Vivek Ramaswamy sprinting through Iowa ahead of caucuses
GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy is in the midst of his mad dash toward caucus night.
Ramaswamy's bus tour rolled through four Iowa communities on Friday, and continues this week with dozens of stops scheduled for his 99-county tour he says the campaign will complete twice before caucus night.
Ramaswamy originally told vlog in April he wasn't going to commit to the 99-county tour, nicknamed the "Full Grassley Tour," calling it a move made by "conventional politicians."
"All we've been continuing is the exact schedule and it so happens that our schedule will have taken us more than two times over to every county. So actually what I told you at the time is exactly what we did," Ramaswamy said when asked about his change of heart.
He is speaking to dozens of Iowans at each stop and says many of his supporters are first-time caucus goers, a group that could be key for a good showing on caucus night, Jan. 15.
The most recent Des Moines Register/NBC/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows 5% of Iowans choosing Ramaswamy as their first choice.
That's 11 points behind Nikki Haley, 14 points behind Ron DeSantis, and 37 points behind front-runner Donald Trump.
Ramaswamy calls that poll and similar ones, flawed and out of date.
"They're not polling people who haven't been to a caucus before, so I think we're on track to win this caucus. I think the polls are wildly off. And especially for a first-time outsider candidate who is bringing first-timers into the caucus as one of our main support bases, the polls are completely missing it," Ramaswamy said.
