He was followed by former governor of Massachusetts Bill Weld, who announced his campaign on April 15, 2019, and former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh, who declared his candidacy on August 25, 2019.

In addition, businessman Rocky De La Fuente entered the race on May 16, 2019, but was not widely recognized as a major candidate.

[citation needed] Numerous pundits, journalists and politicians speculated that President Donald Trump might face a significant Republican primary challenger in 2020 because of his historic unpopularity in polls, his association with allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, his impeachment, and his support of unpopular policies.

[18] However, longtime political strategist Roger Stone predicted in May 2018 that Trump might not seek a second term were he to succeed in keeping all his campaign promises and "mak[ing] America great again".

[26] In August 2019, he indicated that he did not see a path to win over Trump in a Republican primary at that time, but that his opinion might change in the future.

[32] Weld received 1.3% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses and one pledged delegate to the 2020 Republican National Convention on February 3, 2020.

"[38] Former South Carolina governor and former U.S. representative Mark Sanford officially declared his candidacy on September 8,[39] but suspended his campaign two months later on November 12, 2019, after failing to gain significant attention from voters.

It took place at the news outlet's headquarters in New York City, and was hosted by Business Insider's CEO Henry Blodget, politics editor Anthony Fisher, and columnist Linette Lopez.

"[147] On January 24, 2019, another Washington Examiner report indicated that the Kansas Republican Party was "likely" to scrap its presidential caucus to "save resources".

"[149] On September 6, 2019, both of Trump's main challengers at the time, Bill Weld and Joe Walsh, criticized these cancellations as undemocratic.

[150] The Trump campaign and GOP officials cited the fact that Republicans canceled several state primaries when George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush sought a second term in 1992 and 2004, respectively; and Democrats scrapped some of their primaries when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were seeking reelection in 1996 and 2012, respectively.

[151][152] Weld and Walsh were joined by Mark Sanford in a joint op-ed in The Washington Post on September 13, 2019, which criticized the party for cancelling those primaries.

[153] Kansas,[154] Nevada and South Carolina's state committees officially voted on September 7, 2019, to cancel their caucus and primary.

[159] The New York GOP on March 3, 2020, decided to cancel its primary after neither De La Fuente, Weld, nor Walsh submitted the required number of names of their delegates in order to qualify for their ballot.

Other states were instead encouraged to use winner-takes-all systems to award delegates instead of using proportional allocation "to avoid dissent" at the convention.

Bids for the Republican National Convention were solicited in the fall of 2017, with finalists being announced early the following spring.

[163] In June 2020, disagreements with the North Carolina government over COVID-19 social distancing rules caused the major events of the convention, including Trump's acceptance speech, to be moved to VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida.