Former US President Donald Trump has won the first Republican primary in Iowa. The television channels CNN, Fox News and CBS reported this unanimously on Monday evening (local time), citing their own forecasts. The race for second place between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis is still ongoing. In 295 days, almost ten months, a new president will be elected in the USA. There are many indications of a duel between Trump and incumbent Joe Biden.
Traditionally, Iowa is the state in which the first primaries take place. It has a population of just over three million and only six out of 538 votes electoral college, the US electoral college, is relatively small. But Iowa is traditionally a swing state, i.e. one of the states in which Republicans and Democrats alternately won. Whoever achieves the first victory in the party’s internal preliminary decision will receive an early boost for their campaign.
1700 small town hall meetings in Iowa
For months, Trump has been very far ahead in all US-wide polls when it comes to the approval of the party’s base. The Republican presidential candidate will not be finally determined until a party conference in the summer. Trump hopes that he will have decided the race much earlier, if possible in March, before the first of the numerous trials scheduled against him begins.
What is remarkable in Iowa is that the Republican primaries are not held as ballot box elections, the so-called ones, as is the case in many states primariesbut in the form of a caucus be held. These are many individual, small citizens’ meetings. About 1,700 take place in Iowa, often in schools or churches. The respective applicants are then advertised in speeches. The votes cast will be counted and the result will be announced by the party within hours.
There are no primary election results from Iowa this Monday for the Democrats. This year they are only holding a postal vote in the state, the results of which will not be announced until March 5th, the so-called Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen states hold their primary election. Joe Biden is the candidate anyway unless something very extraordinary happens. However, the Democratic primaries are seen as an indicator of how strong his support is among the party base, where there are certainly critical voices. The Democrats’ first primary stop is New Hampshire on January 23rd.