Former President Trump on Monday passed the first milestone in what his allies hope will be a rapid march toward a third presidential nomination.
Iowa Republicans put the defeated former president, who faces four criminal cases involving allegations of multiple felonies, on track for another shot at the White House.
Trump won the Iowa caucuses, according to the Associated Press, thanks to the determination of his die-hard supporters, who turned out for the meeting on a bitterly cold night that Iowa officials described as some of the worst weather for a caucus in half a century.
It was too early to predict which Republican would come in second as caucus meetings continued across the state.
Democrats did not hold a caucus on Monday. The party failed so badly in the 2020 caucuses that no winner was ever formally named. Amid concerns that Iowa's overwhelmingly white population did not represent the country's changing demographics well, Democrats decided last year to begin their nomination contest with primaries in South Carolina and Nevada.
The results show that Trump retains the fervent support of his staunch loyalists. His margin of victory is expected to break the record in a hotly contested Iowa Republican caucus, set by George W. Bush, of 41% in 2000.
Unlike primaries, where voters can cast their ballots at any time during Election Day (and in many states for weeks before the election), caucuses require voters to attend at a specific time, 7 a.m. pm, and stand in front of their neighbors to announce who. they returned.
At 1,657 precinct-level caucus sites across the state, the candidates' supporters gave speeches, often expressing the grievances and anger that have animated many Republican voters over the border, pandemic and perceived bias against conservatives.
In pre-election polls, Trump voters were much more enthusiastic about their candidate than supporters of the other candidates.
“There is a huge awakening going on right now across the country,” said Kathryn M. Heilesen, a certified public accountant in Denison, a small town in western Iowa, who was a Trump caucus captain. She did not clarify her reference to the Great Awakening, a phrase that dates back to 18th-century evangelicalism in the United States but has also been taken up in recent years by devotees of QAnon conspiracy theories.
Heilesen's vote for the former president was a matter of faith, but also of prophecy, Heilesen said. “And you just have to listen to the prophets; If you listened to them in 2016, they predicted this.”
Although the population of Crawford County, where Denison is located, is almost 30% Latino, turnout in the caucus was almost entirely non-Latino white voters.
Nearly half of Trump supporters described themselves as “extremely enthusiastic” about their candidate, according to a Des Moines Register/NBC/Mediacom poll of Iowa voters conducted last week. By contrast, only 9% of Haley supporters were equally excited, while 23% of DeSantis voters said they were extremely excited.
Trump led among all demographic groups tested in the survey, but was especially strong among voters who identified as evangelical Christians and the 4 in 10 likely caucus voters who labeled themselves as supporters of Trump's “Make America Great Again” movement. . Among Trump supporters, 60% called themselves “ultra MAGA” or “normal MAGA,” according to the survey.
About half of Haley's supporters identified as “anti-MAGA,” while only 1 in 10 said they were MAGA supporters.
DeSantis voters fell between those two poles, with more than half saying they were neutral toward the MAGA movement, the poll showed.
Kurt Moore, 54, a DeSantis supporter in Ames, home of Iowa State University, said he hadn't rallied in past elections because “sometimes you know you're not going to change anything.”
This time, he said, he would have “gone through a blizzard” to participate.
“Many of us think we are coming to the end as a country if we don't go in a new direction,” he said.
“We have a great country… only if we don't destroy it. Now, with all these people crossing the border… people's tax money is used to house illegal aliens in schools. We don't know what a man or a woman is. It is a disaster and we have to fix it,” she stated. Voters are “willing to go out in two-degree weather to fix it,” she added, looking at the roughly 120 people gathered in a packed elementary school cafeteria for his caucus.
Moore voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but now felt the former president “had his chance,” he said, and had proven inadequate as a leader.
Like several other DeSantis supporters interviewed, he highlighted Trump's support for lockdowns early in the COVID-19 pandemic and his support for vaccine mandates.
“That's really what changed everything: COVID policy,” he said.
In Iowa, as elsewhere, Haley appears to be consolidating support among those who have rejected Trump, including disaffected Republicans, independents and some Democrats who said in the poll they planned to cross over and participate in the Republican caucus, something Iowa rules allow. . She was doing better with two groups that have consistently resisted Trump: suburban voters and white women with college degrees, according to the survey.
The poll found that about half of Haley's supporters were independents or crossover Democrats and only 23% said they would vote for Trump in a November rematch against President Biden. By contrast, 43% said they would vote for Biden, while the remainder backed one of several third-party or independent candidates.
Trump's criminal liability did not bother the vast majority of likely caucusgoers, the poll found: 6 in 10 said that if Trump were convicted, it would have no impact on their support for him in November, and another 2 in in 10 said a conviction would make them more likely to vote for the former president. About three-quarters of likely caucus voters said they expected Trump to defeat Biden despite his legal problems.
Only 2 in 10 likely caucus voters said a conviction would make them less likely to support Trump, but among Haley voters, 4 in 10 said a conviction would make them less likely to back him.
Mehta reported from Des Moines, Lauter from Washington, D.C. and Pinho from Ames, Iowa. Times staff writer Jack Herrera contributed to this report from Dennison, Iowa.
