What to Watch at the Haley-DeSantis Debate and the Trump Town Hall

Only two Republicans, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, will take the CNN debate stage at Drake University in Des Moines on Wednesday night for the final televised clash before the Iowa caucuses next week.

The man they are both chasing, Donald J. Trump, is yet again skipping any debate in which his front-runner status could be challenged in person, instead taking part in counterprogramming on a rival network, Fox News, with a prime-time town hall of his own.

It’s exactly the sort of split screen that Mr. Trump has sought throughout the cycle: his rivals bickering among themselves while he presses his case without meddlesome interruptions.

Here are five things to watch.

Ms. Haley has entered the final phase before the first voting of 2024 begins in Iowa on Monday as perhaps Mr. Trump’s most serious challenger, a status that, she likes to joke on the trail, has earned her lots of new attention from “the fellas.”

She is very much waging two wars at once.

One is a contest in Iowa against Mr. DeSantis, whom her allies have said she hopes to finish ahead of, in second place. The other is a race against Mr. Trump in New Hampshire, where some polling shows her gaining significant ground before the primary there on Jan. 23. She is within striking distance in some surveys, especially if support for Chris Christie, an anti-Trump candidate, were to flow to her.

But Ms. Haley has made blunders in the run-up to Iowa. She left out slavery when asked about the causes of the Civil War, and more recently said in New Hampshire that voters in the second early-voting state would “correct” those in the first.

“It was very condescending,” said Cody Hoefert, a former co-chairman of the Iowa Republican Party who is supporting Mr. DeSantis. “Like Iowa