Trump was expected to be the winner in Iowa, but the outcome of the race for second place remains uncertain
Donald Trump was expected to be the landslide winner of Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses Monday night, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expected to finish second.
Former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley took third place, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy took fourth place.
Ramaswamy subsequently announced that he was withdrawing from the race and endorsed Trump.
Trump has had a large lead for months in most early polls in the state, so the main focus of Iowa’s top polls has been who will finish second and how close that candidate can get to the former president.
Now that the results are almost all in, a second-place finish could help keep the DeSantis campaign alive. Haley’s team may be unhappy to finish in third place after gaining momentum in recent weeks, but she isn’t far from second place.
With 96% of Iowa’s votes counted, Trump won 51.1%, DeSantis 21.2%, Haley 19.1%, and Ramaswamy 7.7%. According to Associated Press data, yes.
DeSantis’ Iowa results “make him feel like he can keep going,” but political science professor Jeff Gulati said it “only delays the inevitable that he’s going to drop out.” from Bentley University, Massachusetts.
Gulati said the Florida governor is likely to finish third in the Republican primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina and has no real path to the 2024 Republican nomination.
Iowa was “very disappointing” for Haley, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, and “she came in second” in a recent poll.
She has a “real chance to win” next week’s New Hampshire Republican primary. New Hampshire “is so different from Iowa because it allows non-partisan voting. But where does he go from there?” Sabato was added.
Republicans have few states like New Hampshire, and it’s not clear that Haley can win South Carolina, where she was governor before Trump appointed her as a U.N. envoy, an expert at the University of Virginia said. “How do you explain the loss of your hometown?”
In Trump’s case, he “won 50% over the other four candidates. That’s what everyone said he had to do and he did it,” Sabato said. The results in Iowa show “how difficult it will be for someone else to unseat Trump as the Republican nominee in 2024,” Sabato said.
New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 Republican primary was expected to be more competitive, especially after former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie withdrew from the 2024 presidential race last week. Christie, who actively criticizes Trump, did not receive much support in Iowa, but received about 11% of support in New Hampshire, ranking third according to the RCP average. Adding his approval rating to the 29% Haley earned in the Granite State would bring her total approval rating closer to Trump’s 44%.
Other key stages in the race to become the Republican challenger to Democratic favorite President Joe Biden include the Feb. 24 Republican primary in South Carolina and Super Tuesday on March 5, when more than a dozen states are scheduled to vote. Includes primary elections.
Trump’s second term economic proposals include a 10% tariff on all imports, ending Obamacare XLV and another attempt to address student debt by launching a free online college called the American Academy.
Haley’s economic proposals include raising the Social Security retirement age along with repealing the federal tax on gasoline RB00.
In his economic plan, DeSantis relied heavily on energy XLE policies to address inflation, promised to curb spending and criticized the Trump administration’s spending.
Ahead of Monday’s Iowa vote, Trump had more than 50% support in Iowa-centered polls, while DeSantis and Haley remained in the teens and on track for victory. That’s according to the RealClearPolitics moving average of Iowa polls.
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It was lower.
