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      Iowa Caucus Recap: Trump’s Win, the Weather, and a Look Toward New Hampshire

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      Listen to and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | AmazonAnna Foley and Lanny Van Daele casting his presidential preference vote in Coralville, Iowa, on Monday.Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette, via Associated PressGoing into the Iowa caucuses, there were a handful of key things we were watching for: Would the frigid weather hamper turnout? Would his overwhelming dominance in the polls translate to a decisive victory for Donald Trump? And finally, could the other candidates muster enough of a showing to keep the race alive?Today: Through conversations with Iowa caucus goers — especially those who preferred another candidate to Trump — we get answers to our questions. And we check in with our colleague Nick Corasaniti in New Hampshire about how the state’s independents are approaching the primary next week — and how confident Trump is of a second early state victory.About ‘The Run-Up’“The Run-Up” is your guide to understanding the 2024 election. Through on-the-ground reporting and conversations with colleagues from The New York Times, newsmakers and voters across the country, our host, Astead W. Herndon, takes us beyond the horse race to explore how we came to this unprecedented moment in American politics. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Shake-Up by a Desperate DeSantis Opens Wider Path for Haley in New Hampshire

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      Straining to recover after a bruising defeat in Iowa, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and his allies moved on Wednesday to shake up his operation yet again, with his super PAC carrying out layoffs and the campaign signaling that it would largely bypass New Hampshire’s primary election next week in favor of competing in South Carolina.The change in strategy appeared to set up the one-on-one contest in New Hampshire that Nikki Haley has been hoping for against former President Donald J. Trump, who leads in polls but is more vulnerable in the moderate state than in socially conservative Iowa. At the same time, the shift could put new pressure on Ms. Haley in South Carolina, where she once served as governor.The maneuvering may not ultimately make much of a dent in a race in which Mr. Trump has dominated polling, won the Iowa caucuses on Monday by a staggering 30 percentage points and spent Wednesday in court for one of his many legal cases, where a judge threatened to kick him out for being unruly. But it changed the calculations for his remaining Republican rivals.As Mr. DeSantis’s team licked its wounds on Wednesday, his super PAC, Never Back Down, trimmed operations in several places, including Nevada. Other staff members were also laid off, including almost the entire online “war room” team, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Those who were cut had their email accounts immediately suspended. It was unclear how many people in all lost their jobs.Mr. DeSantis also began moving a majority of his campaign staff — a separate group — to South Carolina to prepare for its Feb. 24 primary, according to a senior campaign official, who insisted on anonymity. And rather than campaign exclusively in New Hampshire this week, the final stretch before the primary election on Jan. 23, Mr. DeSantis will stump in South Carolina over the weekend, hoping that his conservative message will better align with primary voters.His campaign on Wednesday framed the decision as a chance to deal a knockout blow to Ms. Haley.“When Nikki Haley fails to win her home state, she’ll be finished and this will be a two-person race,” Andrew Romeo, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “We’re wasting no time in taking the fight directly to Haley on her home turf.”But the move showed that Mr. DeSantis was all but giving up on competing in New Hampshire, where his poll numbers have been abysmal, trailing in the single digits far behind Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley.Mr. DeSantis’s schedule has been hectic. After campaigning in New Hampshire on Wednesday, he and his team have said he now plans to spend Thursday off the trail, hold more New Hampshire events on Friday and then travel to South Carolina for most of the weekend before returning to New Hampshire on Sunday.In Derry, he still tried to play up his New Hampshire bona fides.“We’re excited to be here,” he said after a well-practiced five-minute anecdote about his family’s relationship to the Boston Red Sox, who are revered in New Hampshire. He went on to suggest that Ms. Haley’s refusal to debate him in the state had played a part in his decision to back away.“You know, we had planned to be here tomorrow night,” he said. “They’ve always done a debate in New Hampshire a week before the primary. So I said I’m in. Of course, Trump hasn’t debated, so he’s not in, and Haley wouldn’t debate either.”Speaking to reporters afterward, Mr. DeSantis tried to downplay his decision to travel to South Carolina.Mr. DeSantis did not directly address his decision to retreat from New Hampshire during a speech on Wednesday in Hampton, N.H., or a later appearance in Derry. John Tully for The New York TimesIt remained uncertain whether he might squeeze in a last-minute New Hampshire stop early next week before the state’s primary on Tuesday, and Mr. Romeo declined to say whether Mr. DeSantis would be there on the day of the election. Neither the governor nor his super PAC has placed an advertisement in New Hampshire since Nov. 18, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Ms. Haley’s path in New Hampshire is now clearer. Even after she finished third in Iowa — close behind Mr. DeSantis — Ms. Haley declared that she had accomplished her goal of creating a one-on-one matchup with the former president.“When you look at how we’re doing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina and beyond, I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race,” she said after votes were tallied on Monday.Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for Ms. Haley, responded to Mr. DeSantis’s move with a quip: “South Carolina is a great state. We hope they enjoy their vacation time here.”Since December, Ms. Haley and her allies have pointed to the possibility of a one-on-one race in New Hampshire as an opportunity for an outright victory there.Internal polling conducted last month in the state by Americans for Prosperity Action, a super PAC founded by the billionaire Koch family that is backing Ms. Haley’s campaign, found that in a full field of Republican candidates, she trailed Mr. Trump by 45 percent to 32 percent.But in a head-to-head matchup between Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump, without Mr. DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy or Chris Christie — both of whom have since left the race — the polling found Ms. Haley in a statistical tie with Mr. Trump, 48 percent to 45 percent.Still, Mr. DeSantis’s decision to spend less time in New Hampshire is not guaranteed to be good news for her. Supporters of Mr. DeSantis tend to be more conservative than Ms. Haley’s moderate-leaning coalition, so those who jump ship from the Florida governor might vote for Mr. Trump instead.CBS News earlier reported Mr. DeSantis’s shift toward South Carolina.Mr. DeSantis was denied his best chance at exposure in New Hampshire when Ms. Haley turned down two debates scheduled for Thursday and Sunday. Even the weather seemed to be against him there. A snowstorm and icy roads forced him to cancel two town halls in rural parts of the state on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, while Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump were able to go through with their events.Mr. Trump was set to return to New Hampshire on Wednesday evening. He spent the morning in a Manhattan courthouse for his defamation trial, where the writer E. Jean Carroll testified that Mr. Trump had “shattered my reputation” by accusing her of lying about her claim that he raped her in a department store dressing room decades ago. Mr. Trump’s disclaiming comments, loud enough for jurors to hear, prompted the judge in the case to threaten to throw him out of the room.Even before it was clear that Mr. DeSantis was retreating from New Hampshire, his allies were trying to lower expectations.Jason Osborne, the majority leader of New Hampshire’s House of Representatives, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, said in an interview on Tuesday that the Florida governor had “nothing to lose” in New Hampshire.“The expectations are already set so low,” Mr. Osborne said. “Anything he does will be over expectations. There’s only upside here.”Never Back Down’s field operation in South Carolina is not nearly as extensive as the one it spent heavily to create in Iowa, where Mr. DeSantis staked many of his hopes and allowed the super PAC to take over many of the responsibilities of a traditional campaign.Nikki Haley at an event in Bretton Woods, N.H., on Tuesday. Ms. Haley’s path in New Hampshire is now clearer.Sophie Park for The New York TimesThe group has burned through cash, spending at least $30 million on its push to reach voters in person through door-knocking and canvassing in early-primary states, according to a person with knowledge of its efforts — a figure that does not include additional tens of millions in television advertising.Given that ambitious investment, Mr. DeSantis’s defeat on Monday to Mr. Trump in Iowa was all the more devastating, and raised urgent new questions about how long his operation could financially sustain a bid and attract new donors.One of those who was laid off at Never Back Down, George Andrews, who had been assigned as a caucus precinct operations director in Iowa but also listed himself on LinkedIn as a state director in California, posted on the career website that he had been let go.“As of 6 am this morning, I learned I am now a free agent due to budget cuts beyond my control,” Mr. Andrews wrote in a post on LinkedIn.“I completely understand why this had to happen, harbor no ill will, and wish my former team great success as they attempt to bring back sanity to our party,” he wrote. “What they are trying to accomplish for America is much greater than my termination as an individual employee.”An official with the group appeared to confirm the layoffs, saying that those affected were being paid through the end of January. The official, who did not speak on the record, added that the group was “evaluating and paring down” other consultants, vendors and some staff members who had been focused on various aspects of the group’s work.Scott Wagner, the chief executive of Never Back Down, issued a statement saying that the group continued to host events for Mr. DeSantis, but he did not address the question of layoffs.“Never Back Down continues to host a slew of events on the ground for Gov. DeSantis,” Mr. Wagner said. “We’ve mobilized several members of our robust Iowa team over to the other early primary states to help in these efforts.”Paul Mondello, 81, of Londonderry, who was at an event for Mr. DeSantis in Derry on Wednesday, said it was “kind of offensive to some degree” that the governor was not focusing on New Hampshire, but it would not shake his resolve to vote for him.“For him to leave, it is a little bit of a punch,” Mr. Mondello said. “I don’t think you should give up.”Nick Corasaniti More

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      Do Political Ads Even Matter Anymore?

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      A confluence of political forces and changing media behavior are testing their efficacy in the Trump era.In a presidential election year, no glowing rectangle in Iowa or New Hampshire is safe from an endless deluge of political ads.Campaign ads are inescapable on the nightly news, “Wheel of Fortune” and YouTube. Even the high-dollar, high-visibility ad blocks of professional and college football games have become increasingly saturated.It’s a deeply entrenched multimillion-dollar industry, and one of the largest expenses of every presidential campaign. But a confluence of political forces and changing media behavior may be testing the efficacy of political advertising in the Trump era.Nikki Haley and her allied super PAC spent roughly $28 million on broadcast ads in Iowa, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies spent $25 million. Trump and his super PAC spent only $15 million — and won by more than 30 points.As my colleagues Michael Bender and Katie Glueck reported, that result showed a new depth to the Republican Party’s devotion to Trump. But it also suggests that a smaller universe of persuadable voters and a wholesale shift in viewing habits may have significantly undercut the impact of political advertising.According to Cross Screen Media, an ad analytics firm, only 63 percent of Iowa Republicans are reachable with traditional or “linear” TV ads, as viewers switch to streaming and social media. In 2016, that percentage was still in the 90s. At most, Republican campaigns this year reached 42 percent of likely caucus voters.“I don’t think that people have caught up with where the media consumption is,” said Michael Beach, chief executive of Cross Screen Media.The pivot to streaming is potentially deadly for political ad buyers. Beach estimates that almost 40 percent of the time viewers spend on television is on streaming, but streaming offers far fewer opportunities to show ads to viewers than traditional programming.Granite State mediaNew Hampshire’s presidential race is much closer than Iowa’s was, with polls showing Haley trailing Trump by single digits. And Trump faces a similar advertising deficit, with Haley and her allies spending more than twice as much as Trump’s campaign and its allied super PAC.But the tone of advertising in New Hampshire has taken a sharply negative turn on the former president. Ten times as many negative ads attacking Trump have run in New Hampshire over the past 30 days as ran in Iowa, according to data from AdImpact. The biggest such spender is the SFA Fund, the super PAC supporting Haley, which is portraying Trump as a liar prone to temper tantrums.Trump and his allies have responded, spending $1.4 million on a single ad attacking Haley over immigration, and $2.7 million on one targeting her support for raising the gas tax when she was governor of South Carolina in 2015 (she also called for a corresponding income tax cut).30-second issuesThe New Hampshire ads reveal the key issues that each campaign is hoping will boost their support in the final days. The Trump campaign and MAGA Inc., the super PAC supporting his campaign, have spent more in New Hampshire on ads regarding immigration than any other issue, according to AdImpact.Haley’s campaign has almost exclusively run ads portraying her as representing a “new generation” and castigating Trump and President Biden as too old for the presidency. The SFA Fund has made taxes core to its ad campaign, with nearly half its ad spending over the past month promoting Haley’s pledge to cut taxes for the middle class or defending her record on taxes.(DeSantis, who is far behind Trump and Haley in New Hampshire, had not broadcast any ads in the state in over a month when DeSantis and his super PAC announced Wednesday that they would be leaving the state to focus on South Carolina.)But there may be slightly more of an opportunity for Haley to close the gap. According to Cross Screen Media, 80 percent of New Hampshire Republican voters are reachable by traditional television advertising.Speaker Mike Johnson will most likely need to rely on Democrats to avoid a shutdown.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe House G.O.P.’s incredible shrinking majorityThanks to a combination of coincidence, scandal, health issues and political turmoil, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives keeps getting smaller.This week, with lawmakers absent for medical reasons and the recent not-so-voluntary departures of the ousted former speaker Kevin McCarthy and the expelled George Santos, the best G.O.P. attendance that Speaker Mike Johnson can muster as he tries to avoid a government shutdown is the bare-minimum 218 votes. That is before factoring in the impact of rough winter weather across the nation.Another Republican, Representative Bill Johnson of Ohio, is resigning as of Sunday to take a job as a university president, lowering the number to 217 if Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the 86-year-old dean of the House, is unable to quickly return from recuperating from a car accident. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, is out until at least next month while undergoing cancer treatment.As a result, the G.O.P. could soon be able to afford just a single defection on any matter if Democrats remain united and have no absences of their own.Republicans are in a real numerical bind. At a time when House Republicans regularly face internal rebellion from hard-line conservatives, Johnson has absolutely no cushion if he chooses to rely strictly on the votes of his own party, which is part of the reason he cut a deal with Democrats on spending to avoid a shutdown later this week, further angering the hard right.Democrats say the recurring scenario of leaning on them for must-pass bills is proof that even though Republicans are the majority party on the tally sheet, they don’t have a working majority because of their diminished forces and constant internal squabbling.“When anything hits the fan, they don’t have 218,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the former longtime Democratic majority leader, referring to the number that represents a basic majority in the 435-member House. “They are not the majority party in this House.”Johnson, the novice speaker, said it was a problem he could handle.“I’m undaunted by this,” he said recently on CBS. “We deal with the numbers that we have.” — Carl HulseRead the full story here.More politics news and analysisBacking down: The super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis began laying off staff.Disorder in the court: A judge threatened to throw Donald Trump out of his defamation trial.No-shows: CNN canceled its Republican debate in New Hampshire for lack of participation.History lesson: Haley and DeSantis were asked about race in America, and it got awkward.You would cry too: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to create his own party to get on the ballot.Read past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Take That, America

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      Well, people, Iowa has spoken. Peeped, anyhow.Every time the nation gets to select its next president, all eyes turn to Iowa, which traditionally has the first word on what the public wants.This is a state with approximately 1 percent of the national population. How could we not pay attention?Next week, we’ll be obsessed with the voting in New Hampshire, which has less than half as many people as Iowa.So goes the current caucus-and-primary system — on the Republican side, at least. The Democrats changed theirs after 2020, when the Iowa count crashed and burned. It took days to get the final results, which gave Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders the lead, followed by Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, who came in at a pathetic 15.8 percent.Pop quiz: The Iowa Democrats struggled to produce a vote count because of:A. A deep reluctance to let other states start getting all the attentionB. A bad appC. Threats to public safety from a 12-foot-tall snow bearDon’t go for the self-absorption option. Be nice. The answer, of course, is a bad app. Truly, in this day and age, virtually anything terrible that occurs is either because of a bad app or Donald Trump.You’ve got to admire the dedicated citizens who keep the Iowa caucuses going. But it’s hard not to get tired of hearing candidates deliver effusive tributes to the state’s special interests, like the glories of ethanol subsidies. (“I stood up for ethanol like nobody has ever stood up for it,” Trump claimed on caucus night. Really suspect that before he began running for president, he thought ethanol was a hair product.)This year, the Democrats are casting their ballots by mail, and Iowa leaders will let us know the results in early March. The party, under orders from President Biden, has rearranged its schedule so the primaries will officially start in South Carolina next month, then move on to Nevada. The idea is to get a population of voters that’s a tad more diverse than Iowa, which is about as ethnically homogeneous as Finland.Sneering at the idea that Iowa is always first is traditionally coupled with an acknowledgment that voters there have a history of high participation even in terrible winter weather.Turns out, however, that not so many showed up this year — 110,000 Republicans voted, which was less than 15 percent of those registered. And hey, probably about a tenth of the population that visited the Butter Cow at last year’s Iowa State Fair.Certainly can’t blame them for choosing to stay home during weather that would have discouraged Nanook of the North. But do you think it was possibly the ballot as well? Everybody knew Trump was going to win. Maybe some people found it too depressing to participate.Our former president managed to get more than half of the votes cast in Iowa. But he failed to win all 99 counties, thanks to a one-vote margin (yes, one) in the county where the University of Iowa is situated. Nikki Haley won there, giving her at least a little bounce for the next stop, in New Hampshire, which has a relatively high percentage of college graduates.Ron DeSantis is moving on, too. He actually came in a tad ahead of Haley statewide, but I’m not sure he should boast about that. Having visited every single one of those 99 counties (as he constantly reminded us), DeSantis apparently won most of the hearts in … none of them.About New Hampshire. If anybody is going to beat Trump anywhere, it’ll be Haley in New Hampshire, where Republicans tend to be moderate and happy to show their independence by doing something different. She’s already taken on the front-runner by announcing that she won’t go to any debates there unless Trump agrees to participate, too.Pause for a brief giggle.On the Democratic side, New Hampshire party leaders are very, very unhappy that Biden has ditched them for South Carolina. And how should we feel about that? On one hand, New Hampshirites have always been super devoted to their role — Chris Christie probably spent the happiest days of his campaign there, attacking Trump before always-available audiences. It’s such a deep-seated tradition, political junkies have to be a little sad to see the state being snubbed.On the other hand, New Hampshire is whiter than Iowa. It’s one of the least diverse states in the Union.It’s very easy to write in a candidate’s name in New Hampshire, and top Democrats say they’re going to do just that for Biden, even though, in the words of the former state party chair Kathy Sullivan, they’re “still pissed.”Gird your loins, citizens. Our political lives are going to be primarily primaries for the next couple of months. (Super Tuesday is March 5.) Candidates will find ways to pick fights, even if they’re silly.Sometimes it’s hard to keep all this in focus. We’ve got lives to live. Joe Biden has to run the country. Donald Trump has to go to nine million trials.But hey, it’s democracy. It’s important. And it’s going to be a very long year.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Why New Hampshire Thinks It’s Smarter Than Iowa

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      Now that the Republican presidential primary race has moved to New Hampshire from Iowa, a few things will change.The evangelical Christian social conservatism that dominates Iowa’s Republican politics is out, replaced by fiscal hawkishness and a libertarian streak rooted in the Granite State’s “Live Free or Die” ethos.With Iowa fully in the rearview mirror, expect to hear a variation on the phrase “Iowa picks corn, New Hampshire picks presidents,” a favorite local slogan that aggrandizes the state’s role in the nominating process. Still, ask Pat Buchanan and John McCain about how winning New Hampshire in 1996 and 2000 catapulted them to the White House.One thing is clear: New Hampshire Republicans think their attention to federal spending and the national debt makes them a lot smarter than their Iowa brethren, for whom abortion and transgender issues have been atop the agenda.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Even if Nikki Haley Shocks Trump in New Hampshire, It Won’t Matter

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      Nikki Haley did well enough in the Iowa caucuses Monday night to keep her supporters’ hopes alive. But her third-place showing, on the heels of Ron DeSantis and a mile behind Donald Trump, was also just disappointing enough to raise doubts about her candidacy.Her plan coming out of Iowa is a classic underdog strategy: Use strong early results to upend expectations in the contests to come, reshaping the dynamic of the race one upset victory at a time. So, the thinking goes, her solid-enough performance in Iowa will propel her higher in New Hampshire, where she holds a strong second place in the polls.It’s possible. But even if Ms. Haley does well in New Hampshire, it won’t matter. That’s because Ms. Haley is starkly out of step with the evolution of her party over the past decade.The shape of today’s Republican electorate can be seen most clearly in national polling of Republican voters, where Mr. Trump has led by a substantial margin for months. Even in the unlikely event that all the voters who have told pollsters in recent weeks that they support Mr. DeSantis, Chris Christie and the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson switched over to Ms. Haley, she would reach only the high 20s, placing her more than 30 points behind Mr. Trump, who sits at around 60 percent. (The voters who have said they support Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped out of the race on Monday night, would likely switch to Mr. Trump.)Sure, Ms. Haley might peel off some of those Trump voters if she manages to puncture his air of inevitability by knocking him sideways in New Hampshire. But imagining that she could wrest the nomination from him ignores the fact that, if he were to suffer a humiliating setback in New Hampshire, Mr. Trump would be guaranteed to attack her with a viciousness he has so far reserved primarily for Mr. DeSantis. In December, as she climbed in the polls, MAGA loyalists like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon offered a preview of these sort of slashing attacks (referring to her as a “hologram” sent by donors or as potentially worse than “Judas Pence”).More important, though, the fulfillment of the Haley campaign’s hopes would require a wholesale shift in preferences among millions of Republican voters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Trump Won 98 of Iowa’s 99 Counties, as Haley Prevented a Shutout

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      Former President Donald J. Trump won 98 of 99 counties in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, according to preliminary results published by the state Republican Party, demonstrating just how broadly he swept the first-in-the-nation contest.In counties large and small, Mr. Trump racked up commanding leads across the state. In the only county he lost, it was by a single vote: Johnson County, the state’s bluest county and the home of Iowa City and the University of Iowa, went for former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.Shut out from a single victory was Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who had banked his candidacy on Iowa and put enormous effort into campaigning in rural, sparsely populated areas. He visited every one of Iowa’s 99 counties in the months before the caucuses, a tour known as the “Full Grassley,” and was rewarded on Monday with second- and third-place finishes from Sioux City to Davenport.Vivek Ramaswamy, the pro-Trump entrepreneur who dropped out on Monday after receiving just 7 percent of the vote in Iowa, had visited all 99 counties at least twice, a strategy that did not deliver the surprise performance he had been brashly predicting for months.Mr. Trump in contrast had put far less effort into circuiting the state and indulging in the kind of retail politics that Iowa campaigning is known for. He also had surrogates do much of the campaigning for him until the final week before the caucuses.After battling fiercely for second place in the race’s final weeks, Ms. Haley finished third overall in Iowa on Monday night. Her lone bright spot, albeit narrowly, was Johnson County. In his 2020 re-election campaign, Mr. Trump lost the county with just 27 percent of the vote, to over 70 percent for Joseph R. Biden Jr.Ms. Haley had been expected to do better in more populous urban and suburban areas — much like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who eight years ago won significant margins in the counties of Des Moines, its suburbs and Iowa City, as he, too, came in third place.But turnout fell sharply across the state this year, the lowest since the Republican caucuses in 2000, and urban counties lost thousands of votes. In the end, Ms. Haley fell far short in Iowa’s largest cities, losing by wide margins to Mr. Trump — and sometimes behind Mr. DeSantis — in the counties that include Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Sioux City. More

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      Trump’s Landslide Victory in Iowa

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      More from our inbox:Young Voters: Vote!U.S. Strikes in YemenThe Genocide Charges Against IsraelDonald J. Trump at a caucus site in Clive, Iowa, on Monday evening. His victory was called by The Associated Press only 31 minutes after the caucuses had begun.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Wins Iowa in Key First Step Toward Rematch” (front page, Jan. 16):If you weren’t scared before Monday night’s Iowa caucuses, you should be terrified now. The disgraced, twice-impeached, quadruple-indicted former president came within one vote of winning all 99 of Iowa’s counties, and received 51 percent of the vote.Ron DeSantis came in a distant second with 21 percent of the vote, and Nikki Haley was a distant third with just 19 percent of the vote.The bid for the Republican nomination for president is all but over, leaving America with a terrible choice between the autocratic and awful former president, and the obviously too old and frail current president.Unless Ms. Haley can win convincingly in New Hampshire, and match Donald Trump in South Carolina, the former president will be the nominee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More