Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spent months campaigning in all 99 Iowa counties. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy traveled to all of them twice. Former President Donald Trump was on the verge of victory in 1999. He lost by one vote — 1,271 to 1,270, according to preliminary counts — to Nikki Haley in Johnson County, where the University of Iowa is located. Apart from that, Trump won a perfect victory in the vote in Iowa. His overwhelming victory with 51% of the vote virtually crushed his rivals in the first round and paved the way for his nomination as the Republican nominee for the November 5, 2024 presidential election.
In his speech, Trump had good words for everyone except the president, Democrat Joe Biden. He already finds himself in contention to return to the White House. The Iowa caucuses showed that Trump is fireproof in the face of scandals and accusations among the Republican Party's base. He received 51% of the vote, a record for a candidate who did not seek the presidency. He is about 30 points ahead of Ron DeSantis (who is at 21.2%) and even more than Nikki Haley (19.1%). As if that wasn't enough, fourth-place Millennial Trumpist Vivek Ramaswamy (7.7%) has thrown in the towel and offered his support to the former president.
Trump won 20 of the 40 delegates up for election in Iowa, but he accomplished much more. He has shown that the polls that give him a 50-point lead nationally are legitimate. He has confirmed that his strategy of not participating in debates with the other candidates and presenting himself as if he were the incumbent president is working. He took advantage of his court visits by presenting himself as a martyr (this Tuesday he had an appointment in New York in a civil case for sexual abuse and defamation). He has advocated for taking responsibility for the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and calling those convicted of that act “hostages.” With his undeniable charisma and leadership, he gets his voters passionate about the cause. He made it clear that there was little room for surprises.
Vivek Ramaswamy hugs Donald Trump after offering his support in New Hampshire this Wednesday. ELIZABETH FRANTZ (Portal)
After Iowa's win, New Hampshire is the next stop. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was hoping to secure a second-place finish in Iowa that would give her a boost ahead of the nomination, in a state where polls give her more than 30% of voting intentions (Trump has more than 40% ). . In New Hampshire, Haley has the support of Gov. Chris Sununu and has taken over the electorate of retired anti-Trumpist Chris Christie. After the result in Iowa, however, there is a feeling that everything has been decided before the start.
Trump won with a low turnout. The polar cold this Monday in Iowa, with temperatures below 20 degrees below zero, has caused many people to stay at home. Just over 110,000 votes were counted, a far cry from the more than 180,000 in 2016 and even below the 120,000 in 2020, when there was little interest as the then-president had no real competition.
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Trump, who urged his supporters to vote for him even if they died trying, had the most enthusiastic supporters, polls showed. Haley was the least mobilized, which may have relegated her to third place. Although the cold and snow theoretically made things difficult for rural voters, Trump has shown that he is also the favorite of Republicans in the cities.
His support is slightly lower among moderate Republican voters, some of whom prefer Haley, and abortion opponents, who prefer DeSantis, according to polls in Iowa on Monday. He also has a little less support from young people.
Biden versus Trump
“It looks like Donald Trump just won Iowa. On the other hand, he is currently the clear favorite. But here's the thing: In this election, you and I were always going to be running against the extremist MAGA Republicans. “It was true yesterday and it will be true tomorrow,” Joe Biden tweeted after the results were announced.
Haley tries to connect Trump and Biden. “You have more in common than you think,” he told his supporters in his post-election speech this Monday. And after recalling that both are about 80 years old (Biden is 81 and Trump is 77), he added: “They lack a vision for the future of our country because both of them are talking about the past, about investigations, about revenge “To be consumed.”, for complaints.” This Tuesday, his campaign began airing ads with those messages in New Hampshire.
DeSantis breathed a sigh of relief with second place, but his prospects in New Hampshire are poor. He hasn't thrown in the towel yet, but no one sees that he has any chance of beating Trump. Iowa was theoretically the perfect state for him: white, conservative, religious… If he's 30 points behind Trump there, where will he beat him?
Trump didn't have much time to celebrate his victory. This Tuesday he had a date in a New York court for a civil lawsuit in a sexual abuse and defamation case against the writer E. Jean Carroll, which the former president described as “pure fiction” despite having already been convicted the first time. “After a historic victory in Iowa, encouraged by Biden, I am going to the witch hunt in Lower Manhattan to fight a FAKE case of a woman I have never met, seen or touched,” he wrote on his social network. “Of course, it starts right after Iowa and during the all-important New Hampshire primary, which is where I will be tonight despite their sinister attempts! “This is a gigantic election fraud encouraged and financed by political agents,” he added.
Trump's victory in Iowa was so overwhelming that the Associated Press, the reference on the subject, and the data teams of most television networks announced his victory when voting had not even begun in many caucuses, just half an hour into the caucuses were called up. The agency said initial results from eight counties showed an insurmountable and extrapolated gap in favor of Trump.
Unlike states with primaries, Iowa's caucuses generally have no ballot drop boxes — some participants collect votes in a more informal manner — and no set time for voting to end. Some meetings may end in a few minutes, while others may take some time to determine the outcome. AP speaks out when it believes there is no doubt. And this time there was no doubt.
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