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Trump easily wins Iowa caucus in landslide first vote of 2024 presidential race
By Social Links forand
Social Links for
Published Jan. 15, 2024
Updated Jan. 15, 2024, 10:43 p.m. ET
DES MOINES, Iowa — The first contest was no contest at all.
Former President Donald Trump was projected to win the Iowa caucus in a blowout Monday night — confirming his standing as the clear front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination.
With hundreds of caucus meetings across the Hawkeye State still in progress, media outlets called Trump as the winner with fewer than 10 precincts having reported their vote tallies to the Republican Party of Iowa.
With 79% of the expected vote in, Trump had 51.0% support, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (21.2%), former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (19.1%) and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (7.7%).
The 77-year-old Trump was on track to record both the biggest margin of victory in the modern history of the Iowa GOP caucus, dating back to 1976, and become the first Republican candidate to get more than 50% support in a contested caucus.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gestures after speaking at a caucus site at Horizon Events Center, in Clive, Iowa, Monday.AP
The early projection of a Trump victory, which happened after caucus meetings had begun but before many actual votes had been cast, infuriated the DeSantis camp, which accused the press of unduly influencing the outcome.
“I spoke before [approximately] 400 Iowans today at a caucus site and DeSantis won,” the Florida governor’s campaign manager James Uthmeier wrote on X. “However, they were getting news alerts of a ‘trump [sic] victory’ before speeches concluded or voting began.
“The media wants to taint this process and it’s sad for America. Wake up everyone.”
Republican presidential candidate businessman Vivek Ramaswamy visits a caucus site at Horizon Events Center.AP
Trump’s margin of victory is a major blow to DeSantis, who invested heavily in a ground game operation that failed to overcome the former president’s popularity among Iowa voters, particularly after he was hit with four criminal indictments beginning in March of last year.
That popularity was reflected in a pre-caucus AP-NORC survey of more than 1,500 Iowa Republicans, many of whom are in the mood to shake things up in Washington again — with 88% saying they wanted either “substantial change” in the way the US is run or “total upheaval.”
The survey also showed that immigration, not the economy, was the top issue on Iowa GOP voters’ minds. With a migration surge threatening to overwhelm border authorities and big cities across America, 40% of Iowa Republicans said immigration was their top issue in this cycle, compared to 33% who said the state of the economy or jobs was their main concern.
A sign announcing the Iowa win of US President and Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is displayed at a watch party during the 2024 Iowa Republican presidential caucuses in Des Moines.AFP via Getty Images
Republican Hawkeye Staters also made no bones about how they felt about new arrivals, with three-quarters of respondents saying they felt immigrants did more to hurt than help the US, with just 22% saying the opposite. About 71% of GOP voters said they “strongly” supported building a wall along the US-Mexico border, the signature promise of Trump’s three consecutive presidential campaigns.
Despite the efforts of DeSantis and Trump’s other rivals, about 7 in 10 Iowans who caucused for the former president on Monday night said they had known all along that they would do so.
Trump performed strongly in small town and rural communities, where about 6 in 10 Republican caucus-goers said they live. He won with white evangelical Christians, who are nearly half of the GOP attendees. He also excelled among those without a college degree.
Trump was projected to easily win the Iowa caucus.Getty Images
While the former president performed less strongly in Iowa’s suburbs, he still held off Haley and DeSantis there.
Despite Monday’s result, DeSantis pledged to reporters he would remain in the race even if he finished third behind Trump and Haley.
The Florida governor, 45, was scheduled to fly to South Carolina for an event Tuesday morning before heading north to New Hampshire for an evening event.
DeSantis campaigns at Pub 52 in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa on Monday.ZUMAPRESS.com
Former UN Ambassador and 2024 presidential hopeful Nikki Haley makes an appearance to invite caucus goers to caucus for her at Franklin Jr. High School in Des Moines.AFP via Getty Images
Haley, 51, had tried to avoid naming specific expectations for her performance, implying she would be happy finishing anywhere in the top three before moving on to New Hampshire — where the primary electorate is more moderate and less dominated by social conservatives and evangelicals than Iowa — and her home state of South Carolina.
“The expectations that have been set is that Donald Trump is going to win over 50% of the vote, and Ron DeSantis is going to win,” former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, a top Haley surrogate, told The Post after last week’s debate between Haley and DeSantis at Drake University in Des Moines.
“Neither of those things can happen.”
Iowans count caucus votes at a place where former President Donald Trump won the vote.Ron Haviv/VII/Redux
Vivek Ramaswamy steadies himself as he recovers from a slip on the snow to an event ahead of the Iowa caucus vote in Hubbard, Iowa, U.S. January 12, 2024.REUTERS
Trump’s campaign had been planning on a blowout win in the first-in-the-nation caucus, with his team rolling out a “10 for Trump” strategy relying on caucus captains to recruit new or irregular participants to put their support behind the former president.
That strategy paid off handsomely, as hats and stickers touting the former president were all the paraphernalia that could be seen at one caucus attended by a Post reporter in West Des Moines.
On the coldest caucus night on record, Iowa Republicans braved snow, icy roads, and a wind chill that made it feel like negative-30 degrees Fahrenheit.
Turnout was projected to be well below the record 186,932 who showed up to the Republican caucus in 2016, when Trump was defeated by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and more in line with the 121,501 GOPers who turned out in 2012 to give former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) a narrow win over eventual nominee Mitt Romney.
Trump and his rivals don’t have much time to digest Monday’s results, as the Republican primary calendar shifts to New Hampshire and the Jan. 23 first-in-the-nation primary — where polls have shown Haley closing a double-digit gap in support.
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