The vote in Iowa, in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination, gave a resounding victory Monday evening to former President Donald Trump, who collected more than 50% of the votes cast during the state’s caucuses. from the Midwest.
But the wave, although it seems spectacular, is far from completely sealing the fate of this race. The very low participation rate and, above all, the particular political context of Iowa still leave some hope for the populist’s rivals, a few days before the slightly more significant vote in the New Hampshire primaries.
This is because nearly 50% of voters in Iowa, a very conservative state, ultimately did not choose Donald Trump and his political speech of revenge tinged with hatred and unfounded accusations of electoral fraud. Victims of freezing weather conditions, the Iowa caucuses also experienced their lowest participation rate since 2008. Barely 111,000 Republican voters, out of the 752,000 registered as of January 2 on the state’s lists, were are moved to choose their candidate, i.e. 15% of them (compared to 29% in 2016).
“In fact, Donald Trump only obtained 56,260 votes,” summarizes Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science at Iowa State University, contacted by The duty the day after this electoral exercise. “The very low participation rate also raises several questions about the value of this victory. But in politics, illusion is more important than reality, and that’s what continues to drive Donald Trump up in national polls. »
Monday evening, barely two hours after the start of the caucuses, Donald Trump trumpeted his victory by strangely calling for unity within the Republican Party, but also by promising good years to come for the oil, gas and extraction. “We’re going to dig, baby, we’re going to dig,” he said, echoing the pro-industry slogan used by Republican candidate Michael S. Steele in 2008. The populist also promised to “seal the border,” component of his anti-immigration nationalist identity discourse to which his base is very receptive.
“By exceeding 50%, Donald Trump enjoyed a very good evening. But the race is not over yet. The vote against him is still very important, even if it finds itself divided between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley,” political scientist Tim Hagle of the University of Iowa said in an interview. The governor of Florida came in second, garnering 21.2% of the vote. He was followed very closely by the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, who received 19.1% of the votes.
Ron DeSantis also defied the odds by avoiding a third place, which would have threatened his short-term survival in this electoral race. “It wasn’t the worst or the best scenario for him,” says Mr. Hagle. “He beat Nikki Haley for second place, but did not close the gap to Donald Trump. His path to winning the Republican nomination still remains difficult, but not impossible. He performed well enough on Tuesday night to warrant staying in the race. »
“His problem is that he has no real political organization outside of Iowa and perhaps he does not have the money necessary to succeed in building one quickly for the rest of the things,” adds David Redlawsk, a voter behavior specialist at the University of Delaware.
Nikki Haley slowed down?
“As for Nikki Haley, she comes out of Iowa a little hurt, and that could slow down the momentum she gained in the New Hampshire primaries,” the next step in this race for the Republican nomination, notes the professor. Redlawsk.
Monday evening, the former governor of South Carolina did not give up, however, positioning herself as a bulwark against the “Trump-Biden nightmare”, which is likely to happen again next November. Her candidacy remains “the only and, above all, the best hope of putting an end to it,” she said from Des Moines, the capital of Iowa. “But it’s more than that. Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. There is nothing to be proud of. »
Donald Trump multiplies false statements about the 2020 elections, while maintaining worrying and threatening belligerent rhetoric both towards his political opponents and the founding institutions of the rule of law and towards the country’s minorities , a rhetoric that several historians associate with authoritarian regimes.
The day after his victory, the ex-president also went to New York to attend jury selection in the defamation trial between him and columnist E. Jean Carroll. Last May, a court recognized that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll in 1990 and demanded payment of $5 million in damages to the victim. The real estate mogul’s legal setbacks should also punctuate the current electoral campaign, with the man facing 91 charges in four separate cases, including one for attempting to steal the 2020 elections and another for launching an insurrection against the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
New Hampshire’s turn
A recent American Research Group poll on the New Hampshire primaries, conducted just before the Iowa caucuses, places Nikki Haley tied in voting intentions with Donald Trump, at 40% each.
The division of the vote in the camp of candidates other than Donald Trump, however, remains the big question in this race. “It was this division, which also existed in 2016, which allowed Trump to become the Republican candidate that year,” underlines Professor Hagle. “In the current race, the fact that he presents himself almost as an outgoing president seeking a new mandate (rather than as the president stripped of his post after a single mandate) places him facing better numbers than in 2016 and makes it even harder for someone else to beat him. »
On Tuesday, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson threw in the towel and withdrew from the race for the Republican nomination after coming in sixth place in the caucuses the day before in Iowa. The politician congratulated Donald Trump on his victory, but has not, for the moment, given his support to any of the candidates still in the running.