Just thirty-one minutes into the Iowa caucuses, the Associated Press declared Donald Trump’s victory. The speed is unprecedented, even though the former president’s victory was widely expected. Eight districts out of 1,657 had declared results. In the auditorium of the Eternity Church in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, where all the candidates appeared to make a final appeal to voters, Trump had just spoken, as had Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, while Congressman Chip Roy was about to speak to DeSantis’ name when the Associated Press announcement came.
The response from DeSantis, the governor of Florida, was harsh. Its communications director, Andrew Romeo, wrote in declaring the outcome of the race before tens of thousands of Iowans had even been able to vote. The media is sold out to Trump and this is the biggest example yet.”
The Associated Press said it announced Trump’s victory based on analysis of early results as well as AP VoteCast, a survey of voters planning to go to the caucuses. Both predicted Trump’s insurmountable lead. It now remains to be seen what the tycoon’s margin of victory will be: if above 50% this could help cement his Republican nomination soon, vice versa his rivals will say that he is weak and will continue to fight him in the next primaries.
The other real unknown is who will come in second place between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. DeSantis as we write at 5 in the morning in Italy is in second place with 21.3% of the preferences and Haley at 19% (partial data with 90% of the votes counted). The first results also show that the former governor of South Carolina beats Trump in districts like the one we visited in West Des Moines, where the population is university educated and wealthy, while she fails to reach even 10% in areas where the education level is lower.
In his victory speech, at 10 pm local time (5 am Italian time), Trump declared that his goal is to unite the Republican Party. “We must unite, it will happen soon,” said the former president, flanked by his sons Eric and Don jr and surrounded by senators and governors who gave him their endorsement. He spoke not as a candidate but as the winner of the nomination. The intent is to quickly cement the candidacy, so he also congratulated DeSantis and Haley for their results (“We had fun” he said ironically), and also with Vivek Ramaswamy (who left the race last night and gave his endorsement to Trump) for his 8%. Then speaking he repeated his priorities including “sealing the border against the invasion of a greater number of people than the inhabitants of New York from prisons and asylums, many terrorists” and promising “deportations” never seen since Eisenhower’s time.