The extreme cold, wind and snow will be the protagonists of the long-awaited election night of the Iowa caucuses, the assemblies that this Monday open the intense primary calendar to decide the Republican contender to occupy the White House. The winter storm has brought temperatures reaching -30 degrees Celsius and dangerous gusts of wind, forcing Republican candidates to cancel several of their final campaign events and posing a threat to turnout.
The Iowa Department of Transportation “strongly advises against travel” on this designated date. Many citizens, called to meet at seven in the afternoon in some 1,700 assemblies throughout the state, will stay at home out of fear, indisposition or laziness. Others, like Rick Evenson, a 73-year-old resident of Indianola, Iowa, wouldn't miss it for the world: “It's not every day you have the opportunity to vote for Donald Trump. Furthermore, in Iowa we are used to the cold,” he said yesterday, moments before the former president took the stage to give his final speech in this municipality, a quarter of an hour from the capital, Des Moines.
The scenario of low participation adds an element of emotion: it is expected to harm Trump, the undisputed favorite in the polls, since his electorate has a higher average age, which – despite examples like Evenson's – “is more "probably they will not risk going out to vote with the storm," predicts Timothy Hagle, professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, in an interview with this newspaper.
The latest pre-caucus poll, published Saturday by the De Moines Register, gives the former president a comfortable 48%, followed far behind by Nikki Haley (20%) and Ron DeSantis (16%). The former US ambassador to the UN arrives at the meeting reinforced by the early withdrawal of Chris Christie, the candidate who has dared most to criticize Trump, and by the DeSantis debacle over the last year, in which It has lost the support of major donors and has collapsed in the polls.
“I see a lot of people out here. It is the indication that the storm has had no effect,” Trump celebrated at the beginning of his speech, “the fake news says that Haley is killing it, but it has only gone from 8 to 11%. We are going to win by beating, because I know that you will not stay at home.”
In previous election cycles, Iowa was considered a key state (swing state) due to its high number of undecided voters. But, after voting for Barack Obama in his two presidential elections (in 2008 and 2012), since Trump's arrival on the political scene it has taken a marked turn to the right, while other Midwestern states – such as Illinois or Minnesota – they consolidated themselves as democrats.
Iowa is a rural state, mostly white (87.93%) and Christian (75%), where evangelism has an important weight (28%). That explains the slogan that Trump, who has broad support among evangelicals, has personalized his campaign in Iowa: “God created Trump.”
Although only 40 of the 2,429 delegates who will vote for the Republican presidential nominee in July are designated in the Iowa caucuses, they are important because it is the first election date of the year and will serve to measure the fitness of the candidates. “Victory in the Iowa caucuses does not, by any means, guarantee the nomination. In the last three elections, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz won... and none of them won the primaries," Professor Hagle recalls, "Iowa is not used to crown the president, but to separate the contenders from the pretenders. ”.
However, as it is the first primary event and one of the most followed, it can give the smaller candidates the necessary media boost to face the election year. Iowa was, for example, the launching pad for presidents Jimmy Carter (1976) and Barack Obama (2008), then unknown to the general public. After an aggressive campaign, in which they traveled from town to town through the Midwestern state, they won decisively. “After that, the press began to consider them a serious option and, thanks to that media attention, so did citizens,” explains Hagle.
Without a doubt, the Republican who has put the most effort in Iowa has been the governor of Florida, DeSantis: he has covered all of the state's 99 counties and has earned the support of the governor, Kim Reynolds. For this reason, many analysts speculate that a bad result could trigger his early withdrawal from the electoral race.
Haley, for her part, did not set out with great expectations – despite the comeback in the latest polls – and has focused her strategy more on New Hampshire, the next state to hold primaries, on January 23. Her speech, more moderate than that of her competitors, has ample potential in the northeastern American state. In fact, the latest polls give Haley 30% of the votes in New Hampshire and she has a chance of beating Trump, with 40% of the voting intention.
This year, Democrats will not start the electoral calendar in Iowa, but in New Hampshire, on the same day that Republicans vote. After the disaster of their caucuses in 2020, when a failed recount did not produce a clear winner, for the first time in decades they have chosen to change the format. Although there will be citizen assemblies, the Democratic vote will be done by mail and the results will not be known until March 5, on the date known as Super Tuesday, when up to 16 states will vote.
