The former president of the United States, Donald Trump, has consolidated his absolute dominance in the Republican Party tonight with an unmitigated victory in the caucuses in icy Iowa. With more than 50% of the votes and a distance of almost 30 points with the Second place, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the tycoon has achieved a historic victory. Never before has a Republican candidate won with such a margin: Trump has doubled the previous record, of 12.8 points, which separated Bob Dale from Pat Robertson in 1988.
"It is time to be united, whether Republicans, Democrats, liberals or conservatives," he said at the beginning of his triumphant speech, to the cheers of those in attendance. And he has praised his opponents, after spending the entire campaign demonizing them, aware that after tonight they will see their chances of aspiring to the Republican nomination greatly reduced: "we have had a very good time campaigning," he said, "they are people very intelligent and very capable."
The extreme weather has frozen participation, but it has not prevented the storm that the polls had been announcing: Trump has swept, with 51% of the votes, and will take more than half of the 40 delegates who will vote in July for the Republican candidate to the White House. Far behind, neither the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis (21.2%), nor the former US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley (19.1%), nor the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy (7.7% ), have endured the inclement gusts of Trumpist wind. After knowing the results, Ramaswamy has announced that he is withdrawing from the electoral race.
Voters registered in Iowa as Republicans were summoned to their voting center at 7 p.m. This year, the party has divided the state into some 1,700 electoral districts, spread across 700 schools, sports centers, churches and civic centers. At the evangelical church Eternity Church, in Clive – a suburb of Des Moines, the capital of Iowa – the process began with a prayer.
Immediately afterwards, the representatives chosen by each candidate's campaign took the lead in the debate, which concluded with a secret vote, in which they wrote by hand the name of their candidate on a sheet of paper. Benjamin Parks, 45, attended the caucuses for the first time to support the winning horse: "I voted for my president, Donald Trump, who was robbed of the last election and deserves to finish the work he started in 2016," he said. in an interview with this newspaper, repeating the theory without evidence of electoral fraud.
Despite its importance, being the first electoral event and one of the most followed, the weight of the Iowa caucuses is relative. They have served to designate the first 40 delegates of the 2,469 that will be sent to the Republican National Convention, which will vote next July in Milwaukee (Wisconsin) for the Republican candidate to occupy the White House.
The presidential candidate nomination process is usually a long-distance race. In fact, the winner of the Iowa caucuses does not usually win: in the last three Republican elections, Mike Huckabee (2008), Rick Santorum (2012) and Ted Cruz (2016) won. Since Iowa became the first state of the primary cycle in 1972, only three candidates have achieved their party's nomination and finally the presidency: Jimmy Carter (1976), George Bush (2000) and Barack Obama (2008). Everything indicates that Trump will become the fourth, after achieving the largest advantage in history in a Republican caucus this Monday.
A few minutes after the voting began, the media projected the victory of the New York tycoon, which has provoked the indignation of DeSantis, who claims to be the victim of "electoral interference." The result has confirmed Trump's indisputable dominance in this largely rural, conservative, white and evangelical state, in which he lost his first caucuses in 2016, but which ended up being key to his victory in the presidential elections.
The surprise of the night came in second place: DeSantis has managed to turn around the polls and has stopped the rise of Haley, whom the latest polls made her the clear alternative to the former president. The governor of Florida has seen his efforts rewarded in Iowa, where he has made a large investment in propaganda, has visited all 99 counties in the state and has earned the support of his governor, Kim Reynolds.
The result keeps the fight for second place alive. Haley, who has positioned herself as the moderate – although also very conservative – alternative to the "chaos" and "constant distractions" of the New York magnate, has remained just two points behind DeSantis. Despite not meeting expectations, the vote confirms its upward dynamic: in five months, since the first primary debate, it has gone from 3% of voting intentions at the national level to the 12% it currently holds.
The governor of Florida and the former governor of South Carolina will continue their personal duel next week. Today they travel to New Hampshire, the next state to hold primaries (January 23), where Haley has serious options to unseat Trump. There, the latest polls give him 30.3% of the votes, 13.4 points below the former president. And he is almost assured of victory against DeSantis, who only has 6% of the voting intention.
New Hampshire, more moderate and less Trumpist, was considered for decades as a pivotal state. However, since Trump's jump onto the political scene, Democrats have won in every federal election, whether for the presidency, the House of Representatives or the Senate. Haley's message, which has earned the support of Governor Chris Sununu, resonates more with the electorate of the northeastern US state.
In the case of Democrats, this year the primaries lack emotion. As is usually the case with the president in office, the party has respected Joe Biden's candidacy for re-election, and only two contenders have presented themselves with minimal options in the polls: the writer Marianne Williamson (6.1%) and the Congressman Dean Phillips (3.5%). This dynamic also explains Trump's dominance: a large part of his followers continue to believe that there was electoral fraud in 2020, which is why the real president-elect is the New York tycoon.
