On the afternoon of January 6, the third anniversary of his supporters’ assault on the US Capitol, Donald Trump travelled to a school gymnasium on the banks of the Mississippi River to ask voters to send him back to the White House — and rattle the world like they did in 2016.
“The battle begins in Iowa, it begins here,” Trump told the crowd assembled in Clinton, a town of nearly 25,000 on the eastern flank of the state. “With your help, we’re going to bring back our country — we’re going to bring it back from hell.”
The Iowa caucuses — to be held on Monday night — will mark the Republican party’s first step towards picking its challenger to face Joe Biden, the 81-year-old Democratic president. Fewer than 200,000 voters out of America’s population of nearly 335mn are expected to brave the subfreezing temperatures to cast the first ballots of the 2024 presidential election cycle and set the tone for the race.
Three years ago, it seemed improbable that Trump would even be a contender. After several of his preferred congressional candidates were trounced in the 2022 midterm elections, a successful comeback appeared even less likely.
But the 77-year-old former president is the overwhelming favourite to win the Republican nomination. And although general election polling is unreliable so far ahead of the November vote, Trump has a very narrow edge nationally over Biden in a head-to-head match.
If the dynamic holds, and Trump emerges victorious and unscathed from the nomination battle, it will cause deep unease among some of America’s closest allies around the world heading into the presidential election. Biden has sought to rebuild America’s commitment to its traditional partners, from Europe to the Indo-Pacific, after the ruptures of the Trump administration. Those ties would once again be jeopardised.
The prospect of a nail-biting rematch for the White House — the first since Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson squared off for a second consecutive time in 1956 — has already caused Biden to begin directly attacking Trump and cast the race as a battle to save American democracy.
But the Iowa caucuses — and the New Hampshire primary, which will be held on January 23 — can often reverse the conventional wisdom of a presidential election, even if temporarily. They can generate surprises, reward underdogs, and shift the momentum.
For a long stretch last year, it was Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, who was in pole position to take advantage of any cracks in support for Trump, particularly in Iowa, where he campaigned assiduously.
But his bid has languished. Though DeSantis remains in the race, it is now Nikki Haley, a former US ambassador to the UN, who is better placed to emerge from the next 10 days as Trump’s top contender. Not only has Haley been rising in the polls in Iowa, but she is within striking distance of beating Trump in New Hampshire, which would shatter the sense of inevitability around his eventual victory in the Republican nomination fight.
“Nikki Haley has a shot. It is a long shot, obviously, it is like drawing an inside straight in poker. But it is still a shot where you can see a path for her,” says Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster at North Star Opinion Research.
On the ground in Iowa, Trump’s allies remain supremely confident that he will win big this week. This would keep him on track to clinch a comfortable early victory in the nomination battle and avoid an extended internecine fight heading into the Republican convention to be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in July.
“I think a lot of folks are saying: ‘Bring [Trump’s] mean tweets back if that means that I can have a better paying job, lower-priced gas, better purchasing power [and] closed borders,’” says Bobby Kaufmann, an Iowa state legislator who endorses Trump and was praised by the former president during the rally in Clinton.
Many Republican pollsters and strategists say the base of the party remains completely enthralled by Trump — particularly working-class, rural and less educated conservatives who have no qualms about supporting him again and are energised by the prospect of his return to the White House.
That loyalty is despite the stain of Trump’s failed efforts to subvert the results of the previous contest, the string of 91 criminal indictments filed against him since he left office, and his increasingly authoritarian rhetoric — including the promise of sweeping retribution against his political foes.
According to the FiveThirtyEight average of national polls, 60.4 per cent of Republicans back Trump, compared to 12.1 per cent who support DeSantis and 11.7 per cent who support Haley.
In Iowa, Trump’s advantage is only slightly narrower: 52.3 per cent of Republicans in the Midwestern state support Trump. Haley is in second place with 17.1 per cent and DeSantis in third with 15.7 per cent. Even if Haley or DeSantis perform better than expected on Monday, they would still face an uphill struggle to dethrone Trump.
“His lead is so big nationwide, and it is not just numerical, it is intensity. Trump voters can’t wait to vote,” says Frank Luntz, a veteran pollster known for his work on the Republican party’s messaging. “It’s very hard to beat somebody like that.”
“It’s pretty much cooked,” says one senior Republican strategist who has been involved in the primary campaigns and declined to be named. “I think it has been that way since midsummer [of 2023]. I don’t think a whole lot has changed.”
Domestically, historians are already issuing stark warnings about the consequences of a second Trump administration for the survival of the US political system as we know it.
Lindsay Chervinsky, a senior fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, says that America is potentially staring at “an election to determine if we have more elections that are meaningful”.
“I’m not saying that Trump would be able to implement all the threats he has made. But there’s no doubt that the second term would be so different [from] the first and would be unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” she says. “And there is so much space for a president who doesn’t care about norms and precedents and following the law to obliterate the system. And I have no doubt that he would try”.
Regardless of the Iowa result, it may be Republicans in New Hampshire who step in and act as a bulwark against the former president.
In the New England state, which has a much greater share of moderate Republicans and fewer evangelical Christian voters, Trump’s lead is far narrower than in Iowa, making it possible that he could be defeated by Haley.
Her chances were further bolstered when Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and ardent Trump critic, dropped out of the Republican race on Wednesday, paving the way for most of his supporters to move her way.
“Things can change quickly if you get an upset,” says Bill Kristol, a prominent conservative Trump critic who worked in the Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush administrations.
“New Hampshire has become perilous for Trump,” adds Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who has worked for several presidential campaigns in the past. “His brand is the winner, the unstoppable tough guy. So if he starts losing it’s kryptonite for him.”
Haley, who is 51 and also served as the governor of South Carolina, in many ways embodies the traditional establishment of the Republican party, which is fiscally conservative, business friendly, open to international trade, hawkish on foreign policy — and wedded to America’s institutions of government.
Some are openly bullish about Haley’s prospects. “I’m feeling good about Iowa and great about New Hampshire,” says Eric Levine, a Wall Street bankruptcy lawyer and Republican donor who is backing Haley. “Trump can be stopped.”
As she has gained in the polls, Haley has boosted her fundraising as deep pocketed anti-Trump Republican donors from Wall Street and US business rushed to finance her run, which has allowed her to blanket Iowa and New Hampshire with adverts to promote her candidacy. Her supporters point to several polls that suggest she would outperform both Trump and DeSantis nationally and would win in a head-to-head match against Biden.
But many still doubt her ability to confront and defeat the former president in the race to the nomination. Even as he bowed out, Christie failed to endorse any of the remaining Trump rivals, including Haley, and was caught on microphone warning that she would eventually be “smoked”. It was a damning verdict against the contender with probably the strongest chance toppling Trump. “You and I both know it, she’s not up to this,” he was recorded saying.
A dwindling cast of Republican donors, lawmakers, former officials and lobbyists had been hoping that the party could be rescued from the isolationism and populism of Trump and that the more traditional Republican policies of George W Bush, George HW Bush and Reagan could be restored.
But their efforts to expunge Trump and usher in a new era for the Republican party have failed so far, which has made it hard for alternative candidates like Haley to break through decisively.
These so-called Never Trumpers are divided on the causes of this failure. Some blame the reluctance of Republican lawmakers in Congress to turn their backs on Trump when he was at his weakest politically in the aftermath of the January 6 attack and the poor showing of the 2022 midterm elections.
Others blame poor and ineffective campaign strategies and messages. With the exception of Christie, most of the Republican candidates for president, including DeSantis and Haley, for a long time failed to confront Trump in a way that was consistent and effective.
Many take issue with big party donors, who struggled to coalesce decisively behind an alternative to Trump.
Yet others say it is the Democrats’ fault. In the aftermath of the multiple indictments from prosecutors in New York, Atlanta, Washington and Miami, vast swaths of rightwing America rushed to Trump’s defence rather than use the opportunity to look for a new leader. Their rage has been compounded by moves by Colorado and Maine to strip Trump from primary ballots on constitutional grounds because of his role in the January 6 attack.
“It began with the search of Mar-a-Lago and the documents. Republicans looked at this and said: ‘My God, the government is being used as a weapon against Donald Trump,’” says Luntz.
In the final stretch of campaigning in Iowa, Haley has marginally been more aggressive in attacking Trump. “If it’s Donald Trump, there will be four more years of chaos,” she said during a debate against DeSantis on CNN this week. “I think what happened on January 6 was a terrible day, and I think President Trump will have to answer for it.”
But it is unclear if she can weather the blast of attacks from both Trump and DeSantis, who are accusing her of being too close to the establishment and captive to “globalist” and “corporatist” interests.
“Voters are very clear about not wanting to go back to the Republican party before Trump,” says Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican who conducts focus groups with voters in US presidential races.
Even on Capitol Hill, Trump has a growing legion of supporters among Republican lawmakers — and far more endorsements compared to either Haley or DeSantis.
Among them are House Speaker Mike Johnson, majority leader Steve Scalise and most recently John Barrasso, the Republican senator from Wyoming and the party’s third highest-ranking member of the upper chamber of Congress, where there is more widespread, if often quiet, scepticism of Trump.
“When President Trump was in office, we had the best economy in my lifetime, in most of our lifetimes. We had energy independence. Our enemies feared us. And we had a secure border,” Barrasso told Fox News on January 9, announcing his support for Trump. Luntz says lawmakers are reading the tea leaves and embracing him more out of political expediency than conviction.
“They know what the outcome is going to be and they want to be on his good side. We’ve never had a presidential nominee with a bigger stick than Trump. If you don’t bow at his feet, he [will] destroy you in the next primary, and they’re afraid of that.”
Kristol blasted that approach as “passivity and cowardice”, and one that was doing “real damage” to hopes of defeating the former president even before the voting had started.
“It just gives the Republican primary voter the impression that it is all over,” he says.
At the White House and the Biden re-election campaign, the sight of Trump comfortably leading the Republican pack is generating mixed emotions.
On one hand, Biden and Democratic officials have long expected Trump to be their challenger in November and believe they have the right political recipe to defeat him, as they did in 2020.
On the other hand, recent general election polling, combined with Biden’s low approval ratings and broad dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, have triggered anxiety among Democrats about the president’s capacity to recreate that same winning coalition.
Biden’s camp is betting that improving economic data and continued anger about abortion restrictions will help win over swing voters. But their main wager is that the president will get over the finish line by highlighting the fundamental danger to American democracy that could come from Trump’s potential comeback.
“I think this idea that democracy is on the line is real. I think it will resonate. There’s going to be a choice,” says Robert Wolf, a Democratic donor and former chair of UBS Americas who supports Biden.
The former president’s own rhetoric has only boosted Biden’s case. In rallies and on social media, Trump has called his political opponents “vermin”, has said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country and has described convicted January 6 rioters as “hostages”. He has also threatened “bedlam” if he loses the vote, heralding more political violence connected to this year’s election.
“Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time,” Biden said during a speech in Pennsylvania on January 5. “It is what the 2024 election is all about.”
Meanwhile, the impact of the criminal trials that Trump will have to face as he wages his campaign for a second term in office is a big wild card in the race. Some polls have suggested that voters, particularly independent and swing voters, will be far less open to Trump if he is found guilty in court.
“Trump is very likely to be the nominee. I think he’s also very likely to be convicted,” says the senior Republican strategist.
Longwell, the anti-Trump Republican, expects that by election day Biden may have the edge simply because the former president remains such a toxic force in American politics beyond his large hardline rightwing base, even if he triumphs in Iowa.
“People right now know what they don’t like about Joe Biden,” she says. “When Trump is back front and centre, they will remember what they hate about Trump. The visceral reaction that he conjures when he’s in people’s faces among swing voters is very potent.”
Data visualisation by Oliver Hawkins