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      The Guide to Iowa via ‘The Run-Up’

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      Listen to and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | AmazonFinally. More than a year after Donald Trump first announced his 2024 presidential run, six months after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida refocused his campaign strategy to be all-in on Iowa, and right in the midst of debilitating winter weather, the Iowa caucuses are upon us.And “The Run-Up” has everything you need to know to understand what might happen today — and what it will mean for the race going forward.What’s at stake is clear: Anyone who is going to slow down Mr. Trump on his path to clinching the nomination has to get started in Iowa, with at least a close second-place finish. Going into the caucus, Mr. Trump has a dominant polling lead. But now it’s up to the voters.Iowa voters tend to care more about candidates who can speak more to small-town and religious values. The state’s evangelical leaders have largely backed Mr. DeSantis, but evangelical voters themselves — including people coming out to Trump events in freezing temperatures in the last week — have largely backed Mr. Trump.There are three big questions going into caucus day. One, will people come out and participate despite the weather? Two, are the campaigns organized enough to have made a successful last-minute push, to turn interest into actual votes? And three, will any of it matter, or will the freezing temperatures and snowdrifts mean that no matter the result, campaigns will excuse it away?We’ll know the answers later this week.In the meantime, here’s more from “The Run-Up” on Iowa and the state of the Republican primary:In a Song of the Summer, Clues for Iowa in JanuaryHow Iowa Learned to Love Trump‘Right Where We Want Him, 30 Points Up’: Chasing Trump in IowaJordan Gale for The New York TimesAbout ‘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 U.S. politics. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Trump Has Made Claims About Caucus Fraud. What if He Underperforms?

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      The last time Donald J. Trump participated in competitive Iowa caucuses, he lost narrowly, accused Senator Ted Cruz of Texas of stealing the contest, claimed fraud, demanded that Iowa Republicans nullify the results, and called for a rerun.While Iowa has a history of troubles with its caucus results, there’s been no evidence of fraud. The 2016 Republican contest was, in fact, the only one since 2008 that had gone off without a hitch.And yet if Monday night ends with Mr. Trump underperforming expectations, both his history and his rhetoric during this year’s campaign suggest he won’t hesitate to cry foul and refuse to accept the result.Mr. Trump has already accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida of “trying to rig” the caucuses. Laura Loomer, a far-right and anti-Muslim activist whom Mr. Trump last year considered hiring for a campaign post, suggested on social media that “the deep state” was engaging in “weather manipulation” to instigate Iowa’s Friday snowstorm and subzero temperatures to depress Trump turnout on Monday. And Donald Trump Jr. suggested in a Telegram video that “we can’t take anything for granted, or assume that everything is going to be on the up and up. We’ve seen this rodeo before.”Those claims are not likely to be met with much support from Iowa Republicans and the party volunteers who will operate the 1,657 caucus sites across the state.“If Trump says it’s fraud, he’s full of crap,” said A.J. Spiker, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa who is backing Mr. DeSantis.Still, Iowa Republicans aim to protect themselves from campaigns claiming foul play at the caucuses.At each site, caucusgoers mark their presidential preferences on paper slips. Those slips are then counted in full view of whoever wants to watch. Typically a representative from each campaign watches the counting, and recording is allowed.“It’s the most transparent straw vote you could possibly do,” Mr. Spiker said.The Trump campaign’s headquarters in Urbandale, Iowa, on Saturday.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s pre-emptive Iowa fraud claims last month followed a flub by Mr. DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis. She called on supporters to “descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus.”“You do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus,” she said.That earned Ms. DeSantis a rebuke from the state Republican Party.Only Iowans can participate in the caucuses. Republican volunteers are supposed to check for photo identification at the caucus sites. Still, Mr. Trump’s campaign suggested then that the DeSantis campaign had professed a “plot to rig the caucus through fraud.”Another candidate who has trafficked in conspiracies and has been sowing doubt about Iowa’s caucuses is Vivek Ramaswamy, who failed to qualify for recent debates.“The mainstream media is trying to rig the Iowa G.O.P. caucus in favor of the corporate candidates who they can control,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in a campaign video this week. “Don’t fall for their trick. They don’t want you to hear from me about the truth.”Voting rights groups and disinformation experts say the pre-emptive cries about fraud and rigged elections have become something of a new normal.“This follows the general playbook, the election denier playbook of just pre-emptively laying the groundwork for claims of fraud in the event of a loss,” said Emma Steiner, the Information Accountability Project Manager at Common Cause, a left-leaning voting rights organization. “It’s sort of future-proofing.”Indeed, Mr. Trump has long trumpeted baseless claims of fraud or rigging before an election. In 2016, weeks before Election Day, Mr. Trump started questioning the veracity of mail ballots in Colorado, citing little evidence. After he won the 2016 election, Mr. Trump claimed that widespread fraud cost him the popular vote (it did not), and he launched a commission to investigate voter fraud in the country (it folded without any significant findings).The Trump team has called elections rigged even when he is not participating in them. When the 2020 Democratic caucuses melted down because of a faulty app and a disorganized state party, Mr. Trump’s campaign questioned whether the results were “being rigged against Bernie Sanders.” His sons went further.“Mark my words, they are rigging this thing,” Eric Trump wrote on Twitter the night of the 2020 caucuses. “What a mess.” More

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      Ron DeSantis’s Campaign Trail Quirk: The Word ‘Do’

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      All humans have oddities in the ways they speak. But those of presidential candidates are exposed more than most. All day, the candidates talk. And talk. And talk. Sometimes in scripted stump speeches, sometimes in off-the-cuff remarks to voters and the news media.And few talk more than Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who, in trying to make up his deficit in the polls, will on a typical day host five events for voters, sit for three interviews on television and hold a gaggle with reporters.Over the weeks and months on the campaign trail, one of Mr. DeSantis’s most curious verbal quirks has become clear: the way he sometimes uses the word “do.”During a CNN debate last week, Mr. DeSantis pledged to help seniors afford prescription drugs.“I want seniors to be able to do,” he said.Not “do” something. Just do. There is no word missing. That’s the full quote. In Mr. DeSantis’s parlance, the verb does not always require a direct object.Similarly, at a barbecue restaurant in Ames, Iowa, the next day, he said that as president he would defund the United Nations. “You’re going to see a lot of changes into how we do,” he vowed.Discussing the freezing weather with a crowd of Iowans, the Florida-born Mr. DeSantis remarked that once the temperature fell below zero, “with the windchill on just your exposed skin, it really, really starts to do.”And when a voter in Decorah asked if he would move the Department of Agriculture’s headquarters to Iowa, the governor said yes — in his typical fashion.“Iowa has first dibs on the Department of Agriculture,” a grinning Mr. DeSantis replied. “You guys want it, we’re going to do!”For Mr. DeSantis, who pitches himself as a take-charge, get-it-done leader, “do” is not just a verb. It can be an idea, a promise, a way to solve the problems that bedevil America. All of us can — and should — do.Of course, Mr. DeSantis also uses the word in the more traditional sense. But ask him if he thinks his rigorous campaigning schedule will help him win the Iowa caucuses on Monday?“I’ve done it right, I think Iowans appreciate that,” he said. “And we’re going to do.” More

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      The Iowa Caucuses Are Not a Delightful Game

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      Ah, the Iowa caucuses. So much drama. So much antici … pation. So much money and energy spent on an antidemocratic process in a state with a pretty dismal track record of picking presidential nominees.And yet! Just because the system is flawed doesn’t mean the stakes aren’t real — and brutal. The outcome of Monday night’s Republican vote will be pounced on by the political world and instantly shredded, devoured and digested like a rump roast tossed into a gator pond. It might not change anything. But it also might turbocharge or deflate this or that candidacy as the whole primary pageant barrels toward New Hampshire and beyond.Even before the official results start being reported, the campaigns and their allies will crank the spin energy up to 11. Because Iowa is never really about who wins the actual caucuses so much as about who wins the Expectations Game. And that game comes with a host of ultra-fuzzy question cards: How many “tickets” are there out of the state — meaning, should the third-place finisher be taken seriously? What counts as a second-place victory? What if the first-place finisher wildly underperforms? What if a blizzard or minus 30-degree wind chills keep most people home? (Someone remind me why a state like Arizona can’t go first.)As you can imagine, this is not a lighthearted game like, say, charades or Hungry Hungry Hippos. It is complicated and grinding, the rules shift, and victory is highly subjective, relying on the savvy of the players’ pre- and postgame spinning. And this election, with Donald Trump dominating the race as a quasi-incumbent cult-of-personality leader, the known unknowns are even knottier.What if Mr. Trump cracks 50 percent? (I’m guessing he will but am hoping to be wrong.) If so, is the race basically over? What if he pulls only 45 percent? 40? If Nikki Haley squeaks past Ron DeSantis, should he drop out? What if she smokes him? Could any third-place showing count as a win for Ms. Haley? And my obsession: What degree of belly flop could persuade Vivek Ramaswamy to leave politics forever?The top contenders have approached the expectations game differently. Heading into the final stretch, Mr. DeSantis has been all sass and swagger, predicting total victory. “We’re going to win here in Iowa,” he assured Fox News shortly before Christmas. Bold strategy, but bluffing is perhaps his only hope. The guy has bet everything on the caucuses. If he goes down hard, and certainly if Ms. Haley bests him, you will hear the sound of pundits, political opponents and quite possibly the rest of his disgusted party pounding nails into the coffin of his candidacy. Even so, raising the bar leaves him even less wiggle room to recover from anything other than a first-place showing — which pretty much no one expects.Mr. Trump has been a bit cagier. He has been crowing about crushing it in the polling, pushing the expectations bar ever higher. “The poll numbers are scary because we’re leading by so much,” he bragged at a rally in Waterloo, Iowa, last month.But the man is no idiot. He has been hedging his boasts, telling Iowa fans he is a little nervous that he is so overwhelmingly popular that they might feel comfortable skipping the caucuses. “You got to show up,” he urged supporters at the Waterloo event. “Even if you think we’re going to win by a lot.” In case things go sideways, he has laid the groundwork for a quintessentially Trumpian message: I am such a huge winner that I (almost) lost!Ms. Haley is attempting a more complicated game plan. Her politics aren’t well suited for Iowa, where the G.O.P. is dominated by white evangelicals. She hasn’t spent as much time in the state as Mr. DeSantis or built a ground game anywhere nearly as elaborate. Instead, she has gone with a classic Iowa move: making clear that she expects to lose the race. That way, no one expects much from her, and even a lackluster showing can be brushed off or even spun as a win. Thus, we see her spreading the word that she is looking beyond Iowa to the broader playing field — at times perhaps a bit too aggressively, as when she quipped to a crowd in New Hampshire that their job was to “correct” Iowa’s vote.Note: A candidate needs to keep a tight grip on her spin machine at all times lest it bite her on the butt.This is not a new strategy, and Team Haley isn’t lowering the Iowa bar as far as some past campaigns. In the 2000 Republican contest, Senator John McCain, with his maverick brand, opted to officially skip Iowa altogether and insisted that it would be a miracle if he got any support there at all. I still have fond memories from that race (my first presidential campaign) of tracking down Team McCain’s quasi-official point person in Iowa, who was clearly nervous that I might get the impression the senator actually cared about the state.It’s not just the candidates who have a lot riding on Iowa this year. As usual, Mr. Trump is disrupting all the norms and rules, and a Trump blowout would be an embarrassment for some of the state’s traditional power brokers. Notably, Mr. DeSantis worked his boots off to score the backing of the state’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds. He won over Steve Deace, a prominent conservative radio host there. And he went hard after the evangelical kingmakers, securing the endorsement of the most prominent, Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the Family Leader. But the party faithful, especially the evangelical grass roots, may very well go all in for Mr. Trump, dismissing the influence of their usual influencers.A Trump rout would also raise questions about the fetishization of Iowa’s retail politics. Iowa trumpets its image as a state that expects personal attention from presidential wannabes, big and small. Witness Mr. DeSantis boasting endlessly about how he has been to “all 99 counties.”But Mr. Trump? He has spent little time in the state, mostly headlining the big, impersonal pep rallies his ego so craves. He has relied heavily on surrogates, and his team didn’t bother fielding a big door-knocking operation. Indeed, it didn’t focus on its ground game much at all until relatively late. Like any entitled celebrity, the MAGA king jetted in and out of the state, in between his courthouse visits and Mar-a-Lago conclaves, leaving the tedious unglamorous stuff to his courtiers.Although it’s not as specifically Iowa-focused, the notion that political debates matter will suffer further decline if Mr. Trump steamrolls the field. It was painful enough watching the non-Trump contenders tear into one another through five debates and 10 hours. The very real possibility that it was all for naught is enough to make one question the entire system.This could be a bad, even dangerous year for the Iowa caucuses in general. Why should Republican presidential contenders lavish all that love on the state just to get thrown over for a guy who couldn’t be bothered to do more than the minimum? The caucuses already have faced criticism in recent years because of operational glitches, the unrepresentativeness of Iowa’s electorate (too white, too old, too rural …) and the exclusionary nature of the process. The Democrats got fed up enough to kill their caucuses this election. What if Republicans start thinking along the same lines?As someone who doesn’t care for the caucuses, I won’t shed any tears if that happens. But I’m guessing plenty of other folks feel differently — especially in Iowa.And so here we go, with so very much at stake. Once more unto the breach.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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      Republican Presidential Primary: 7 Numbers That Tell the Story

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      There’s $46,499,124.63. There’s 3 percent. Here are five other figures that shed light on the dynamics at play before Monday’s caucuses.The only numbers that will truly matter in the Iowa caucuses on Monday will be the number of votes tallied for Donald J. Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy.But there are a number of, well, numbers that help explain the Republican nominating contest. In most polls, Mr. Trump holds a solid lead, while Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are battling it out far behind in a fight for second place.Here are seven numbers that show how we got here — and what comes next.28 percentage pointsMr. Trump’s lead in the Iowa Poll The bar has been set.In the Iowa Poll released on Saturday evening by The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom, Mr. Trump was winning 48 percent of likely caucusgoers. It’s a dominant showing that’s more than the total support measured for Ms. Haley (20 percent) and Mr. DeSantis (16 percent) combined.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 Far Ahead, With Haley Edging DeSantis for Second, Key Iowa Poll Finds

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      Donald J. Trump has the backing of 48 percent of likely caucusgoers ahead of Monday’s election, a commanding lead for the former president, according to the Iowa Poll by The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom.Nikki Haley is narrowly leading the battle for second place over Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, 20 percent to 16 percent, according to the survey, which was released on Saturday evening.The poll shows Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, improving compared with December and Mr. Trump slipping — but only marginally. He enjoys a 28-point lead, compared with a 32-point advantage last month.The survey has almost nothing but good news for the former president. He leads with every demographic group tested, performing most strongly among those without a college degree, those earning less than $50,000 and men who did not graduate from college. He pulled in the support of roughly three in five voters in those three categories.His supporters were also more enthusiastic about voting than either of his rivals’, and Ms. Haley’s enthusiasm levels were markedly below his — and even below those of Mr. DeSantis.And Mr. Trump is ahead by so much that his support is greater than what Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are garnering — combined.More than two-thirds of voters said they had made up their minds, while only 7 percent said they did not yet have a first-choice candidate on the cusp of the caucuses. One in four likely caucusgoers said they could still be persuaded to pick a new candidate.The survey, which has taken on an almost mythic status in some political circles, immediately forms the new base line of expectations for the caucuses on Monday. All three leading candidates have been not just fighting to win the most votes in recent days but also to dampen how well they are expected to perform in order to claim a stronger-than-expected showing.No other candidate was above single digits, with Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman who has aligned himself with Mr. Trump and has campaigned heavily in Iowa, at 8 percent. The caucuses are not limited to Republicans — both independent voters and Democrats can vote in the election, if they re-register as Republicans on caucus night.One of the survey’s more striking findings is that roughly half of Ms. Haley’s support is coming from independents (39 percent) and Democrats (11 percent).Ms. Haley’s strongest demographic groups are no surprise — those who live in suburbs and white women with college degrees — but even among those constituencies she does not lead Mr. Trump.Historically, one of the most important groups in Iowa Republican caucuses are evangelical voters, and Mr. Trump leads among those voters widely, with 51 percent. Mr. DeSantis is a distant second with 22 percent, but that is actually lower than his support level among that demographic in the December survey. Ms. Haley is pulling only 12 percent among evangelical voters.The poll — conducted by J. Ann Selzer from Jan. 7 to 12, with a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points — comes during an unusual cold snap even for Iowa.The weather has made turnout predictions on Monday especially volatile. The Trump, DeSantis and Haley campaigns have been studying the impact of the storm for any potential advantage, with unaligned political strategists calling the cold — with subzero highs for the day — an unusual test of both natural enthusiasm and organizational might in the race’s final days.“You have the worst weather, I guess, in recorded history but maybe that’s good, because our people are more committed than anybody else,” Mr. Trump said in a video announcing that he was canceling some of his weekend’s events.The poll does show an enthusiasm edge for Mr. Trump. He has the largest share of enthusiastic supporters, with 49 percent saying they are extremely enthusiastic and 39 percent very enthusiastic.In comparison, Ms. Haley’s backers were far less excited. Only 9 percent said they were extremely enthusiastic to support her, and 30 percent very enthusiastic.Ms. Selzer told The Des Moines Register that the low levels of enthusiasm for Ms. Haley “are on the edge of jaw-dropping.”There is one strong result in the poll for Mr. DeSantis on a caucus night expected to set records for its cold temperatures: His supporters were the most likely to say they will definitely caucus, with 62 percent saying so, slightly above the numbers for Mr. DeSantis or Ms. Haley.In the previous Iowa Poll, in December, Mr. Trump was the first choice of a 51 percent majority of likely caucusgoers, and leading among every demographic group. He was dominating by an even wider margin among first-time caucusgoers, with 63 percent support.Mr. Trump had grown from 42 percent in August, 43 percent in October and 51 percent in December, and dipped for the first time to 48 percent in the new poll. Mr. DeSantis had previously stayed relatively steady: 19 percent in August, 16 percent in October and then 19 percent again in December. He dropped back to 16 percent in this latest survey.Ms. Haley began far behind, with 6 percent in August, but she is the only candidate who has not dropped since. She rose to 16 percent in October, stayed at 16 percent in December and hit a new high of 20 percent in this survey. More

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      In Iowa, Nikki Haley Has the Attention of Democrats and Independents

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      Ms. Haley has attracted the interest of non-Republicans who say they’ll caucus for her, as rivals attack her for an insufficiently conservative message.With temperatures threatening to dip below zero in Iowa on Monday, some of the voters preparing to caucus for Nikki Haley have already overcome a different hurdle: a long history of voting for Democrats.At recent campaign events across Iowa, a number of Democrats and left-leaning independents said they saw Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, as a reasonable Republican who could move the country away from bitter partisanship and restore civility in national discourse. Many were drawn to her pledges to unite the country, and to work across the aisle on thorny issues such as abortion. Others are simply motivated by a fear of former President Donald J. Trump’s candidacy and the possibility that he will beat President Biden and regain the White House.Joseph E. Brown Sr., who served two terms as an Iowa state senator in the 1970s and ’80s, said he was a registered Democrat for 50 years until he switched parties last month so that he could caucus for Ms. Haley.“Now that I have my Republican card, I have to go visit my father’s gravesite here in town and apologize,” said Mr. Brown, who lives in Clinton, Iowa. He added that his father, a staunch Democrat and World War II veteran, always voted a straight party ticket.Mr. Brown’s one complaint about Ms. Haley is that she tends to echo misleading claims from Republican lawmakers on the number of agents from the Internal Revenue Service auditing middle-class families. But he said he appreciated her stalwart support for aiding both Ukraine and Israel, and her promises to lower the national debt and make the federal government more efficient. He praised her measured approach toward Mr. Trump — calling out the “chaos” that trails him without attacking him on specifics — and even agreed with her support for pardoning the former president if he is found guilty of crimes.“I’m not opposed to Joe Biden,” he said. “But out of all the Republican candidates, she is the one that strikes me as someone who can rebuild the office of the presidency.”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