Some Iowa voters shift favorites after GOP debate, while Ramaswamy stokes a divide

Betsy Sarcone is nowhere near done looking for a presidential candidate, but the first Republican primary debate did reorder her shopping list some.

“My personal favorite was Nikki Haley,” Sarcone told CNN of the former South Carolina governor after watching Wednesday’s debate at her Urbandale home in the Des Moines suburbs. “She had a lot of commentary on different topics where I said, ‘Wow, I agreed with everything she said right there.’”

Chris Mudd, who owns a solar energy company in Cedar Falls, is still enthusiastically for the candidate who skipped the debate: front-runner Donald Trump.

But of those on stage, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy stood out to Mudd.

“I’m for the USA,” Mudd said in a text message moments after the debate in Milwaukee wrapped up. “Trump represents that best in my opinion. Vivek sounds great.”

Sarcone and Mudd are part of a group of Iowa voters CNN is tracking as part of a voter-focused 2024 reporting project, beginning in Iowa because it votes first in the GOP nominating contest, and then expanding as the campaign unfolds over the next 14 months. The goal is to watch the presidential race through the voters’ eyes and life experiences, and see what, if anything, leads them to change their voting preferences or, at this early stage in the nominating process, at least how they stack their favorites.

To be clear, this is anecdotal reporting and should not be considered a scientific sampling of public opinion. But it is helpful, and at times telling, to track how voters from different slices of the Republican electorate view the same event.

To that end, these were the two biggest takeaways from our group: Haley made a strong impression, and Ramaswamy stirs an undercard version of the Trump GOP divide.

Haley first.

As…