Ron DeSantis says Trump and Biden are too old to be president
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Donald Trump is pulling ahead in Iowa ahead of the state’s caucuses on 15 January.
With only five weeks left to go, the former president’s support passed 50 per cent for the first time during the 2024 campaign, according to a poll by the Des Moines Register, NBC News, and Mediacom, in which 51 per cent of the respondents said Mr Trump was their top choice.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is at 19 per cent in the survey while former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is at 16 per cent.
Biotech entrepreneur and anti-woke author Vivek Ramaswamy received about five per cent in the poll, with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie being the only other candidate polling at more than one per cent.
“Iowa is the least predictable,” Ann Selzer, a prominent Iowa pollster, previously told The Independent. “We look at the largest number of candidates.”
“It should be impossible to poll caucuses accurately because they’re designed for things to change at the very last moment,” she added.
Key PointsShow latest update
1702320078Trump leads Biden in swing states amid terrible ratings for incumbent
In Michigan, 10 per cent said they don’t support either candidate. Mr Trump’s lead is increased by voters who say they didn’t vote in 2020 – this group breaks for the former president by 26 points in Georgia and by 40 in Michigan. Respondents who say they voted in 2020 reported having broken for Mr Biden in the last election but they now lean in Mr Trump’s direction in both swing states. Mr Biden is currently retaining fewer of his 2020 supporters compared to Mr Trump.
While Mr Trump faces the challenge of getting politically disengaged people to turn up to the polls, Mr Biden is confronted with having to convince those who backed him in the past to do so again, despite their negative views of his leadership.
Thirty-five per cent in Michigan and 39 in Georgia approve of Mr Biden’s job performance and 54 per cent in Georgia and 56 per cent in Michigan say his policies have led to a worse economy.
Gustaf Kilander11 December 2023 18:41
1702317609Trump hits new high in Iowa poll weeks before caucuses
Mr Trump also has a wide lead among many of the key groups within Iowa’s electorate, with 51 per cent of white evangelicals supporting him as their first choice; 59 per cent of self-identified Republicans; 63 per cent of first-time caucusgoers; and 66 per cent of white men without a college degree.
Mr Trump also has a wide lead against his nearest competitor Mr DeSantis.
The Florida governor has elected to put all of his efforts in the Hawkeye State as his campaign continues to lag. To date, he has visited all 99 counties, finishing what is called the “Full Grassley,” named for the state’s long-serving Senator Chuck Grassley.
Eric Garcia11 December 2023 18:00
1702314033The unplanned rise of the Iowa caucuses
Iowa’s rise in political importance was unplanned — the process used to be dominated by political insiders and there was little opportunity for regular members to have any influence, as The New York Times has noted.
That began to change in 1968, with both the country as a whole, and specifically the Democratic Party, experiencing significant unrest amid the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. The battle between party leaders and rank-and-file members came to a head at the Democratic Convention, where protesters clashed with law enforcement.
The uneasiness stretched onto the convention floor, and the party eventually began to rethink the process for how they choose their presidential candidates to include the voices of regular party members.
This led to new rules for the 1972 contest and the four stages in which Iowans now choose their preferred candidates, beginning on the precinct level. The precinct votes are the caucuses where people gather in community centres, sports halls and, in less populated areas, even people’s homes. But there’s also voting taking place on the county, congressional district and state levels.
These new rules, while making the process more accessible and inclusive, also led to further delays as newly formed committees needed updated election materials. However, the state party only had an old machine to make the required copies, leading the state party to decide they needed at least a month between each voting stage to get everything in order in time.
The national convention was set for early July, meaning that the state convention could take place in June, but at the time, the state party was unable to locate a big enough venue, pushing each stage further back, meaning that the process had to begin earlier in the year.
The party chose 24 January as their start date in 1972, making the caucuses the first presidential contest in the nation. While the New Hampshire primaries had been first since the 1950s, Iowa Democrats weren’t in earnest moving their contest earlier to garner national attention, The Times noted. But the national spotlight came to Iowa anyway, beginning with the campaign of South Dakota Senator George McGovern. The longshot candidate was struggling in the polls against the frontrunner, Maine’s Senator Edmund Muskie.
On caucus night, state party officials convened at the party headquarters, where New York Times reporter Johnny Apple was one of about a dozen members of the press in attendance. He was the only one who asked for the results that night, but the party wasn’t ready to release them, having not expected any interest. A party official, Richard Bender, organised a phone tree to get all the results from around the state.
Apple’s article published the following morning revealed Muskie as the winner but that McGovern had received 22 per cent of the delegates, helping bring the caucuses into the national spotlight. Muskie’s less-than-impressive win went against all expectations. Similarly, McGovern’s strong second-place finish was also a surprise.
As with the surprising wins of Barack Obama in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012, John Kerry in 2004, George HW Bush in 1980 and Jimmy Carter in 1976, the strong second-place result for McGovern first showed in 1972 that a lesser-known candidate can come from behind and do better than expected thanks to the new rules first used almost 52 years ago, changing the narrative and building momentum for a nascent campaign.
Gustaf Kilander11 December 2023 17:00
1702310433‘The entire Iowa caucus game is really about expectations’
Des Moines Register politics reporter Katie Akin has been to countless events in Iowa this campaign season.
“The entire Iowa caucus game is really about expectations,” she tells The Independent. “And that’s true throughout the entire early campaign all the way up until caucus night.”
“It’s the first chance for these candidates to really impress or disappoint the people who are watching this race. And that is all based on how they are expected to do versus how they end up doing,” she adds.
Gustaf Kilander11 December 2023 16:00
1702306833When are the Iowa caucuses and why are they so important?
Gustaf Kilander11 December 2023 15:00
1702303632Trump passes 50 per cent support in Iowa poll
Donald Trump is pulling ahead in Iowa ahead of the state’s caucuses on 15 January.
Biotech entrepreneur and anti-woke author Vivek Ramaswamy received about five per cent in the poll, with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie being the only other candidate polling at more than one per cent.
Gustaf Kilander11 December 2023 14:07
1701900059Where the Republican candidates stand on Donald Trump
The field of Republican candidates has winnowed significantly since the beginning of the campaign, going from eight hopefuls appearing on the stage during the first primary debate to just four in the fourth showdown.
Biotech entrepreneur and anti-woke author Vivek Ramaswamy has been mimicking him while at times struggling to explain why he’s running against a man he has called “the best president of the 21st century”.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been creative in finding different ways to call Mr Trump a wildly incompetent and dangerous criminal.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has argued that he would be a more competent, and most importantly, younger, version of the ex-president who would be able to run again in 2028.
Former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley initially instituted the “pro-having it and pro-eating it” cake policy of disgraced former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson when it came to Mr Trump, attempting to remain on the fence and not annoy either Republicans supportive or critical of the former president. More recently, she has become slightly more outspoken in her criticism.
Gustaf Kilander6 December 2023 22:00
1701892859Trump allies threaten criminal charges against media if elected
On his War Room podcast on Tuesday, former White House adviser and far-right activist Steve Bannon asked Trump loyalist Kash Patel whether he can “deliver the goods” and “get rolling on prosecutions” should Mr Trump win election in 2024.
“And I want the Morning Joe producers that watch us and all the producers to watch us – this is not just rhetoric. We’re absolutely dead serious,” Bannon said. “The deep state, the administrative state, the fourth branch of government never mentioned in the Constitution, is going to be taken apart, brick by brick, and the people that did these evil deeds will be held accountable and prosecuted, criminal prosecutions.”
Patel said a team of “all-American patriots” in all levels of government in a potential Trump administration beginning in 2025 will “come after” members of the press that he claims have “lied about American citizens” and “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”
“We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminal or civilly, we’ll figure that out,” said Mr Patel, who joined the Trump administration in 2019 as a dubiously qualified intelligence official.
Alex Woodward6 December 2023 20:00
1701889259Trump doubles down on claim that his gaffes are ‘sarcastic’
The former president has repeatedly raged at the suggestion that he, at the age of 77, is not as sharp as he used to be.
During a Fox News town hall on Tuesday night, Mr Trump said: “I’ll say our real president is Barack Hussein Obama – they’ll say ‘he doesn’t know who the president is, he thinks it’s Barack Hussein’ – no, I’m being sarcastic.”
“Whenever I sarcastically insert the name Obama for Biden as an indication that others may actually be having a very big influence in running our Country,” Mr Trump wrote in the post on 27 November.
“Ron DeSanctimonious and his failing campaign apparatus, together with the Democrat’s Radical Left ‘Disinformation Machine,’ go wild saying that ‘Trump doesn’t know the name of our President, (CROOKED!) Joe Biden. He must be cognitively impaired.”
Graeme Massie, Gustaf Kilander6 December 2023 19:00
1701886563Trump allies defend his ‘day one’ dictatorship: ‘All he needs’
During an event on Fox News billed as a town hall on Tuesday, host Sean Hannity gave him a chance to clarify that “under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody.”
His supporters and campaign have framed his comments as a joke to attack his critics, a defence that has tried to rewrite and undermine his own words and actions over the last several months, including his explicit promises of a campaign of retribution and political vengeance against his rivals.
Hours before the town hall, his allies Steve Bannon and Kash Patel promised that another Trump administration would “come after” his political opponents and the media.
“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” said Mr Patel, a former Trump-era intelligence official who is reportedly considered for another high-level role in a potential Trump White House. “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.”
Alex Woodward6 December 2023 18:16
