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Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses Monday night with the largest margin in the history of the first Republican presidential nominating contest, cementing an early victory in his defiant bid to return to the White House.
The Associated Press declared Trump the winner roughly a half-hour after the caucuses convened. The call came so quickly that at some caucus locations, attendees hadn’t even finished making speeches of support for the various candidates.
With 97% of the vote reported, the AP said Trump had 51%. He was followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 21%, who was called the second-place finisher. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was at 19%.
Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who was at 8%, suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump late Monday. Turnout was well below levels recorded in 2016, when the state last held competitive GOP caucuses.
Trump’s dominance carries him to New Hampshire, where he is expected to face a stronger challenge in a Jan. 23 primary that will include more independent voters. The outcome also underscores the resilience he has shown despite a barrage of criminal prosecutions that could still upend his trajectory toward a rematch with President Biden.
“I really think this is time now for everybody, our country to come together,” Trump said during a victory celebration in Des Moines. He said his two closest competitors did well, before outlining his agenda and nodding to the general election. “The big night is going to be in November when we take back our country.”
The tight battle between Haley and DeSantis for second place left both candidates claiming they were best positioned to become the only Trump alternative as a long-shot challenger to the front-runner.
“We’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa,” DeSantis told supporters at a hotel in West Des Moines, as he noted the many attacks Trump and others threw at him.
Haley, speaking at another West Des Moines hotel, congratulated Trump on his victory and pledged to continue campaigning.
“I can safely say Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race,” she said. “Do you want more of the same or do you want a new generation of conservative leadership?”
The results, on a night that saw the coldest temperatures on record for the caucuses, gave the first tangible indication that the party remains overwhelmingly committed to restoring Trump’s power, instead of turning the page on the man who remade the GOP in his image when he won in 2016. Analysts closely watched whether Trump got a majority of the vote as a metric of his fortitude in the party.
The DeSantis campaign complained after news outlets quickly declared Trump the winner.
“It is absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote,” DeSantis spokesman Andrew Romeo said in a statement. “The media is in the tank for Trump.”
The second-place finish for DeSantis salvaged his ability to tell donors and supporters that he has a path forward.
The third-place finish for Haley, a former United Nations ambassador, will force her to expend resources battling DeSantis, when she was instead hoping to capitalize on a strong position for the next nominating contest in New Hampshire, where the electorate is more centrist and has a history of bucking Iowa.
DeSantis promised to appear Tuesday in South Carolina, another key early primary state, and he had scheduled events later that day in New Hampshire. Trump and Haley both had rallies planned Tuesday in New Hampshire.
A clear path to the GOP nomination for Trump would set the stage for a 2024 contest few voters seem to want: a rematch between Trump and Biden, as many voters have said they are eager for alternatives.
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