Why Iowa Republicans who once opposed Trump are ready to vote for him

Kellerton, Iowa CNN —

Shanen Ebersole is voting for Donald Trump. With plenty of reservations, but zero hesitation.

“It’s definitely a vote for Trump,” Ebersole said. “I’m happy doing that with the choices that we have. I don’t think there is any way I could vote any other direction.”

Ebersole was a Nikki Haley supporter when we first met before the Iowa caucuses. Trump won 59% of the caucus vote in conservative Ringgold County; Ebersole was one of just 16 votes for the former South Carolina governor.

Once Trump locked up the GOP nomination, Ebersole thought a bit about voting third party. But her maverick streak has limits. Her family and her farm come first, so she came home to Trump.

“Because we have to put the American people first,” she said in an interview along the fence line of the Ebersole cattle farm. “I think that the policies that have been in place in the Harris-Biden administration — they hurt this. They hurt our land and they hurt the people of middle America the most.”

Ebersole is part of our All Over the Map project, an effort to track the 2024 campaign through the eyes and experiences of voters who live in key battlegrounds and are members of critical voting blocs or areas in those states.

John King talks to Iowa voter Shanen Ebersole on her cattle ranch in Kellerton, Iowa.

Iowa was an early 2024 battleground — the first test of whether Trump’s grip on the GOP had been loosened by his 2020 loss, his conduct on January 6, 2021, or any of the myriad criminal and civil legal proceedings he has faced since leaving the White House. Trump won the caucuses with 51% — the beginning of a march to the nomination that proved his grip on the party remains quite firm but also exposed important