The extreme cold, wind and snow will be the protagonists of the election night of the Iowa caucuses, the assemblies that today open the intense calendar of primaries to decide the Republican contender to occupy the White House. The winter storm has brought temperatures as low as -30 degrees Celsius and dangerous gusts of wind, forcing candidates to cancel some of their final campaign events and threatening turnout.
The Iowa Department of Transportation “strongly advises against travel” on this designated day. Many citizens, called to meet at seven in the evening in some 1,700 assemblies throughout the state, will stay at home due to fear, indisposition or laziness. Others, like Rick Evenson, a 73-year-old resident of Indianola (Iowa), wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world: “It’s not every day you get the chance to vote for Donald Trump. In addition, in Iowa we are used to the cold”, he assured yesterday, moments before the former president took the stage to make his final speech in this municipality, a quarter of an hour from the capital, Des Moines.
The scenario of a low turnout adds an element of excitement: it is expected to hurt Trump, the undisputed favorite in the polls, since his electorate has an average age higher than – despite examples like Evenson’s – “it is more likely that he will not risk going out to vote with the storm”, predicts Timothy Hagle, professor of Political Sciences at the University of Iowa, to this newspaper. The latest poll before the caucuses, published on Saturday, gives Trump a comfortable 48%, followed by Nikki Haley (20%) and Ron DeSantis (16%).
“I see a lot of people out here. It is the indication that the storm has not had any effect – celebrated Trump at the beginning of his speech. Fake news says Haley is kicking it, but it’s only gone from 8% to 11%. We will win by beating, because I know you will not stay at home”.
In previous election cycles, Iowa was considered a key state due to its high number of undecideds. But, after voting for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, since Trump’s arrival on the political scene he has made a marked turn to the right. Iowa is a rural state, mostly white (87.93%) and Christian (75%), where evangelicalism has a significant weight (28%). This explains the slogan that Trump has personalized in his campaign in Iowa: “God made Trump”.
Although the Iowa caucuses only designate 40 of the 2,429 delegates who will vote for the Republican presidential nominee in July, they are important because it is the first election date of the year and will serve to measure the candidates’ form. “Victory in the Iowa caucuses does not, by a long shot, guarantee the nomination. In the last three elections, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz won…, and none of them won the primaries – remembers Professor Hagle. Iowa is not used to crown the president, but to separate the contenders from the pretenders.”
Without a doubt, the Republican who has put the most effort into Iowa has been the governor of Florida, DeSantis: he has gone through the 99 counties of the state and won the support of the governor, Kim Reynolds. That is why many analysts speculate that a bad result could trigger his early withdrawal from the electoral race. Nikki Haley, for her part, did not come out with great expectations – despite the rebound in the latest polls – and has focused her strategy more on New Hampshire, the next state to hold primaries, on January 23. His speech, more moderate than that of his contenders, has wide possibilities in the northeastern state of the United States. In fact, the latest polls give Haley 30% of the vote in New Hampshire and she has a chance to beat Trump, who has 40% of the vote intention.
This year the Democrats will not start the election calendar in Iowa, but in New Hampshire, on the same day that the Republicans vote. After the disaster of their caucuses in 2020, when a failed recount did not end with a clear winner, for the first time in decades they have opted to change the format. Although there will be town meetings, Democratic voting will be by mail and the results won’t be known until March 5, the date known as Super Tuesday, when sixteen states will vote.
