"It's always a great day to be a polar bear," reads a motto in the hallways of North High School in Des Moines, Iowa. The Polar Bears are the sports teams of this institute where a group of Republican voters have gathered to choose their candidate for the presidential elections in November. It's 21 degrees below zero outside. It's a good day to be a polar bear, to be sure, but it's also a good day to be Donald Trump. As the polls anticipated, the former president has swept the Iowa caucuses, according to early estimates.
Trump has been the candidate with the most votes in the hundreds of citizens' assemblies that have demonstrated on Monday who is their favorite to challenge Joe Biden for the White House on November 5. The victory in frigid Iowa, covered in snow and subjected to Arctic temperatures, is only the first step in the primary race, but it is a blow to Trump, who is not weighed down by his four indictments for 91 alleged crimes, but by wings.
Trump's victory has been resounding, judging by the speed with which data analysts on television and media outlets have certified his victory, including the almost infallible AP. Apparently, he has broken the record of Bob Dole, who won the 1988 Iowa caucuses by just over 12 points and set a record then.
In the absence of knowing who has been Second and Third, for Ron DeSantis, the result is a full-blown disappointment. Television stations have been recreating themselves in recent days with their change of message. A few months ago he said, "We're going to win Iowa." A few weeks ago: "We're going to do well in Iowa." The reality is that despite having kicked all 99 counties and despite being a white, conservative, religious state, which favors his political profile, DeSantis has failed.
The Iowa caucuses are political assemblies that have been held this Monday from 19:00 p.m. local time (2 a.m. on Tuesday in mainland Spain), in hundreds of civic centers, schools, sports centers, churches and even private homes, throughout this state of 3.2 million inhabitants. In those places, Republican voters have expressed their preferences for the candidates. In most cases there are speeches and debates, although it is not essential. In the case of Republicans, there is no formation of groups or elimination of candidates who do not reach a certain percentage of votes. Those were the characteristics of Iowa's Democratic caucuses until 2020. Here, although those who attend tend to be more participative and often like to express themselves and defend their ideas, the vote is secret and the differences with traditional primaries are reduced.
At the North Institute, John Satre has taken it upon himself to defend Trump's candidacy. He tells EL PAÍS that this is the second time he has acted as caucus captain, as those volunteers who act as spokespersons for their candidates are known. In 2016, interestingly, he defended Senator Ted Cruz against Trump, but now he is committed to the motto of making America great again. "Trump is what the country needs, he has shown that he has common sense," he defends without batting an eyelid. He has made his public defense of Trump with almost simultaneous translation into Spanish, even though there were hardly any Latino voters in the room.
Irma Fralic, 60, from Nikki Haley's home state of South Carolina, has traveled from Pennsylvania to ask for the vote for her. "Nikki can beat Biden. Trump has a very strong base, but it's not enough. Nikki can unite the country, she's conservative, she doesn't want a big government, she wants a balanced budget," he told EL PAÍS. "She's the only one with her pants on," he adds.
Mike Dorwart, 63, lived in Florida before moving to Iowa, and that's partly why he's defending Ron DeSantis. "I think it would be good for the country, he's the right person for this moment, because of his experience and everything," he explains. "One thing that unites all of us Republicans is the desire to defeat Joe Biden in November," he says.
The North Institute caucus has functioned as a messy assembly, without a public address system, with several people intervening in parallel, protests over the delay in starting, and some chaos in the vote. Just under a hundred Republicans attended. "You can feel the bad weather," said the organizers. In addition to speeches in defense of Trump, Haley and DeSantis, the candidacies of Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson have also been defended. The news that Trump had swept Iowa reached the school's auditorium before they had even begun voting. Paradoxes of Democracy broadcast live.
Democrats have relegated the Iowa caucuses after the botched 2020 count, which dragged on for days and never quite got to grips. President Joe Biden, who had a dismal showing in this state four years ago, pushed for the first votes to be cast in more diverse states that better represented his party and the country. Iowa Democrats agreed to have their ballots by mail and not finished and posted until March. On Monday, they met to discuss party business, but not to vote.
Officially, the party's primary process begins in South Carolina on Feb. 3, and then moves to Nevada. However, the New Hampshire Democratic Party is moving forward with a Jan. 23 primary that the party's national apparatus says will not be valid.
[Breaking news. Enlargement to come.]
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