In the 2024 Iowa Republican Caucus, former president Donald Trump has won the vote, beating out all of his competitors with 51% of the votes and 20 delegates. Trump’s victory is the largest in Iowa history. The runner-up was Ron DeSantis with 21% of the votes and 9 delegates, just barely beating out Nikki Haley with 19% of the votes and 8 delegates. In fourth place was Vivek Ramaswamy who obtained about 7% of the votes and 3 delegates. After Ramaswamy’s poor performance, he decided to stop his campaign, turning the four-way race into a three-way race. After ending his campaign for the presidency, Ramaswamy gave his support to Trump’s campaign. Trump’s significant victory will allow him to enter the New Hampshire primary with a large advantage.
Only 110,000 of Iowa’s 752,000 registered Republicans voted in the Iowa Republican Caucus. Shockingly low compared to the 187,000 voters in 2016. This low number of voters could be due to the rough weather conditions which reached record low temperatures during the voting.
Primaries and caucuses are how presidential candidates are chosen for political parties. Primaries are run by local governments while caucuses are run by political parties. Primaries and caucuses decide the number of delegates a candidate receives. Delegates go on to vote at their political party’s national convention to select their party’s nominee for president and vice president.
Despite Trump’s victory by a large margin, it has not yet decided the Republican race for presidential candidate. The next event for voters is the New Hampshire Republican primary on the 23rd of January.
