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Donald Trump’s sweeping victory in Monday’s Iowa Republican caucuses showed that the former president was able to build on his previous base of rural and working class voters, bettering his performance in counties where his more moderate rivals were expected to be more competitive.
Trump won 98 out of Iowa’s 99 counties — including 60 that he failed to carry in 2016. Trump won 51 per cent of the votes cast in Iowa, compared with 21 per cent for Florida governor Ron DeSantis and 19 per cent for Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the UN.
He continued to dominate among less well-educated and working class voters. But he also won in counties that were younger and richer, barely losing to Haley in Johnson County, home to the University of Iowa.
The lone dark cloud for Trump on a frigid Iowa night was turnout, which was down in every county compared with the 2016 caucus. Statewide, voter turnout almost halved from 28.7 per cent in 2016 to 14.7 per cent on Monday
Many of those no-shows were likely due to historically cold weather. The low temperature in Des Moines was -27C and almost 2 feet of snow had fallen on the city in the week before.
Allies of DeSantis have also blamed several news organisations, including the Associated Press, which called the contest for Trump only a half-hour after the caucuses began — another factor that could have suppressed voter enthusiasm.
At one caucus site in a Des Moines suburb, voters showed each other news alerts declaring Trump the winner as another caucus-goer was giving a speech in support of Haley.
The AP explained that “initial results from eight counties showed Trump with far more than half of the total votes counted” and that those “counties included rural areas that are demographically and politically similar to the large number of counties that had yet to report”.
Some analysts argued that the low turnout could also be a sign of “Trump fatigue”, with some Republican voters unexcited about a race that the former president seemed destined to win anyway, given his huge lead in the polls before the caucuses.
The Iowa results show that if Haley and DeSantis have any hope of derailing Trump’s path to the nomination they would likely need to improve their performance in precincts with more educated and well-off voters, the only Iowa districts where they were able to compete with the former president.
Neither of the next two primary states — New Hampshire and South Carolina — are among the US’s wealthier states, making a breakthrough difficult. But New Hampshire does allow Democrats and Independents to vote in the Republican primary, giving Trump’s rivals a competitive edge.
While Trump won support nearly everywhere in Iowa and among nearly every demographic, he appealed in particular to counties with larger populations of lower-income families and those with fewer college graduates.
The only county Trump lost was Johnson County. It is one of the state’s most educated counties, where 54 per cent have a bachelor’s degree or higher. There he lost by a single vote to Haley, compared with the more than 800 votes by which he lost to Florida senator Marco Rubio in 2016.
Trump also won a majority of Iowa Republicans over 45, very conservative voters, white evangelical Christians and those with some or no university education, according to entrance polls published by The Washington Post.
The county where Trump won the smallest share, about a third of votes, was Story County, home to Iowa State University. About 38.9 per cent of that county’s population are between the ages of 18 and 29, the highest percentage of any county in the state.
Conversely, in Keokuk County, where Trump won 75 per cent of votes — the highest of any county — only 12.9 per cent of people fall within the younger age bracket.
Both DeSantis and Haley are staying in the race for now, against long odds and daunting national poll numbers. They will face Trump next in the New Hampshire primary on January 23.
Additional reporting by Oliver Hawkins
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