IT IS STARTING to get real.

After many months of speculation and anticipation, voters will soon begin to have their say on who will be the 47th president of the United States. The Iowa Republican caucus is this Monday, and there will be GOP and Democratic primaries in New Hampshire on Tuesday week (23 January). 

2024 presents unusual wrinkles for fans of American presidential politics. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has eliminated Iowa and New Hampshire’s shared elevated stature as being the first states to decide on their nominees for president. After chaos in the hawkeye state in 2020, Iowa Democrats have moved to an entirely mail-in process which won’t conclude until 5 March.

While New Hampshire election officials are ploughing ahead with their traditional first-in-the-nation primary, Joe Biden’s name won’t be on the ballot because the DNC is not officially recognising it. His friends in the granite state are waging a write-in campaign on his behalf.

It’s fair to ask why. Ostensibly, Iowa and New Hampshire, as two relatively minuscule, nearly all-white states, do not reflect the extraordinary diversity of a vast country and its people. As a result, it was wholly unjustified that they played such a significant role in determining who the Democrats’ standard-bearer would be.

Cynics can be excused, however, for noting that President Biden, who, from the date of his inauguration, was manifestly vulnerable to an intra-party insurgency, did abysmally in both states in 2020 as he sought the office he had wanted for decades. He was all but out of it until South Carolina, where African-Americans are an enormously important constituency and Congressman James Clyburn, a staunch Biden ally, is venerated.

The proud son of Mayo and Louth won easily there – and the rest is history. And so what is the first “game” that the DNC rules-makers have decided will actually count this time? South Carolina.

On the other side, there is no major change. Of course, Donald Trump, notwithstanding all that is known about him and the array of legal troubles he faces, holds a massive, circa fifty-percentage point advantage in national polls. He lost Iowa in 2016, largely owing to the widespread negative perception of his moral character among evangelical Christians, a key grouping in the state’s Republican Party.

The end for DeSantis? 

Cognisant of that and buoyed by the endorsements of popular conservative figures, including Governor Kim Reynolds, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis long ago pinned his hopes of ultimately vanquishing Trump on a upset or strong second place showing in Iowa. The data suggests it won’t materialise; DeSantis is flailing here as he is everywhere else. In the probable scenario that he fares poorly on Monday, the rationale for continuing with his candidacy is over.

Barring a political miracle, it is difficult to fathom how or why the 45-year-old, who may well seek the presidency again in the future, would carry on when the battle has apparently been lost. He could be pushed into third position by Nikki Haley, the surging ex-South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration His chances of winding up in third have increased in the wake of the withdrawal of former New Jersey Governor and avowed Trump hater, Chris Christie. His supporters will migrate, almost en masse, to Haley.

My guess is that the end of the road is nigh for DeSantis. His numbers are terrible in New Hampshire and the quest for the nomination turns in February to Haley’s home turf in South Carolina.

Either way, Haley is likely to emerge as the big story of Iowa, especially as some recent surveys show that she isn’t trailing Trump too badly in New Hampshire. Mainstream American media outlets, undeniably desperate for any semblance of a competitive fight and palpably animated by disdain for Trump, will provide her with abundant free advertising.

It will nonetheless be hard for Haley to catch Trump in the state derisively nicknamed “nothing happens” by its neighbours in Massachusetts. His disciples are loyal to a fault and will do what is necessary to get him across the line, particularly if they sense their man is under pressure. Haley will definitely be buoyed by the conversions of a considerable portion of the roughly 12% of Republican voters, according to RealClearPolitics, who had planned to vote for Christie.

On the other hand, were DeSantis and the arch right-wing entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to give up the ghost after Iowa, the majority of their adherents would migrate toward Trump and perhaps tip the balance in New Hampshire.

Haley vs Trump 

Conjecture aside, the clash to represent the GOP at the top of the ticket in November seems destined to boil down to Haley, a huge underdog, and Trump, the obvious favourite. Polls show Haley, the 51-year-old daughter of Indian immigrants, performing better against President Biden. But her more traditional brand of conservatism is out of step with the “turn back the clock” messaging and policies embraced by the grassroots now. Hence, lots of them would rather lose with Trump than win with Haley.

Contrary to Trump’s public bluster and the nasty moniker – “Birdbrain” – he has bestowed upon her, though, Team Trump is aware of the potential threat she poses. Things unfolding in the next couple of weeks as detailed above as the campaign moves to the state that chose her to be governor is the single political worry they have at the moment.

That’s why his musings about how the Civil War could have been avoided were not totally random. In South Carolina, a substantial chunk of the Republican primary electorate still believe this existential conflict was first and foremost a war of northern aggression and absolve the south of responsibility. Alive to this sad truth, Haley got there first in refusing to identify slavery as a cause of the Civil War.

External observers may be aghast, yet there is a ruthless political method to their madness in that, on 24 February in South Carolina, either Trump will be coronated for all intents and purposes or Haley will morph into a dangerous thorn sticking in the side of a defendant in multiple criminal trials. The latter remains a slim possibility.

As for the Democrats, it will be interesting to see whether President Biden can prevail in New Hampshire as a write-in candidate. Congressman Dean Philips has mounted a late, quixotic challenge to his party’s de facto leader. If Philips loses there, he can fold his tent. Regardless, doubts as to the incumbent’s fitness and capacity to serve another term in the White House will persist.

In sum, Iowa, New Hampshire and the contests following hot on their heels will feature plenty of drama and intrigue, but of a quite different sort to what watchers of US politics are accustomed. Time to trot out the “U word” again when endeavouring to explain events in a land the world finds ever trickier to comprehend: unprecedented.

Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a law lecturer at the University of Galway and a political columnist with The Journal.