LAST UPDATE | 14 Jan

NIKKI HALEY HAS overtaken Ron DeSantis for the coveted second place in the Iowa caucuses, the last poll before the event showed yesterday, but former US president Donald Trump still leads by nearly 30 percentage points.

The Midwestern state of three million people officially kicks off the 2024 US presidential election tomorrow when its residents participate in its unusual “caucus” system to mark their preference for Republican presidential candidates.

Trump received 48 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers’ vote in the NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll, which is notable for its historical accuracy and ability to fuel last-minute surges.

Election watchers have been looking for signs of a potential jump by Haley, a former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor, after she steadily gained support throughout the primary election season.

Haley notched 20 percent of the vote, according to the poll, which is four percentage points up from where she stood in December.

Florida Governor DeSantis meanwhile fell three percentage points to 16 percent, it showed.

Iowa is a notoriously poor predictor of the eventual nominee, but it is considered crucial for winnowing the field and as a springboard to the next few battlegrounds.

Those include Haley’s home state of South Carolina, as well as her preferred state of New Hampshire where she trails Trump by only single digits.

Responding to the poll’s release, Trump urged his supporters to get out and caucus next week despite frigid blizzard conditions.

“Our grassroots supporters have put us in position to win, and now we have to show up to Caucus for President Trump on Monday and get the job done,” he wrote in a statement.

Trump’s 28-point lead was down from his 32-point lead over his nearest rival in December.

Somewhat critically, only 9 percent of Haley’s voters said they were “extremely enthusiastic” for her, while 49 percent of supporters said that about Trump.

“There is underlying weakness here,” J. Ann Selzer, who conducted the poll, said of Haley’s standing, according to NBC.

“If turnout is low, it seems to me that a disproportionate share of her supporters might stay at home.”

Straggling far behind, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy came in fourth place in the poll at 8 percent, up from 5 percent from December.

Voters will venture into sub-zero temperatures Monday to kick off the Republican presidential nomination race with the Iowa caucuses, the first major test of whether runaway front-runner Donald Trump is as much of a sure thing as he appears.

With a commanding lead in polls, the ex-president is expected to win the Midwestern state’s first-in-the-nation vote easily as he bids to be the Republican standard-bearer against President Joe Biden in November.

But Iowans may have to contend with the coldest conditions in the modern era of presidential election campaigns, with blizzards and a potential wind chill of -26 degrees Fahrenheit (-32 degrees Celsius) forecast.

Frontrunner Trump has admitted that he is worried the cold weather could deter people from getting out to vote tomorrow. 

In a social media video that shows the former President arriving at a hotel in Des Moines, the state’s capital, he told reporters that there’s “a lot of cold weather out there”. 

At a campaign event yesterday evening Trump said of the “nasty” weather: “I worry about that but at the same time, I’m watching even the newscast today, they’re saying the Trump voter has so much more spirit, dedication. They say they’ll walk over glass, that the Trump voter’s coming to vote.”

President Trump walks into the Hotel Fort Des Moines where I happen to also be staying. Trump: “That’s a lot of cold weather. We have a lot of meetings tonight, a lot of tremendous support, but it’s nasty out there.” Cc: @dcexaminer pic.twitter.com/B3obeiVxhK

— Samantha-Jo Roth (@SamanthaJoRoth) January 14, 2024

Trump and his leading rivals, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, were forced to cancel appearances in the home stretch as the threat to Monday’s turnout added intrigue to a campaign season that is already something of an unknown quantity.

However, despite canceling three rallies, Trump was still due to hold a campaign event on on Sunday in Indianola, just south of Des Moines.

Despite his apparent strength, Trump has been indicted four times since he was last a candidate and is preparing for the potential collapse of his business empire in his native New York in a civil fraud trial.

“If DeSantis’s massive ground effort, coupled with a recent Haley surge, can drag Trump under 50 percent by several points, that will be the first meaningful sign that Trump can be defeated,” said political analyst Alex Avetoom, who worked on Republican John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“However, this paradigm-shifting reality – that Trump could be defeated – happens if, and only if, the rest of the field consolidates behind one anti-Trump candidate.”

“I’m voting for Trump again,” 37-year-old trucker Jeff Nikolas told AFP, adding that “he may be bullheaded, but he can actually get stuff done.”

Stung by defeat in 2016 after skipping much of Iowa’s campaign trail, Trump has built up an impressive network of “precinct captains” to corral votes this time around – but he has been as notable for courtroom appearances as campaign events.

In a state that likes to meet its candidates face-to-face, DeSantis has been at pains to highlight his own ground game, which has taken him to all 99 counties.

‘Eye candy’
The Iraq veteran and conservative hard-liner will be under heavy pressure to drop out however if he finishes third – although Avetoom cautioned against counting him out.

“Poll respondents are not necessarily Iowa caucus-goers, and the DeSantis precinct operations… are run by first-in-class operatives that have collected an impressive tally of caucus support pledges,” he said.

Edward Segal, a former press secretary for Democratic and Republican lawmakers, echoed the benefits of a strong ground game, pointing to at least nine presidents who toured Iowa by train during campaigns.

“Whistle-stop campaign trains can still serve as eye candy to help attract the attention of voters and the media,” the analyst told AFP.

A good night for Trump on Monday, he added, would be “getting 60 percent or more of the vote.”

The Republican primary also features a number of low-polling candidates, including biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has promised a third-place finish in Iowa but didn’t qualify for the final televised debate.

Iowa’s Democrats will also attend caucuses – meetings at which local members of a political party gather to register their candidate preferences – on Monday but will vote by mail from January until March.

Biden is expected to comfortably defeat self-help author Marianne Williamson and Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips.

© Agence France-Presse