From our correspondent in the United States,
It is an almost banal election which launches an extraordinary electoral year. Under a polar blizzard, nearly 200,000 voters will kick off the Republican primary during the Iowa caucus this Monday. The polls are unanimous: the nomination of Donald Trump, which counts 50 points ahead in national studiesseems as inevitable as the victory of the villain Thanos in the “Avengers” saga.
The former president “needs to eliminate Ron DeSantis and prevent Nikki Haley from taking off so as not to let doubt intrude,” judge Barrett Marson, Republican strategist from Arizona. Especially with a legal sword of Damocles hanging over his head, his political future being inextricably linked to his judicial future and Supreme Court decisions.
Donald Trump wants to prove that the polls were right
Mathematically, Iowa represents a drop in the bucket in the primary delegate race (see box), but it’s all a matter of momentum. If Donald Trump exceeds the symbolic 50% mark, he proves that the polls were right. Ron DeSantis, who has crisscrossed the cornfields like no other, is gambling for his survival. “If he finishes second, more than 20 points behind Trump, or, worse, third, I don’t see how he continues his campaign,” analyzes Marson.
Nikki Haley hopes to “outperform” and bet everything the following week on New Hampshire. In this state with a more moderate electorate, she is around ten points behind Donald Trump in the polls. She could take advantage of Chris Christie’s recent abandonment to cast doubt on the former president before taking on a home battle on February 24 in South Carolina, a state of which she was governor.
Ineligibility, immunity… The Supreme Court as arbitrator
Afterwards, everything gets complicated. In theory, Donald Trump must kill the game on Super Tuesday. It will be March 5, with a third of American states voting. But the Colorado justice system declared the Republican candidate ineligible for having “participated in an insurrection” during the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, causing a constitutional earthquake. Maine followed suit.
The US Supreme Court agreed last week to arbitrate this fundamental question, with a hearing set for February 8. The decision, which should logically be rendered in the following weeks, could weigh on the primary, and even more on a possible duel between Trump and Biden on November 5, with other states which risk following if the nine judges agree with the Colorado.
“Democrats must beat Trump with ideas, not in court”
Beyond the legal arguments that divide experts, the question of the impact on American democracy arises: does not letting states remove from the lists a former president who obtained 47% of the votes in 2020 risk dig a little deeper into already gaping divisions? “I don’t think a majority of Americans would accept a disqualification based on an amendment written with the Civil War in mind,” responds Timothy Naftali, professor of history specializing in the presidency at NYU University. Barrett Marson agrees: “Democrats must beat Trump at the ballot box with ideas, not in the courts or with a text from 1868.”
The Supreme Court, which leans 6 to 3 on the conservative side, should also be required to rule on a possible immunity for Donald Trump, currently being debated on appeal. Brad Moss, a lawyer in Washington, does not exclude “unforeseeable factors, such as potential political loyalty” of the three judges appointed by the former tenant of the White House. “But if we were in Las Vegas, the punters would be banking on immunity being rejected.” “The entire American constitutional system is built on the notion that a president is not a king and is not above the law,” agrees Chris Edelson, professor of political science at the American University in Washington. .
Uncertainty over the judicial calendar
If the immunity card were validated by the Supreme Court, this would mark the end of the two trials on the 2020 election – the most dangerous for Donald Trump – in Washington and Georgia, specifies Brad Moss. But even if the court dismisses Trump, the timetable will be disrupted by the appeals whatever happens. In Washington, the hearing which was to start at the beginning of March risks being postponed until the summer, or even the fall. It is ultimately the Stormy Daniels affair, much less risky for Trump, which could get the ball rolling in the spring. Finally, the date of the trial on the classified documents in a federal court in Florida remains undetermined for the moment, with Judge Cannon, appointed by the former tenant of the White House, who is far from being in a hurry.
A victory for Donald Trump in the primary seems inevitable, because the party of Reagan has become the party of Trump. His popularity rating among the conservative electorate is around 80% favorable opinions. Only 3 in 10 Republicans believe that the election of Joe Biden in 2020 was legitimate, and 7 in 10 believe that Donald Trump, indicted for trying to overturn the election, is innocent, according to a study for the Washington Post. To defy him is political suicide. Many Republican elected officials openly critical of the former president were beaten by “Maga” candidates during primaries or preferred to retire from Congress.
The only certainty is that nothing in the Constitution can prevent Donald Trump from being a candidate or even president. A victory would allow him, in theory, to quash federal prosecutions still pending or to pardon himself in the event of conviction, except for a sentence imposed by a state like Georgia.
“There is no historical precedent and so many variables that it is impossible to make predictions,” says historian Mark Updegrove, head of the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation. According to him, “If Trump were convicted of acts intended to overturn the verdict of the ballot box in 2020 and pardoned himself, it would mean that democracy has been, at least temporarily, overthrown by authoritarianism. »And unlike Marvel’s heroes, America has no magic stone to turn back the clock.
How does the Republican primary work?
Between January 15 and June 4, 50 American states, plus the District of Colombia and five territories, vote to designate the official candidate of the Republican Party for the American presidential election on November 5.
Some ballots are “closed”, meaning that only Republican voters can vote (Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, in particular), and others are open to all voters (Texas, Michigan, Louisiana).
The vast majority of elections are primaries organized by the states, but there are also half a dozen caucuses (Iowa, Nevada, Utah, North Dakota, Hawaii). These neighborhood meetings, vestiges of participatory democracy, are organized by the local Republican party, with often more complex rules which let representatives of the candidates try to convince the undecided.
As is often the case in the United States, these are indirect ballots: voters actually vote for local delegates. In total, there are 2,429 at stake, so a candidate must win at least 1,215 to secure the nomination during voting at the Republican Convention, which will be held July 15-18 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. .
The number of delegates from each state depends on its population. The biggest jackpots are California (169), Texas (162), Florida (125) and New York (91). During “Super Tuesday”, March 5, almost a third (874) will be at stake.
The first states allocate delegates proportionally, but most then operate on the principle of “winner-takes-all”: the candidate who comes first takes all the stake (Florida, Arizona, Colorado), sometimes only if it exceeds 50% (Texas, New York). With this system, supposedly preventing the primary from dragging on, Donald Trump could mathematically ensure the nomination by March 19.