Poll shows Ohioan Vivek Ramaswamy third in GOP presidential race in Iowa

OTTUMWA, Iowa — Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a Columbus resident and Cincinnati native, is polling third in a new poll behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The Echelon Insights poll, conducted June 26-29 and released last week, found 49% of respondents said they favored Trump, 16%, DeSantis, and 10%, Ramaswamy.

More: Ohio native Vivek Ramaswamy is trying to out-Trump Trump in the 2024 presidential race

The 37-year-old Ohio tech entrepreneur had more support in the poll than 11 other candidates, including better-known ones like former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, also of South Carolina.

The poll is Ramaswamy's first double-digit showing in the race. A national average calculated by statistical analysis group FiveThirtyEight.com from polls dating back to June 20 and including Echelon's shows Ramaswamy with of 4% support, placing him fourth in the field behind Trump, DeSantis and Pence.

Ramaswamy grew up in the Cincinnati suburb of Evendale and attended Princeton Junior High and St. Xavier High School.

Vivek Ramaswamy: Poll is a 'pleasant surprise'

Speaking to reporters on a campaign bus enroute to an Iowa GOP event in Ottumwa from an appearance at Walnut Creek Church in Des Moines, Ramaswamy said his campaign hoped he would be in third place in national polls by the end of the year, heading into Iowa's first-in-the-nation Jan. 15 caucuses.

"The plan was to maybe be there by November, maybe the fourth quarter, set ourselves up well to then do well here, do well in New Hampshire and plan to win the election," he said.

He acknowledged he still has a long way to go to catch up with the frontrunners.

"The other candidates all have very good name ID or well-known names," he said. "I get to introduce myself on my own terms to people of this country. The fact that is converting into ballot share in some of the recent polling is a pleasant surprise."

Later, addressing the crowd in Ottumwa, he compared his early showing to that of Trump at this point in his first presidential bid.

"I'm a little bit ahead of where Trump was in 2015, and people dismissed him then," he said.

Also addressing the Ottumwa audience, Iowa Republican Party Chair Jeff Kauffman said Ramaswamy has a promising future in the Republican party.

“He is brilliant and a fresh breath of oxygen,” Kauffman said. “That’s what this caucus is about.”

Many of the positions advocated by Ramaswamy, author of "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam," are similar to those of DeSantis. He also is an avowed admirer of Trump. In a Sioux City appearance last month, he pledged that if elected, he would pardon the former president, who has been indicted on 37 counts of illegally keeping national defense documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving the White House, and conspiring to obstruct justice by hiding them from federal authorities.

Ramaswamy acknowledged Monday that there is a lot of policy overlap between him, Trump and DeSantis. But he also has repeatedly touted himself as "the first millennial to run as a Republican for U.S president."

"I'm also better able to reach the next generation of Americans with reviving that national pride," he said. "I think I'm the best positioned candidate in the race to do that."

Vivek Ramaswamy proposes to let people who collect donations keep 10%

Ramaswamy already has hit critical fundraising goals, making him eligible to participate in the first GOP debate in August, according to Axios. He has 65,000 unique campaign donors, according to his spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin.

On Monday, he announced a plan to allow people who solicit donations for him keep 10% of whatever they raise. They must fill out an application, have a background check performed by a third party and then they will get a unique link to share with their donors, McLaughlin said.

Ramaswamy said he is trying to change the way campaigns raise money, empowering grassroots fundraisers instead of professionals.

"They only go to the same traditional set of donors and those donors have expectations of the influence they're going to have on the campaign," he said. "Then there's a gatekeeping function to reach those donors by this political fundraising class."

He already is using his own wealth, which reportedly ranges from at least $630 million to more than $1 billion. FiveThirtyEight reported Monday that he loaned his campaign $10.25 million through March 31.

It also said that as of July 7, Ramaswamy had spent 17 days campaigning in Iowa and 14 in New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first primary, more than any other major presidential candidate.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Ohioan Vivek Ramaswamy gets a boost in new Iowa presidential poll