DES MOINES, Iowa — Voting is set to begin Monday night in frigid Iowa, as former President Donald Trump eyes a victory that would send a resounding message that neither life-threatening cold nor life-altering legal challenges can slow his march to the Republican Party’s 2024 nomination.
The Iowa caucuses, the opening contest of the months-long Republican presidential primary process, begin at 8:00 PM EST. Caucus participants will gather in more than 1,500 schools, churches and community centers to debate their options, in some cases for hours, before casting secret ballots.
While Trump exudes confidence, his former main rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, is fighting for his political survival in a race for second place. Standing in DeSantis’ way is former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, the only woman in the race. The two have competed aggressively in recent weeks to emerge as the clear alternative to the former president, who has alienated many Americans and could be a convicted felon by the end of the year.
“I absolutely love a lot of the things Trump has done, but his personality just gets in the way,” said Hans Rudin, a 49-year-old community college counselor from Council Bluffs, Iowa. Trump in the past two elections, but will rally for DeSantis on Monday.
Polls show Trump entering the day with a huge lead in Iowa, while Haley and DeSantis duel for a distant second place. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson are also on the ballot, as is former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who suspended his campaign last week.
With the coldest temperatures in caucus history expected and dangerous travel conditions in virtually every corner of the rural state, the campaigns are preparing for a low-turnout contest that will test the strength of their support and their organizational strength. The end result will serve as a powerful signal for the rest of the nomination battle to determine who will face Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s general election.
After Iowa, the Republican primaries will shift to New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in the coming weeks before moving to the rest of the country this spring. The final nominee won’t be confirmed until the party’s national convention in July, but with big wins in the opening contests, Trump will be hard to stop.
Trump’s political strength heading into the Iowa caucuses, which come 426 days after he launched his 2024 campaign, tells a remarkable story of a Republican Party that won’t or can’t move on from him. He lost to Biden in 2020 after causing near-constant chaos in the White House, culminating in his supporters carrying out a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. In total, he faces 91 charges on four criminal counts, including two charges over his efforts to overturn the election and a third charge over keeping classified documents in his Florida home.
In recent weeks, Trump has increasingly emphasized authoritarian leaders and framed his campaign as one of retaliation. He has spoken openly about using government power to pursue his political enemies. He has repeatedly used the rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country. And he recently shared a word cloud on his social media account last week highlighting words like “revenge,” “power” and “dictatorship.”
Republican voters were not deterred.
“Trump is a Christian. He is reliable. He believes in America. And he believes in freedom,” said 71-year-old Kathy DeAngelo, a retired hospital administrative assistant who waited for Trump in freezing weather on Sunday. “He’s the only one.”
The final Des Moines Register/NBC News poll before the caucuses showed Trump maintaining a formidable lead, supported by nearly half of likely caucusgoers, compared to 20% for Haley and 16% for DeSantis. Haley, the former UN ambassador and governor of South Carolina, and DeSantis, the governor of Florida, remain locked in a tight battle for second place. Trump is also viewed more favorably by likely caucusgoers than the other top candidates, with 69% compared to 58% for DeSantis and just 48% for Haley.
On the eve of the caucuses, Trump predicted that he would set a modern-day record for a Republican caucus in Iowa, with a margin of victory greater than the nearly thirteen percentage points earned by Bob Dole in 1988. He also tried to downplay expectations that he would deliver as much as 50% of the vote.
Whether he reaches that number or not, his critics note that about half of the state’s Republican voters are likely to vote for someone not named Trump.
“Someone won by twelve points and that was a record. Well, we have to do that,” Trump said during an appearance at a hotel in Des Moines on Sunday. “If we don’t do that, let them criticize us, right? But let’s see if we can reach 50%.”
“Brace the weather and go out and save America,” he later added.
Temperatures in parts of Iowa could drop to minus 14 degrees Fahrenheit (negative 26 degrees Celsius) on Monday, while blizzards from Friday’s snowstorm still make travel dangerous across the rural state, where dirt roads are common.
Forecasters warned that “dangerously cold wind chills” of up to 45 degrees below zero Fahrenheit were possible through Tuesday afternoon. The conditions could lead to “frostbite and hypothermia within minutes if not properly dressed for the conditions,” according to the National Weather Service.
This past weekend, signs on major roads warned motorists in large flashing orange letters: “TRAVEL NOT ADVISED.”
And the winter weather, which is intimidating even for Iowa, will make an already unrepresentative process even less representative.
Many older Iowans, who form the backbone of the caucus, are wondering how they will get to their locations. And only a small portion of participants will be voters of color, given Iowa’s predominantly white population, a fact that has convinced Democrats to move their first caucuses to South Carolina this year.
The Iowa caucuses also take place on Martin Luther King Day, a federal holiday.
Last month, some presidential campaigns expected nearly 200,000 Republican voters to participate in the caucus. On the eve of the election, many are now wondering whether 2024 turnout will exceed the 118,411 Republicans who showed up in 2012.
Yet each of the campaigns claims a strong voting operation that will ensure their supporters turn out.
Haley gathered a room full of Iowans and out-of-state volunteers in Ames on Sunday, with frequent cheers from the pink chain and boa-clad “Women for Nikki.”
The 51-year-old former governor of South Carolina reiterated her frequent call for Republican voters to elect her as a “leader of the new generation who will leave the negativity and baggage behind and focus on the solutions of the future.”
Nearly 200 miles away in Dubuque, DeSantis dismissed questions about his standing in the polls as he wooed voters.
“I like being underestimated. I like being the underdog,” the Florida governor said. “I think that’s better.”
Meanwhile, not all voters were enthusiastic about their options.
Jake Hutzell, 28, has not participated in a caucus before, and he’s not sure if he will on Monday. He follows politics, but he said he is part of a generation that is skeptical that it makes any difference.
“There has never been anyone that I have a strong bond with,” the Dubuque resident said. “If I’m going to put my name behind who I think should be the president, I would want to feel very strongly about that.”
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Nations reported from Washington. Beaumont reported from Indianola, Iowa, and Fingerhut reported from Ames, Iowa. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Des Moines, Iowa, and Adriana Gomez Licon in Council Bluffs, Iowa, contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2024 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.