CNN town hall with Vivek Ramaswamy in Iowa

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is set to field questions from Iowa voters Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET at a CNN town hall, less than five weeks before the state’s January 15 caucuses kick off the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest.

The town hall will stream live on CNN Max and for pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN connected TV and mobile apps. It will also be available on demand beginning Thursday to pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN apps and Cable Operator Platforms.

Here are five things to watch:

Differences with Haley: Among the most memorable exchanges at the four Republican presidential primary debates so far this year have been those between Ramaswamy and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. On and off stage, their clashes have taken personal turns. Haley in recent weeks has risen in polls, challenging Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ status as the second-place contender in Iowa and emerging as the party’s top-polling alternative to Trump in GOP primary surveys in New Hampshire and South Carolina, her home state. Even if Ramaswamy doesn’t climb in the polls himself, his criticism has the potential to shape the GOP race.

No one to brawl with: To date, Ramaswamy might be best known to voters for his sharp-elbowed, stage-dominating debate performances. He has relished picking fights with rivals such as Haley, Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence and others. If he is going to jump out of the single digits in national and early-state polls of likely Republican primary voters, he’ll need to create memorable moments of his own, outside of the context of playing the foil in debates.

“Double Grassley”: Ramaswamy has focused on Iowa throughout his campaign. As part of that strategy, Ramaswamy announced his intention to have visited every Iowa county twice before the caucuses on January 15. Earlier this month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis completed his goal of visiting all 99 Iowa counties – a feat dubbed the “Full Grassley” after Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who visits all counties in the state every year. Ramaswamy also pledged earlier this month to host more than 200 events in the state before the caucuses, a massive undertaking that speaks to how critical success in Iowa is to Ramaswamy’s potential path to the nomination.

Conspiracy theories: At the Alabama debate, Ramaswamy said the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol “looks like it was an inside job.” After the debate, he told CNN, “I do think we have a government that’s consistently lied to its people.” Over the weekend, he embraced another fringe theory, telling a crowd in Sioux Center, Iowa, that the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was an inside job. Ramaswamy’s embrace of conspiracy theories could win him support from a share of the GOP base — many of the same pro-Trump voters who have parroted the former president’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. But it could also alienate the broader general electorate. It’s likely to be a topic he addresses Wednesday night.

Questions of faith: Ramaswamy could also use Wednesday’s town hall to address his religion in a bid to assuage Iowa’s substantial evangelical Christian constituency that he, a Hindu, shares their values. He often cites his education at a Catholic high school in Cincinnati to substantiate his connection to Christian values. “When I read the Ten Commandments for the first time … it didn’t feel like I was reading those values for the first time,” he said last month in Ida Grove, Iowa. “And that’s when it hit me: Those values don’t belong to Hindus. Those values don’t belong to Christians. Those values belong to God, actually, and those are the values that this nation was absolutely founded on.”

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy clashed throughout the fourth Republican primary debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama earlier this month, reigniting one of the most contentious feuds of the primary cycle thus far, which was punctuated by Ramaswamy’s accusation that Haley was “corrupt.”

Ramaswamy attacked Haley in the opening minutes of the debate, criticizing her for accepting donations from wealthy donors, including some who have supported President Joe Biden, and for her support of the US providing aid to Ukraine.

Haley responded to attacks of her growing support from wealthy donors by dismissing Ramaswamy as “just jealous” and said she doesn’t change her positions to appease donors.

Haley and Ramaswamy have traded barbs at each of the previous three debates, with each exchange heightening the tension between the two. The source of their disagreements typically focuses on foreign policy issues, but as the two continue to clash, their attacks have become increasingly personal. The substance and tone of those moments at the fourth debate appeared to build on the history of confrontation between them, as both candidates leaned into personal attacks.

Ramaswamy reiterated his attacks on Haley’s ties to donors throughout the debate, culminating in him holding up a handwritten sign on his notepad that read “Nikki = Corrupt” as he defended himself from claims that his attacks against her were sexist.

“After the third debate, when I criticized Ronna McDaniel after five failed years of leadership of this party and criticized Nikki for her corrupt foreign dealings as a military contractor, she said that I have a woman problem. Nikki, I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem. And I think that that’s what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt,” he said, emphasizing his argument by holding up the sign, which he had written in large font on his notepad, for the audience to see.

When asked if she would like to respond to Ramaswamy’s blunt attack, Haley dismissively declined.

“No, it’s not worth my time to respond to him,” she said.

Read more about their clashes here.

Polls continue to show Donald Trump with a massive lead over his competition for the Republican presidential nomination. Yet, many of his opponents continue to hold their fire against the former president. They may be doing so in hopes of eliminating all their non-Trump competition before taking on Trump himself.

The problem with this plan is that it won’t work. Trump’s rivals have to do something different to knock him off his perch. Unlike in 2016, when there were signs that he could be defeated in a one-on-one contest (which never actually happened), Trump holds major advantages this time around.

He’s up by more than 40 points nationally when polled against his closest rivals (Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley). More than that, he is pulling in greater than 60% of the Republican vote. Even if his rivals were able to consolidate into one super candidate, Trump would still win majority support.

This is very different from where we were at this point in the 2016 cycle. Trump was getting somewhere around 25% to 30% of the GOP vote nationally.

Additionally, it’s not at all clear that any of his 2024 rivals can unite the Republican primary voters not supporting Trump. Consider a Marquette University Law School poll from last month.

Trump corralled 57% of the vote in this national survey when matched up against all of his GOP competitors. When facing just DeSantis, Trump’s support jumped to 65%. When matched up with just Haley, he got to 70% of the vote.

We didn’t see such numbers in 2016, when Trump was on his way to locking up the GOP nomination. As late as March 2016, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found Trump trailing both Marco Rubio (51% to 45%) and Ted Cruz (54% to 41%) in hypothetical one-on-one polling.

That is, there was a legitimate argument back then for Trump’s rivals hoping to become the last candidate standing against him. Today, it doesn’t make much sense.

Read the full analysis.

Months ago, Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy was gaining traction in the polls, backed by a populist outsider message and an attention-grabbing performance at the first primary debate. Now, the Ohio entrepreneur is still stuck in the single digits in a thinning GOP primary pack.

Former President Donald Trump – whom Ramaswamy has defended and praised repeatedly – remains the front-runner for the GOP nomination. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are competing to be seen as the main Trump alternative in a field that has grown smaller with the recent exits of former Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

At the Republican debate in Miami, Ramaswamy bet that attacking Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, interrogating moderator Kristen Welker instead of answering the question posed to him and trying to ding Haley over her daughter’s use of TikTok would shift the national political spotlight on to him. It didn’t. A 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll of potential GOP primary voters who watched the debate found his unfavorability rating rising 12 points to 47%.

Ramaswamy and his team have moved to redistribute staff and resources. The campaign relocated most of the staff from Columbus, Ohio, to New Hampshire and Iowa – a move campaigns often make as a strategic Hail Mary to build momentum around a strong performance in an early nominating state. The staffing shift came days after the campaign announced an approximately $10 million ad buy in Iowa and New Hampshire, its first major one of the cycle.

The Ramaswamy campaign believes these moves, coupled with his confrontational rhetoric at the Miami debate, will translate to improvements in the polls – but not right away.

“At this third debate, he definitely came out swinging, which I think everyone saw, and I think that’s kind of the tone he’s going to continue for the rest of the campaign,” campaign senior adviser Tricia McLaughlin said last month before the fourth GOP debate. “We’ve been purely reliant on earned media and on-the-ground events. We’re going to shift tactics in New Hampshire and Iowa. We’re optimistic that between a strong debate performance and earned media, that he’s going to start seeing some bumps. I don’t think we’re going to see the difference until January.”

Read more about the Ramaswamy campaign.

Four Republican presidential candidates stuck to speaking about their faith and their families during a Saturday forum in western Iowa – a stark contrast from the contentious fourth GOP debate last Wednesday, when they spent much of the evening attacking one another.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Texas pastor Ryan Binkley attended the “Faith and Family with the Feenstras” event hosted by GOP Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa, with less than six weeks to make an impression on caucus-goers before the state’s first-in-the-nation nominating contest.

At Dordt University in Sioux Center, DeSantis appeared with his wife, Casey DeSantis, and argued that Democrats want to establish a religion of “secular leftism.”

“And they want that to be the orthodoxy so that if you as a Christian or another faith, if your faith conflicts with their agenda, they expect you to bend the knee. That is not religious liberty as our Founding Fathers understood it,” he said.

Nikki Haley reflected on the 2015 mass shooting that killed nine congregants in a historically Black church in Charleston during her tenure as governor of South Carolina, emphasizing she believes in “faith and family and country” because “I’ve lived it.”

GOP rival Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been fielding questions about his Hindu religion from voters during his campaign events, talked in-depth about his faith before the evangelical crowd and acknowledged that his religion “ends up being an elephant in the room at times at events” because “that’s not been a norm for US presidents in the past.”

When asked whether his campaign would work with the “Christian vision to advance the Kingdom of God in America,” Ramaswamy said, “I don’t think that’s the job of the US president.”

“I’m not running for pastor, I wouldn’t be qualified to be pastor, but I am running to be the commander in chief and to be president,” he added.

Texas pastor Ryan Binkley – who has barely registered in the polls in Iowa and did not qualify for the debate earlier this week – introduced himself to the audience and argued that “America needs an economic revival and a spiritual revival,” and vowed to reform health care.

Keep reading about the event here.

The Republican presidential candidates are all vying to take on President Joe Biden in November 2024. But first, they’re competing in the GOP primaries and caucuses, which begin in January, to emerge as the party’s nominee.

The first event of the Republican primary calendar, the Iowa caucuses, will provide an initial moment of truth for former President Donald Trump’s bid and could help Republicans tired of Trump decide which of his challengers to rally behind.

The new Democratic presidential primary calendar upends decades of tradition in which Iowa and New Hampshire were the first two states to hold nominating contests and moves up South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan. President Joe Biden has argued the new nominating order would better reflect the diversity of the nation and the Democratic Party.

Here's a look at key dates in the primary race coming up in the first few months of the year:

January:

February:

March:

Access the full 2024 election calendar.

CNN held town halls with other Republican presidential candidates earlier this year as part of a series of political events to cover the 2024 race.

In May, CNN kicked off the presidential primary election season by hosting a town hall with former President Donald Trump in New Hampshire.

During the town hall, Trump took questions from GOP primary voters and once again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election and repeated false claims about it being stolen.

In June, CNN hosted town halls with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Haley participated in a town hall on June 4 in Iowa, where she faced questions from host Jake Tapper and GOP caucus voters on foreign policy, the economy and domestic issues.

Pence – who has since dropped out of the race —participated in a town hall on June 7, also in Iowa, where he faced questions from GOP Iowa caucus voters. When asked about investigations into Trump, Pence said "no one is above the law" but that indicting a former president would be divisive and send a terrible message to the world.

Christie delivered a blistering rebuke of Trump in when he participated in a CNN town hall on June 12 in New York. He called the former president “angry” and “vengeful” and accused him of “vanity run amok."

On Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis participated in a CNN town hall in Iowa.

Iowa will kick off the 2024 Republican presidential nominating process early next year with its caucuses on January 15.

It’s a tradition that has turned the Hawkeye State into the focal point of many GOP campaigns and positioned its voters to have a crucial role in determining the party’s nominee.

Iowa’s role as the first state in the presidential nominating process dates to the 1970s. In 1972, it was the first state to hold its Democratic caucus — and it moved to the front of the Republican line four years later in 1976.

The lead-up to the Iowa caucuses has historically been seen as a test of campaigns’ organizational strength. And its winner typically leaves Iowa with a jolt of momentum in the national polls as the race then shifts to New Hampshire for the Granite State’s primary (which will be held on January 23).

Iowa is one of the few remaining states to eschew primaries in favor of choosing parties’ nominees in caucuses — election-night gatherings at which voters discuss the candidates and cast their ballots in person.

Caucuses, unlike primaries, are run by political parties, and are held in venues such as fire stations, churches and schools.

In Democratic caucuses in Iowa, caucus goers separate into groups to indicate their candidate preferences and the support of at least 15% of attendees is necessary for the candidate to be considered viable and be awarded delegates. However, in Republican caucuses, attendees cast paper ballots, which are then counted in person. Delegates are awarded based on the results.

As far as the national momentum-building role of the Iowa caucuses, those election night results are conclusive. But the official process continues: Delegates selected on election night in the months ahead attend county, district and state conventions, where they are narrowed and delegates for the national convention are chosen.

The Iowa caucuses are important, but not necessarily decisive. In 2016, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz finished first, narrowly ahead of then-businessman Donald Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Trump would seize the GOP’s nomination in the weeks and months that followed.

Read more about the Iowa caucuses.

Former President Donald Trump has expanded his lead over the GOP field in the latest Iowa Poll of likely GOP caucusgoers in the kickoff state of next year’s presidential election.

Overall, 51% of likely caucusgoers say Trump would be their first choice, 19% name Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 16% former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, with the rest of the field at 5% or less. In October, the same poll found Trump at 43% with DeSantis and Haley each at 16%.

Trump, Haley and DeSantis are the only candidates in the field that a majority of likely caucusgoers say they are at least considering for the nomination (76% are considering or supporting Trump, 67% DeSantis and 52% Haley). Just 38% say they are at least considering businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and 17% former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. 

About half (49%) of likely caucusgoers, though, say their minds are already made up about whom to support, with Trump’s backers far more likely to say they are committed to their candidate than are those supporting other candidates (70% of Trump supporters say their minds are made up, compared with 34% of Haley backers and 30% of DeSantis backers). 

Trump’s supporters are also significantly more enthusiastic about their candidate than are DeSantis’s or Haley’s supporters. More than eight in 10 say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about the former president (86%) while 61% of DeSantis’s supporters feel that way and 59% of Haley’s supporters do.

Nearly three-quarters, 73%, say Trump can win an election against President Joe Biden, regardless of his legal challenges, up from 65% who felt that way in October. Just 24% in the current poll say Trump’s legal challenges will make it nearly impossible for him to win. 

Asked to rate the ideological lean of top candidates, 71% say Trump is about right, with just 18% saying he’s too conservative and 7% that he’s too moderate, with 60% calling DeSantis about right and 55% saying the same about Haley. More say Haley is too moderate (23%) than too conservative (12%), while the balance narrowly tilts the other way on DeSantis (20% too conservative, 15% too moderate).

More about the poll: The DMR/NBC/Mediacom poll was conducted by telephone Dec. 2-7 among a random sample of 502 likely Republican caucusgoers. Results for the full sample of likely caucusgoers has an error margin of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.