7 numbers that tell the story of the GOP Primary

The only numbers that really matter in the Iowa caucuses on Monday are the number of votes for Donald J. Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy.

But there are some numbers that help explain the Republican nomination battle. In most polls, Mr. Trump has a solid lead, with Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis far behind in a battle for second place.

Here are seven numbers that show how we got here – and what comes next.

28 percentage points

Trump's lead in the Iowa Poll

The bar has been set.

In the Iowa Poll released Saturday evening by The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom, Trump won 48 percent of likely caucusgoers. It is a dominant showing that is more than the total support measured for Ms. Haley (20 percent) and Mr. DeSantis (16 percent) combined.

How dominant is his 28 percentage point lead?

It is more than double the largest margin of victory for a Republican in any previous competitive party. Mr. Trump led among every demographic group in the survey. And his voters showed greater enthusiasm than those of his rivals.

It was not always expected that things would turn out this way. Mr. Trump lost Iowa in 2016 and his rivals, especially Mr. DeSantis, had a chance to beat him in the state.

But on the eve of the caucuses, the “first in the nation” state's biggest fight is the battle for second place, and whether Ms. Haley can show up where Mr. DeSantis has staked his candidacy.

3,000,000

The number of doors a pro-DeSantis super PAC has knocked on nationally

If Mr. DeSantis turns in a stronger-than-expected performance Monday night, his operation will thank the major organizing effort led by his super PAC, Never Back Down, which has been aggressively knocking on doors since the summer.

The super PAC said it knocked on its millionth door nationwide in July, its two millionth door in September and its three millionth door in recent days. Never Back Down marked the three million number by having Casey DeSantis, the governor's wife, knocking on the door while a local television news crew from Iowa filmed her.

That timeline is unintentionally telling: In fact, the super PAC knocked on more doors over the summer than in the last 100 days.

Much of the attention has been on Iowa, where more than 935,000 doors have been knocked on in total, according to the super PAC, for a caucus that has seen only a fraction of that participation in the past.

Will Rogers, former chairman of the Polk County Republican Party, the state's largest party, said he recently received his sixth knock-on call from Never Back Down, which he said had hired and trained the best door-to-door canvassers . .

“Ron DeSantis and his campaign and Never Back Down have done everything they can to prepare themselves to get a 1600 on the SAT,” Mr. Rogers said. “He still won't be chosen prom king.”

-33 Fahrenheit

The expected minimum wind chill temperature in Des Moines on Monday evening

It's so frigid in Iowa that the bishop of the Des Moines diocese granted a “general dispensation” from attending Sunday Mass. citing the severity of the winter storm. And it's not expected to be any warmer Monday night, when Iowans gather for their caucuses at 7 p.m. local time.

The prediction has clouded expectations about who will emerge and injected a surprising degree of uncertainty into a race that Trump appeared to be comfortably leading. Until recently, both the Trump and DeSantis campaigns had expected turnout to exceed 200,000 caucusgoers, breaking the record set in 2016, when about 186,000 people voted.

But the Arctic air has lowered those numbers — or at least raised serious questions about not just who will come, but who will benefit.

Ms Haley is expected to perform strongest in more urban areas – where road conditions are less likely to be an issue – so that's an advantage for her. Mr. DeSantis is believed to have the largest organizational operation in the state, and that could give him an edge in drawing his most likely supporters to the polls. Mr. Trump's team has said it has the most passionate supporters, so put that on his potential ledger. But according to polls and internal data, the former president is performing strongest among potential caucus participants, who may not be as inclined to caucus in the freezing cold.

Even the final margin in public opinion polls could matter. Will Trump's big advantage dampen enthusiasm to brave the elements?

Add it all up to the biggest X-factor of the final piece.

3 percent

Nikki Haley's share of the vote among non-college Republicans in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll

There is perhaps no better figure that captures the uphill climb Ms. Haley faces to prove she is more than a factional candidate and can compete for a majority of Republican voters than her tenuous standing among non-college voters.

While Ms. Haley has surged in the polls both nationally and in early states in recent months, much of her growth has come from consolidating support among the Republican Party's most educated voters. In fact, according to the latest Times/Siena survey, she won 28 percent of the vote nationally among college-graduating Republicans, practically nipping at Trump's 39 percent mark.

Among non-college Republicans, it was a very different story, with Mr. Trump winning a commanding 76 percent of support to Ms. Haley's 3 percent.

One of the reasons Ms. Haley is doing best in New Hampshire is that, according to some surveys, she is not only trailing Trump, but beating him among college graduates. In the most recent CNN poll in New HampshireMs. Haley won 41 percent of those who had done post-doctoral work, giving her a huge lead compared to Mr. Trump's 25 percent (she also had a 12-point lead among graduates).

But her problem remains that the party's base largely did not go to college. Until she starts to rise more among that crowd, her ceiling will remain low.

$46,499,124.63

The amount of spending by super PACs opposing Ron DeSantis

Mr. Trump is the frontrunner. But that is not at all reflected in the expenditure in the race.

Instead, it is Mr. DeSantis who has borne the brunt of the attacks from super PACs in a blizzard of advertising and mailers blanketing Iowa.

The $46.5 million spent on him is a remarkable sum, and notably more than the total spending of super PACs against Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley combined, as of Friday.

Another way to look at it is the share of negative spending compared to positive support, where the results are just as skewed. Spending to boost Ms. Haley has exceeded negative spending against her by nearly $50 million, and Mr. DeSantis has endured about $9 million more in attacks than he has received in supporting super PAC ads.

$5,865

The DeSantis campaign's TV ad spent this week in Iowa in the conservative Sioux City market

In the state where Mr. DeSantis is running, his campaign is spending only sparingly on television advertising in the waning days of the race, a clear sign of the financial pressure the race is under.

All told, data from AdImpact, a media-tracking company, shows that Mr. DeSantis spent $202,400 on TV in Iowa this week. Not only is that less than Ms. Haley ($467,565) and Mr. Trump ($1.42 million), it is also fractionally less than the candidacy of one of the race's least known candidates, Ryan Binkley ($204,984), a self-funded candidate. businessman and preacher who never qualified for a debate.

To be sure, Mr. DeSantis has air cover from supportive super PACs. But the discrepancy underlines how tight his budget is.

Nowhere are the spending more revealing than in western Iowa's Sioux City market, which covers some of the state's most conservative congressional districts and is the kind of place where Mr. DeSantis once hoped to compete for votes with the former president.

Instead, Mr. DeSantis spends just $5,865 there, compared to Mr. Trump's $237,393, according to AdImpact.

0

The former president's total number of debate appearances

Mr. Trump's decision not to debate his rivals has proven to be one of the most impactful tactical choices of the cycle. It has pushed his rivals to fight among themselves – literally – while he has avoided battle.

His rivals have complained. They have tried to goad him on stage – or find him guilty. One of Chris Christie's motivations for entering the race in the first place was that he was the only candidate who could tangle with Trump in a debate. But Mr Christie left the race without ever getting his chance.

Mr. Trump has made it clear that he will not show up unless he feels politically vulnerable. And he doesn't feel vulnerable yet.

So when Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis debated for two hours on CNN Wednesday in a decisive caucus finale, it couldn't help but feel like a battle for second place. Mr. Trump, as he has done before, has mounted a kind of counterprogramming: a Fox News town hall.

And Thursday's numbers only poured salt in the wound for his two biggest rivals: according to Nielsen, Trump's town hall attracted significantly more viewers (4.3 million) than the debate (2.6 million).