US presidential election heats up as frigid Iowa tests Trump

On Monday, voters will brave sub-zero temperatures to kick off the Republican presidential nomination battle with the Iowa caucuses, the first big test of whether runaway front-runner Donald Trump is as confident as he looks.

With a commanding lead in surveys, the former president is projected to comfortably win the first-in-the-nation vote in the Midwestern state as he seeks to be the Republican standard-bearer against President Joe Biden in November.

But with blizzards and a possible wind chill of -26 degrees Fahrenheit (-32 degrees Celsius) predicted, Iowans may have to deal with the coldest circumstances in the modern period of presidential election campaigns.

In the last stretch of the campaign, Trump and his main opponents, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, were forced to postpone events as the uncertainty surrounding Monday’s voter turnout added excitement to an already unpredictable campaign season.

Trump was still scheduled to host a campaign rally on Sunday in Indianola, which is located just south of Des Moines, even though he had cancelled three rallies.

In spite of his seeming strength, Trump is facing the possibility of his corporate empire collapsing in his home state of New York during a civil fraud trial, having been indicted four times since his previous campaign.

“If DeSantis’s massive ground effort, coupled with a recent Haley surge, can drag Trump under 50 percent 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 48 percent among likely caucus-goers, with Haley surging into second place but still only at 20 percent.

“I’m voting for Trump again,” 37-year-old trucker Jeff Nikolas told AFP, 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 16 percent and has seen his claim to be heir apparent to the post-Trump Republican Party eclipsed by Haley.

The 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.

Stung by defeat in 2016 after skipping much of Iowa’s campaign trail, Trump has built up an impressive network of “precinct captains” to corral votes this time around — but he has been as notable for courtroom appearances as campaign events.

In a state that likes to meet its candidates face-to-face, DeSantis has been at pains to highlight his own ground game, which has taken him to all 99 counties.

‘Eye candy’

The Iraq veteran and conservative hard-liner will be under heavy pressure to drop out however if he finishes third — although Avetoom cautioned against counting him out.

“Poll respondents are not necessarily Iowa caucus-goers, and the DeSantis precinct operations… are run by first-in-class operatives that have collected an impressive tally of caucus support pledges,” he said.

Edward Segal, a former press secretary for Democratic and Republican lawmakers, echoed the benefits of a strong ground game, pointing to at least nine presidents who toured Iowa by train during campaigns.

“Whistle-stop campaign trains can still serve as eye candy to help attract the attention of voters and the media,” the analyst told AFP.

A good night for Trump on Monday, he added, would be “getting 60 percent or more of the vote.”

The Republican primary also features a number of low-polling candidates, including biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has promised a third-place finish in Iowa but didn’t qualify for the final televised debate.

Iowa’s Democrats will also attend caucuses — meetings at which local members of a political party gather to register their candidate preferences — on Monday but will vote by mail from January until March.

Biden is expected to comfortably defeat self-help author Marianne Williamson and Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips.