DES MOINES: Voters venture into sub-zero temperatures on Monday to kick off the Republican presidential nomination race with the Iowa caucuses, the first major test of whether runaway front-runner Donald Trump is as much of a sure thing as he appears.

With a commanding lead in polls, the ex-president is expected to win the Midwestern state’s first-in-the-nation vote easily as he bids to be the Republican standard-bearer against President Joe Biden in November. But Iowans may have to contend with the coldest conditions in the modern era of presidential election campaigns, with blizzards and a potential wind chill of -26 degrees Fahrenheit (-32 degrees Celsius) forecast.

Trump and his leading rivals, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, were forced to cancel appearances in the home stretch as the threat to Monday’s turnout added intrigue to a campaign season that is already something of an unknown quantity. Trump canceled three weekend rallies, but was still due to hold a campaign event on Sunday in Indianola, just south of Des Moines.

Despite his apparent strength, the former president has been indicted four times since he was last a candidate and is preparing for the potential collapse of his business empire in his native New York in a civil fraud trial.

“If DeSantis’s massive ground effort, coupled with a recent Haley surge, can drag Trump under 50 per cent by several points, that will be the first meaningful sign that Trump can be defeated,” said political analyst Alex Avetoom, who worked on Republican John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“However, this paradigm-shifting reality — that Trump could be defeated — happens if, and only if, the rest of the field consolidates behind one anti-Trump candidate.”

Poor predictor

For all the talk of miracle bounces, the Iowa race is hardly competitive: A new NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll has Trump at 48pc among likely caucus-goers, with Haley surging into second place but still only at 20pc.

“I’m voting for Trump again,” 37-year-old trucker Jeff Nikolas said, adding that “he may be bullheaded, but he can actually get stuff done.” The poll was more bad news for Florida Governor DeSantis, who scored just 16pc and has seen his claim to be heir apparent to the post-Trump Republican Party eclipsed by Haley.

But DeSantis insisted that his “very motivated” backers would turn out in sufficient numbers — despite the frigid conditions — to keep him relevant in a vote that is open only to registered Republicans.

In 2016, he told ABC, only 186,000 Iowans took part in the caucus, and “now, with this weather, it could be significantly less,” making turnout paramount. He urged his supporters: “Bring in friends and family, man, that’s going to pack a punch.” Haley, a former South Carolina governor, is looking to outperform expectations to cement her claim to be Trump’s top challenger going into her preferred state of New Hampshire the following week.

Iowa is a notoriously poor predictor of the eventual nominee but it is considered crucial for winnowing the field and as a springboard to the next few battlegrounds, which include Haley’s home state.

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2024