Iowa GOP chairman: Walker’s lead won’t last

The head of Iowa’s Republican Party does not think Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s lead in polls there will last.

Jeff Kaufmann said on Sunday that it’s far too early for the Hawkeye State to have made up its mind.

“There’s a very large grouping just below Walker,” Kaufman told host John Catsimatidis of “The Cats Roundtable” on New York’s AM 970.

“I don’t see that gap between Gov. Walker and the rest of the candidates, I don’t see that holding where it’s at right now,” he said. “I think this thing is going to tighten and that it is going to continue to tighten.”

{mosads}Kaufmann said that the GOP’s vast presidential field for 2016 offers plenty of opportunities for other frontrunners before the Iowa caucus in early February.

“Everything right now is just so fluid,” he said. “I think you’re going to see that grouping under Walker shift and change depending on who’s in the news, who’s making headlines.”

The Iowa GOP chair also could not resist weighing in on his state’s Democratic presidential race.

“Sanders is certainly picking up some steam out here,” Kaufmann said of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “[But] I don’t see any way that he overtakes Hillary,” he added of Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

The latest Quinnipiac poll of Iowa voters shows Clinton leading Sanders 52 percent to 33 percent. That gap is half what it was in Quinnipiac’s last Iowa poll in May.

Walker, meanwhile, has a commanding lead in samplings of Iowa caucus voters.

A RealClearPolitics average of recent polls shows he has 17.5 percent of possible supporters there.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is next, trailing Walker with 9.3 percent.