Trump notches a commanding win in the Iowa caucuses
which will hold the first-in-thenation primary on Jan. 23. A shrinking field will compete there after conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy suspended his campaign after a disappointing fourth place finish and endorsed Trump.
DeSantis first heads to South Carolina on Tuesday, a conservative stronghold where the Feb. 24 contest could prove pivotal. He will head later in the day New Hampshire.
“Because of your support, in spite of all of what they threw at us, we got our ticket punched out of Iowa,” DeSantis told supporters.
Haley plans to compete vigorously in New Hampshire, where she hopes to be more successful with the state’s independent voters.
“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.
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.
The Associated Press declared Trump the winner at 7:31 p.m. CST based on an analysis of early returns as well as results of AP VoteCast, of more than 1,500 voters who said they planned to take part in the caucuses. Both showed Trump with an insurmountable lead.
Initial results from eight counties showed Trump with far more than half of the total votes counted as of 7:31 p.m., with the rest of the field trailing far behind. These counties included rural areas that are demographically and politically similar to a large number of counties that had yet to report.
The Associated Press determined at 11:17 p.m. CST that DeSantis finished a distant second to Trump. With an estimated 10% of ballots remaining to be counted, DeSantis led Haley by approximately 2,300 votes, or about 2 percentage points. With votes reported in all but one of Iowa’s 99 counties, Haley wasn’t doing well enough anywhere to catch DeSantis, based on the number of outstanding votes.
Trump showed significant strength among Iowa’s urban, small-town and rural communities, according to AP VoteCast. He also performed well with evangelical Christians and those without a college degree. And a majority of caucusgoers said they identify with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
One relative weakness for Trump comes in the suburbs, where only about 4 in 10 supported him.