynamic in which he is being treated as the de facto incumbent, both by party insiders with years of reluctantly falling into line under their belt and by risk-averse donors, according to interviews with numerous Republican strategists and officials.Mr. Trump greeting supporters at his new Iowa campaign headquarters on Friday.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesThe first primary debate, scheduled for late August, is widely viewed as the critical next date for Mr. DeSantis or anyone else to upend the current dynamic, even if Mr. Trump does not attend.For now, outside groups looking to slow down Mr. Trump have focused on Iowa. The new political action committee Win It Back, which is tied to the Club for Growth, has run negative television ads worth $3.5 million this month in Iowa and South Carolina.The ads themselves reveal much about the current state of the race. Each features testimonials from Republican voters describing both their affection for the former president and their interest in moving on.“I love what he did,” the narrator in one ad says. “He definitely was the right man in 2016,” the narrator in another says, before pivoting, “It’s just time for new blood.”Mr. Trump’s enduring popularity with the Republican base has meant that even his competitors often sandwich the gentlest of criticism with praise. Few of his rivals mentioned his name on Friday, while Mr. Trump repeatedly used a derisive nickname for Mr. DeSantis. “I wouldn’t take a chance on that one,” he said.One rival who addressed Mr. Trump directly was Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman running a long-shot campaign. He declared that Mr. Trump was running for president again to avoid prison. He was booed as he exited the stage.Former Representative Will Hurd was booed as he left the stage for suggesting that Mr. Trump was running for president again just to avoid prison.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis himself has generally avoided direct criticism of Mr. Trump.He did not say the former president’s name on Friday, and when he was asked about the criminal charges facing Mr. Trump in an interview with CBS News on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis answered with only a vague generality: “I think voters have to make this decision on that.”Some prominent Trump critics have questioned such a delicate approach, especially as his criminal problems have mounted.“If you’re down 20 points in the polls to anybody, you’ve got to be able to hit them,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who decided against a 2024 run for president but attended the dinner in Iowa.Mr. Trump has been indicted by the Manhattan district attorney and a Justice Department special counsel already this year, and he may face another special counsel indictment for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. A separate investigation into efforts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia could result in yet another charge.Many Republicans who are leery of entering another turbulent cycle with Mr. Trump atop the ticket remain intrigued by the Florida governor but not yet sold.“I think people are just waiting for DeSantis to close the deal for them,” said David Kerr, a DeSantis supporter who attended an event in Osceola with the governor at a distillery this week.Mr. DeSantis during a stop at a center for wounded and disabled veterans in Albia, Iowa, on his bus tour on Friday.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has now committed to visiting all 99 of Iowa’s counties (he is at 17, according to a campaign aide), an arduous task for a candidate who is trying to compete across all the early states and must travel the country to fund-raise for a campaign supported heavily by big-money bundlers.“This caucus demands that you earn it,” Mr. DeSantis said on Friday. Mr. Trump has mostly focused on visiting more populous areas rather than every county.For Mr. DeSantis, the goal is to come in first — or a strong enough second to prove that Mr. Trump can be beat and narrow the contest to a two-person race. But some of Mr. DeSantis’s allies worry that the heavy emphasis on Iowa could prove a self-inflicted knockout punch — that after investing so much, his campaign will have a less than compelling case to carry on if he falters badly in the opening state.Kathy Kooiker, a Republican activist in Clark County, Iowa, had a Trump flag in her yard for years but said she had folded it folded up and put it away. She is trying to explore the other candidates to decide whom to support instead of Mr. Trump, and she went to the DeSantis event in Osceola.“He hasn’t been in Iowa as much as the other candidates, so I’m glad to see — I think it’s a mistake not to do that,” Ms. Kooiker said.Republicans in Iowa, both those who support Mr. Trump and those who oppose him, see the race there as at least slightly more competitive than national polls would suggest.Amy Sinclair, the president of the Iowa State Senate, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, acknowledged, “it’s a tough uphill battle to fight against a machine like Donald Trump.”But she said Mr. Trump’s swipe at Ms. Reynolds had damaged him. “He’s not doing himself any favors if he wants to win Iowa behaving that way,” she said. “You don’t insult our family.”Ryan Rhodes, who served as Iowa state director for Ben Carson’s presidential campaign in 2016, agreed that the episode had broken through among conservative activists.“Trump needs to get out there and talk to Iowans again,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Trump may not yet have personally worked aggressively for votes in Iowa, but he has professionalized what in 2016 was a scattershot political operation. His campaign had secured its keynote slot on Friday night by being the fastest to confirm its attendance with the state party. More