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Hey, good morning. I am Playbook co-author Eugene Daniels. It is Thursday, January 4th. Here's what's driving the day.

During election season, we reporters, political, they spend

their time talking to anyone with a pulse, especially in those early states. But there's one

group of folks who are kind of in the middle of the party elite and the grassroots and have their

pulse on the party, and that's the county chairs.

Their allegiances tell you a lot about where the party is, where it's going.

And so political scientist, Seth Maskett, has been surveying GOP county chairs for almost a year for our colleagues at Political Magazine.

And today he has a new entry into his ongoing series for the magazine that

takes a look at the GOP presidential race. I won't get into every single detail of it because

it's very long, lots of information. But what you need to know is heading into the first contest of

the 2024 presidential race. No surprise, Donald Trump maintaining a dominant

lead among Republican grassroots leaders. Nikki Haley is eclipsing Ronda Santis for second

place. If you've been paying attention, none of this is surprising. But what he's been finding

in this series is that there has been a much more fluid race in the primary

than conventional wisdom suggests. So after you finish listening to me, go to political.com,

take a look at what he wrote, and it is fascinating. And speaking of Nikki Haley, she was in

New Hampshire yesterday, a state that's going to be very, very important if she has any chance of at any point getting to take on Donald Trump one-on-one for that number one spot.

And she's doing something that she hasn't been doing that much over the last few months, which is going head on against Donald Trump for one very particular issue.

But it does mark a shift in how she talks about the frontrunner.

And joining me now, fresh from a Nikki Haley appearance and in her car is politics reporter Lisa Kaczynski.

Lisa, thank you so much for joining us.

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