Trump’s 30-point Iowa lead boosts his confidence for New Hampshire win

Donald Trump will continue on to the New Hampshire primaries more confident than ever about capturing the Republican nomination after the former president secured a 30-point win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday. Trump won 51% of the vote in Iowa, giving him the largest margin of victory in the history of the state’s Republican caucuses, further securing his position as the Republican frontrunner who will face President Joe Biden in November. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, secured a distant second-place finish with 21% of the vote, while Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, trailed in third place with 19%. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who came in fourth, dropped out of the race following his disappointing performance, as did the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson. As he delivered his victory speech in Des Moines on Monday night, Trump complimented his opponents as “very smart people, very capable people”, and he appeared to already be turning his attention to a potential general election rematch against Joe Biden. “We’re going to come together. It’s going to happen soon,” Trump told the crowd. Trump’s history-making victory in Iowa intensified skepticism that any of his opponents will be able to overtake him in the Republican primary. Despite the 91 felony counts against him, Trump has maintained a consistent and significant lead in the 2024 US race, and the Iowa results underscored his enduring popularity with the Republican base. Even so, DeSantis voiced optimism as he addressed supporters on Monday night, dismissing any possibility of withdrawing from the race. “Because of your support, in spite of all of that they threw at us, everyone against us, we’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa,” DeSantis said. Haley also remained undaunted after Trump’s runaway victory. Even though she failed to capture second place, Haley boldly declared that the primary was now “a two-person race” between her and Trump, given her momentum in the next voting state of New Hampshire. According to the FiveThirtyEight average of New Hampshire polls, Haley is now roughly 11 points behind Trump, having cut his lead in half over the past month. “Tonight, I will be back in the great state of New Hampshire,” Haley told supporters in West Des Moines on Monday. “And the question before Americans is now very clear: do you want more of the same, or do you want a new generation of conservative leadership?” The results of the Iowa caucuses indicate Republicans may be quite happy with more of the same. While Haley is looking to New Hampshire for a campaign boost, she also suggested she may not participate in the two upcoming debates in the state this week. “We’ve had five great debates in this campaign. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them. He has nowhere left to hide,” Haley posted to social media on Tuesday morning. “The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it.” DeSantis responded that he will remain committed to those debates despite his dismal poll numbers in the state. Meanwhile, some Democrats are playing Trump’s decisive hold on the party as a boon for their party. “If it is Donald Trump, we’ve beat him before and we’ll beat him again,” the vice-president, Kamala Harris, said in an interview with ABC news the night of the Iowa caucus. Story by Joan E Greve in Des Moines, Iowa, and staff