‘Got to make it’: Trump demands supporters turn out for first 2024 presidential vote
After months of build-up, the first pivotal contest of America’s election year is here. Donald Trump is driving his supporters hard.
A pivotal election year in the United States formally begins on Monday, local time, with voters in the state of Iowa choosing their preferred candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
The incumbent president, Democrat Joe Biden, is yet to face any meaningful challenge for his own party’s nomination. That just leaves the Republicans.
Former president Donald Trump, who was defeated by Mr Biden in 2020, is once again the runaway favourite. A relatively small cluster of candidates – former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy – are attempting to challenge him.
Ahead of the Iowa caucuses, which kick off the season of primary contests to determine the two major parties’ nominees, polling suggests Mr Trump is overwhelmingly likely to set up a rematch with Mr Biden.
Polling averages show Mr Trump with roughly 50 per cent support among Republican voters in Iowa. Ms Haley and Mr DeSantis are competing for a distant second place.
In a week, New Hampshire will hold the country’s second contest. There the race is closer, with Ms Haley trailing Mr Trump by about 15 per cent. She’ll be hoping to build momentum with a strong showing in Iowa and close the gap further.
But the chief question remains the same: can anyone realistically compete with the former president? Or will his rivals for the nomination melt away, as they did in 2016?
‘Can’t sit at home’: Trump gees up supporters
Abysmal weather is threatening to be a factor in the Iowa contest, with extreme cold and icy conditions likely to keep some voters from attending. The state’s forecast predicts temperatures will rise no higher than -19 degrees Celsius.
With that backdrop, the candidates have been urging their supporters to turn out, no matter the discomfort it may cause them.
“You’ve got to get out. You can’t sit (at) home,” Mr Trump said at a rally on Sunday.
“If you’re sick as a dog, you say, ‘Darling, I’ve got to make it.’ Even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it.”
He went on to claim that Mr Biden was “clobbering” both Ms Haley and Mr DeSantis in the polls, and therefore it would be folly to select either of them as the nominee.
“Biden is clobbering Nikki Haley. She’s killing Nikki Haley, and she’s also beating DeSantis in the polls,” he said (misgendering of Mr Biden his, not mine).
The most recent polls show all three Republicans beating Mr Biden – Mr Trump by 2 per cent, Mr DeSantis by 3 per cent, and Ms Haley by 8 per cent.
“People are not happy with MAGA,” Trump said, referring to his “Make America Great Again” movement.
“Because MAGA’s taking over. MAGA’s, you know – when you hear the fake news, and they say, ‘MAGA represents, MAGA represents 44 per cent of the Republican’ – no no. MAGA represents 95 per cent of the Republican Party.”
Elsewhere in the speech Mr Trump took a shot at the American capital, Washington D.C., calling it a “rat-infested” city.
“We have a capital that we all love. Right now it’s a rat-infested, graffitti-infested s***hole,” he said, promising to take power away from the city’s mayor.
Iowans who brave the conditions on Monday may have to contend with the coldest temperatures in the modern era of presidential election campaigns, with blizzards and a potential wind chill in some areas -42 degrees Celsius.
Mr Trump, Ms Haley and Mr DeSantis were all forced to cancel appearances in the home stretch of campaigning.
Despite his continuing political strength within his own party, Mr Trump faces multiple headaches – he has been indicted four times since he was last a candidate, and is preparing for the potential collapse of his business empire in New York as a result of a civil fraud trial.
“If DeSantis’s massive ground effort, coupled with a recent Haley surge, can drag Trump under 50 per cent by several points, that will be the first meaningful sign that Trump can be defeated,” political analyst Alex Avetoom, who worked on Republican John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, told AFP.
“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.”
Mr Trump and Mr McCain feuded consistently before the latter’s death – Mr Trump earning the ire of some voters by suggesting he preferred soldiers who “weren’t captured” over those like Mr McCain, who spent years enduring torture in POW camp during the Vietnam War.
Long road ahead
For all the talk of miraculous polling bounces, which is always rife ahead of the caucuses, the Iowa contest hardly appears to be competitive. Ms Haley, in second place, is expected to earn no more than 20 per cent of the vote.
“I’m voting for Trump again,” 37-year-old trucker Jeff Nikolas told AFP, adding that “he may be bull-headed, but he can actually get stuff done”.
The latest polls have been poor news for Mr DeSantis, who is averaging about 16 per cent in Iowa, having initially been seen as Mr Trump’s most potent challenger.
Should he finish behind Ms Haley in the caucuses, his campaign might be finished.
But Mr DeSantis insisted on Sunday that his “very motivated” backers would turn out in sufficient numbers to keep him in the contest.
In 2016 only 186,000 Iowans took part in the caucus, he told ABC, and “now, with this weather, it could be significantly less,” making turnout paramount.
He urged his supporters: “Bring in friends and family. Man, that’s going to pack a punch.”
“It’s good to be an underdog when folks want to count you out.”
Ms Haley, who as well as being the former South Carolina governor served as Mr Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations during his first term, is looking to outperform expectations to cement her claim to be his top challenger.
“Rightly or wrongly, chaos follows” Trump, shMs Haley e told a last-minute campaign stop in the town of Adel, adding: “You don’t fix Democrat chaos with Republican chaos.”
Iowa is a notoriously poor predictor of the eventual nominee but it is considered crucial for winnowing the field, and for acting as a springboard to the next few battleground states.
– with AFP
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