Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis pitched Republicans on Wednesday on their bids to be the 2024 presidential candidate in the final debate before nominating begins — but spurned repeated chances to make the case for abandoning front-runner Donald Trump.

The head-to-head showdown in Iowa capital Des Moines came five days before the State’s pivotal opening vote in the primary season, considered crucial for winnowing the field and giving those left standing a springboard for the rest of the race.

Mr. Trump has a commanding lead despite the multiple legal challenges he faces, but has skipped the televised debates, concluding he has nothing to gain by taking prime-time hits from lower-polling rivals.

With no other candidate qualifying and the contest’s most vocal Trump critic, Chris Christie, dropping out hours earlier, the pair were expected to go after the ex-President more directly than in previous debates. But it quickly became clear that they were competing to be the absent former President’s closest runner-up in Iowa rather than looking to eat into his lead as they ducked repeat opportunities to criticise him.

Mr. DeSantis, Florida’s governor and a hardline conservative, set the tone early on by calling Ms. Haley a “mealy-mouthed politician who just tells you what she thinks you want to hear.”

Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor, hit out at Mr. DeSantis’s runaway campaign spending and repeatedly directed viewers to a website dedicated to enumerating all of her opponent’s “lies.”

The pair spent much of the debate on alternating monologues, rehearsing prepared opposition research, aggressively trading barbs on their records and policies running their states.