Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses on Monday, the first phase of primaries that will lead to the Republican Party choosing its candidate for the November presidential election. Voting will take place on Tuesday in New Hampshire, where the main candidates remaining in the race moved a few days ago: Trump and former South Carolina Governor Nikky Haley. Iowa and New Hampshire are two small and sparsely populated states: together they make up 1.4 percent of the US population. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis retired Sunday.
Demographically, these are two states that are not very representative of the rest of the United States: Iowa is a rural Midwestern state, New Hampshire is a wealthy region in the Northeast, and both are populated almost entirely by white people. But despite the small number of voters and their racial uniformity, the Republican electorate they represent may not be that far removed from the overall electorate. The ethnicity factor is less relevant for Republicans, as 85 percent of the party's voters in 2022 were white.
Trump's victory in Iowa allowed him to win 20 of the over 1,100 delegates needed for the nomination (in short, less than 2 percent). And it was achieved with fewer than 57,000 votes. Nevertheless, the consensus that he confirmed within his voter base was interpreted as a sign with possible national implications, also because of the size of the victory, the largest in the history of the Republican caucuses in the state.
(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Further information emerged from the interviews that many of the constituency participants were subjected to before entering the polling stations. Two-thirds of voters said they do not believe Joe Biden is the legitimate president, showing that the false theories Trump continues to promote about alleged fraud in the recent presidential election have taken hold. Among those who believed the 2020 election was fair, about half were Haley supporters.
The same polls also confirmed that Trump's legal troubles, accused in four separate criminal cases, two related to an attempt to subvert the 2020 election, do not appear to be influencing or discouraging voters who support him. Two-thirds of Iowa Republicans believe he could become president even if he had a criminal record; only one in 10 of those who voted for him in the primary would view conviction as an obstacle. In recent months, Trump has portrayed the trials in which he is being indicted as “political” and an attempt to legally exclude him from the presidential race: this thesis also appears to have convinced the Republican base.
In addition, about half of those who did not vote for him in the caucuses but chose another candidate listed him as their second choice: Iowa is considered particularly conservative and only twice did those who won there receive the nomination (Bob Dole) . in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000), but Trump's hold on the party appears solid.
New Hampshire will be another test because there are several factors that could favor Haley, starting with demographics. It is one of the richest states in the country and the electorate is particularly moderate and has many college-educated people (39 percent). In Iowa, Trump performed best among lower income groups, winning in 98 of the 99 counties, coming in second by very few votes only in Johnson's district, where the University of Iowa is located. The worst percentage result (34 percent) was also in Story County, where Iowa State University is located.
Nikki Haley, in the kitchen of a New Hampshire restaurant (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Haley, who is supported in New Hampshire by popular Gov. Chris Sununu, has 35 percent of the vote in the state, a slight increase, according to recent polls, while Trump is at around 52 percent. The primaries will then continue between February 6th and 8th in Nevada and February 24th in South Carolina, geographically and socially very different states. But a big victory for Trump in New Hampshire could actually have almost definitive influence on the next phases of the primaries.