US Elections

Iowa Caucus 2024: Ex-US President Trump Secures Victory As DeSantis Gets Distant Second Place

Published

11 months ago

Jan 16, 2024.

Trump lost to US President Joe Biden in November 2020.
He refused to accept the outcome of the election and is seeking a rematch with the American president in November 2024.
Trump’s hopes of a rematch got off to a promising start as he overwhelmingly won the first election of the 2024 presidential primaries.

Eko Hot Blog reports that former United States (US) President, Donald Trump, has won the Iowa Caucuses, the first contest of the 2024 presidential primaries.

Trump secured the victory in the early hours of Tuesday, asserting his command over the Republican Party despite facing scores of criminal charges.

According to election results, the former president finished first in the Iowa caucuses, about 30 percentage points ahead of second-place finisher Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

Former United Nations (UN) Ambassador Nikki Haley is projected to finish third, while businessman Vivek Ramaswamy is projected to finish fourth. As a result, Ramaswamy has dropped out of the presidential race.

“THANK YOU IOWA, I LOVE YOU ALL!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Tuesday morning.

Nikki Haley speaks to the crowd at a caucus night party in West Des Moines, Iowa. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters)

With 95% of the expected vote tallied, Trump had 51%, while DeSantis was at 21% and Haley 19%, according to Edison Research.

The largest margin of victory for an Iowa Republican caucus had been 12.8 percentage points for Bob Dole in 1988, but Trump has shattered that record with his 30-point win.

Notably, Trump’s win was projected only around 30 minutes into the caucuses, cementing his place as the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary race.

DeSantis kept his campaign alive with a respectable second-place showing; and Ramaswamy’s fourth-place result prompted him to exit the race and throw his support behind Trump.

Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy

However, the Iowa caucuses didn’t hold many surprises as polls predicted Trump was expected to win by a huge margin, and he did.

DeSantis and Haley were expected to duke it out for second place, and they did. Haley had been hoping for a second place finish to get a boost leading into New Hampshire, a must-win state for her, but she failed to reach that target.

The next election on the Republican primary calendar is in New Hampshire next Tuesday where Trump is also expected to win even though Haley is within striking distance of the former president according to polls.

Former US President, Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden during a presidential debate in 2020

Analysts predict that another landslide win in New Hampshire could essentially make the former president the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden in November.