An incredibly map of Iowa’s counties reveals just how overwhelming Donald Trump’s caucus victory was, with his 30-point margin affirming his grip on the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Trump won 98 out of 99 counties in a drubbing that leaves his rivals Ron DeSantis, who came second with 23% of votes, and Nikki Haley, who finished third with 21% of votes, trailing behind.
But now Trump and his rivals will turn their attention to next week’s New Hampshire primary on January 23 where they will compete for more key votes with more to play for after conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the race.
In previous presidential races, the winners for Iowa have gone on to win the presidency – as was the case with Jimmy Carter in 1976, Barack Obama in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2000.
DeSantis and Haley will now look to turn their loss in Iowa into a win in the upcoming primaries, but conservative commentators such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have already declared: ‘Trump is the nominee. Get over it.’
Trump won 98 out of 99 counties in a drubbing that leaves his rivals Ron DeSantis, who came second with 23% of votes, and Nikki Haley , who finished third with 21% of votes, trailing behind. Haley did beat Trump in one county – Johnson – but only by one point.
Trump won 98 out of 99 counties in a drubbing that leaves his rivals Ron DeSantis, who came second with 23% of votes, and Nikki Haley , who finished third with 21% of votes, trailing behind
For Haley, who finished third on 21 per cent, she will look for a strong performance in New Hampshire where she has polled as high as 45 per cent in recent weeks
And coming more than 30 points behind Trump in the Iowa caucus will be a huge blow for DeSantis – especially since previous Iowa delegates have backed conservative and religious candidates like him
As of 2am, Trump had more than 56 percent of the votes with Haley and DeSantis scrapping in second place
For Haley, who finished third on 21 per cent, she will look for a strong performance in New Hampshire where she has polled as high as 45 per cent in recent weeks.
‘When you look at how well we’re doing in New Hampshire and in South Carolina and beyond, I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race,’ she said.
But her supporters in Iowa have admitted that falling behind DeSantis last night could blunt her momentum in the key battlegrounds that lie ahead. Haley did beat Trump in one county – Johnson – but only by one point.
That said, DeSantis had been largely absent from New Hampshire during his campaign trail.
He will first head to South Carolina on Tuesday, a conservative stronghold where the February 24 contest could prove pivotal. He will head later in the day New Hampshire.
And coming more than 30 points behind Trump in the Iowa caucus will be a huge blow for DeSantis – especially since previous Iowa delegates have backed conservative and religious candidates like him.
Some will now question that if DeSantis can’t beat Trump in conservative Iowa, where could he? But his spokesperson has previously said his campaign will not be derailed if he lost to Trump in Iowa.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the competition is all but over for the other candidates, declaring that Trump will be the Republican’s presidential candidate despite this being the first vote.
‘Despite every lawsuit, despite every effort to destroy Trump, the people of Iowa have stood up and said “No, he’s our candidate”.
‘He’s the nominee. Get over it – he’s the nominee. He’s going to win the nomination.’
Gingrich said the other candidates are now ‘irrelevant’, adding: ‘Nobody is going to be number two because Trump is going to dominate totally if you look at the country at-large.’
Trump’s landslide victory in Iowa does now mean that the not-Trump vote remains divided with no clear challenger emerging between DeSantis and Haley. The split field could ease his path to the nomination.
Iowa voters have been influential over the years and have propelled candidates such as Barack Obama to the presidential nomination.
But it hasn’t always been the best at predicting who will go on to win the presidency, as was the case in 2020 when Trump won all 99 counties in Iowa only to lose the election to President Joe Biden.
Indeed, Iowa Republicans selected Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorium in 2012 – neither of whom won the presidential election.
And for some candidates who were defeated in Iowa – such as Ronald Reagan in 1980, George Bush in 1988 and Trump in 2016 – they all went on to win the election.
Former President Donald Trump raises his fist in the air after he won the Iowa Caucus on January 15
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Iowa Events Center after winning the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus in Des Moines, Iowa, on Monday
Former President Donald Trump raises his fist in the air after he won the Iowa Caucus on January 15
Indeed, in 2016, Trump lost in Iowa to Ted Cruz with only 37 counties voting for him but he went on to win the presidency.
But last night’s record victory for Trump leaves him with a tighter grip on the GOP nomination – though it could take several more months for anyone to formally become the party’s standard bearer.
The magnitude of Trump’s victory, however, posed significant questions for both DeSantis and Haley. But neither candidate appeared poised to exit the race ahead of next week’s New Hampshire primary.
In a preview of a remarkable balancing act Trump may have to manage in the months ahead, he was expected to be in court in New York on Tuesday.
A jury is poised to consider whether he should pay additional damages to a columnist who last year won a $5 million jury award against Trump for sex abuse and defamation. It’s just one of multiple legal challenges facing the former president.
After visiting the court, Trump will fly to New Hampshire to hold a rally Tuesday evening.
Trump has made courtroom visits a part of his campaign – heading to court voluntarily twice last week while his opponents campaigned in Iowa – in a strategy designed to portray him as a victim of a politicized legal system. Among Republican voters, at least, the approach is working.
It took just half an hour for Trump’s landslide victory to be called as thousands of his die-hard supporters turned up to vote in sub-zero temperatures and wind chills as low as minus 30 degrees.
Trump quickly looked forward and said the ‘big night is going to be in November when we take back our country’ in the general election.
Instead of mocking the rest of the Republican field he applauded them for their campaigning and called them ‘very smart people, very capable people’.
‘I want to congratulate Ron and Nikki for having a good time together. I think they both actually did very well,’ Trump told a crowd of a few hundred supporters just hours after networks called the state for him.
It was a sudden turn for someone he regularly insulted as ‘Ron DeSantimonious’ before the caucusing began and his victory was assured.
He also had kind words for Vivek Ramaswamy, after blasting him in the final days before the caucus – speaking shortly before Ramaswamy dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump.
‘I also want to congratulate Vivek because he did one hell of a job. He came from zero … that’s an amazing job,’ Trump said.
Trump, who holds a lopsided lead in national polls, included calls for unity in his speech, even though Iowa represents just 1.6 per cent of the total delegates at stake in the fight for the nomination.
He called to ‘come together and straighten out the world and straighten out the problems.’
Trump sought to seize the momentum from his convincing win, even as the race for the GOP presidential nomination shifts immediately to New Hampshire, where Haley has been rising in the polls. DeSantis plans to hold events in South Carolina, which holds its primary February 24, and New Hampshire on Tuesday, after failing to use his turnout organization to pull closer to Trump.
‘Because of your support in spite of all of what they threw at us,’ said DeSantis at his own rally, ‘we got our ticket punched out of Iowa.’ Haley said the results make it a ‘two-person race’ between her and Trump.
Trump’s remarks came in a victory speech where he paid tribute to his late mother-in-law Amalija Knavs and thanked ‘my incredible wife’ former first lady Melania Trump.
He joked about his mother in law. ‘Boy did she take care of Barron. ‘That’s how he got so tall.’
Trump was joined onstage at his victory party by sons Eric and Don Jr., but there was no sign of daughter Ivanka.
Ron DeSantis embraces his wife Casey DeSantis as he celebrated a projected second place finish
Nikki Haley speaks with her kids at a caucus night party in West Des Moines, Iowa
Trump celebrated after storming to victory in the first primary contest in just 30 minutes by waiting on stage as Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA’ played to the crowd.
Iowa has been an uneven predictor of who will ultimately lead Republicans into the general election. George W. Bush’s 2000 victory was the last time a Republican candidate won in Iowa and went on to become the party’s nominee.
But Trump’s success tells a remarkable story of a Republican Party unwilling or unable to move on from a flawed front-runner. He lost to Biden in 2020 after fueling near-constant chaos while in the White House, culminating with his supporters carrying out a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. In total, he faces 91 felony charges across four criminal cases.
The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether states have the ability to block Trump from the ballot for his role in sparking the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. And he’s facing criminal trials in Washington and Atlanta for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump has increasingly echoed authoritarian leaders and framed his campaign as one of retribution. He has spoken openly about using the power of government to pursue his political enemies.
He has repeatedly harnessed rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ And he recently shared a word cloud last week to his social media account highlighting ‘revenge,’ ‘power’ and ‘dictatorship.’
Trump’s legal challenges appear to have done little damage to his reputation. Many of his supporters view the charges through a political lens.
About three-quarters of Iowans responding to AP VoteCast said the charges against Trump are political attempts to undermine him, rather than legitimate attempts to investigate important issues.
‘God called us to do that to support Trump,’ said 64-year-old David Lage, donning a captain’s hat at Trump’s victory party.