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- GOP presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis finished in second place in the Iowa Caucus.
- He finished behind former President Donald Trump and roughly even with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
- After Monday night's poor showing and momentum slowing, DeSantis may need to rethink his campaign.
The first Republican election of the 2024 presidential primary has officially come to a close in Iowa, with former President Donald Trump dominating the rest of the field. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis finished in distant second place, leaving his path to the nomination increasingly unclear.
By night's end on Monday, DeSantis tallied just 21 percent of the vote in Iowa, amounting to 8 of the state's 40 delegates. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley finished in third place with 19 percent of the vote. Both paled compared to Trump, who received 51 percent of the vote.
Trump committed limited resources to his win. Haley essentially tied DeSantis despite a strategy far more suited to New Hampshire and South Carolina. DeSantis, however, made Iowa a centerpiece of his effort.
Though the estimated margin of victory has shifted in recent weeks, Trump has long been the clear favorite to win the state.
Eyes in Iowa have long been on which candidate would place second: DeSantis, who was once considered a formidable competitor to Trump, or Haley, Trump's former UN ambassador who's repeatedly declined to say whether she'd accept an offer to be his vice president.
Nevertheless, despite running a nearly textbook-perfect Iowa Caucus campaign and visiting each of the state's 99 counties, DeSantis won zero of them.
After DeSantis' poor showing in Iowa, the Florida governor faces an important question: Where exactly are the 1,215 delegates he needs to win the nomination going to come from? If he can't win even a quarter of the available delegates in Iowa, where he's campaigned for months, how will he start winning majorities anywhere else?
New Hampshire is next on the GOP primary calendar on January 23. As of the most recent poll in the state from Emerson College, Haley was 21 percentage points ahead of DeSantis, who finished in the poll behind even the no-longer-a-candidate Chris Christie.
DeSantis' campaign said it's traveling straight to South Carolina — Haley's home state — post-Iowa Caucus to get a head start on the fifth primary event before returning to New Hampshire to participate in a televised town hall.
But with DeSantis' dismal finish on Monday, what's increasingly looking like a third place in New Hampshire, and no obvious advantage against a South Carolina governor and a popular former president in South Carolina, momentum is not on his side.
It may be best for DeSantis to hang up his raised boots for the campaign season and focus on finishing his final few years in the governor's mansion.