Trump’s challengers facing an uphill battle to attract Iowa’s Republican voters

The five Republican candidates hoping to wrest the party’s presidential nomination from Donald Trump face a significant reckoning this week as they converge for a last round of barnstorming campaigning in Iowa. The quadrennial political and public fascination with the political leanings of the midwestern US state will intensify ahead of the voting, which will take place at the caucuses next Monday evening.

Caucuses: it’s a strange word, almost exclusively associated with this four-year intense focus on the political leanings of Iowans and believed to originally derived from the Algonquin term for the meeting of tribal elders.

Given the gerontological profile of the 2024 US election, that image has never been more apt. The suitability of president Biden, who turned 81 in November, as a returning candidate has been the source of internal wrangling for Democrats while one of the shrewder aspects of Trump’s early campaigning has been to obscure the fact that if he is returned to the White House, he will be 81 when his second term ends. Neither man is young and remarks by both over the weekend presaged the combative and hostile tone which will characterize the weeks and months ahead.

In his Friday speech at Valley Forge, president Biden invoked revolutionary history and the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol to deliver a caustic attack on Trump’s record as president, portraying him as a threat to democracy. Hours later, at a campaign speech in Iowa, Trump retorted by Biden’s term in office as “an unbroken streak of weakness, incompetence, corruption and failure” before mocking the president’s stutter from the stage.

Putin praises Xi Jinping’s proposals for ending war in Ukraine ahead of two-day visit to China

---

Even David Attenborough couldn’t save the Tories now

---

‘We’re police – it’s simply our job’: Ukraine’s ‘White Angels’ help people flee Russia’s advance

---

‘The house fell down on their heads’: Gazan falafel seller in southwest London with a tale to tell

---

[ America fears for the future of its democracy as it faces crucial election year ]

The week-long closing gambits at scheduled meetings and talks across Iowa offer the other Republican candidates a last opportunity to persuade Iowan voters that they are a viable alternative to Mr Trump. Already, that cast has been reduced to five, with Mike Pence, the former vice-president in Mr. Trump’s administration, the most prominent of the five candidates who have already dropped out of the race. The five remaining candidates share a similar problem: the apparently untouchable popularity of Donald Trump among swathes of Republican voters. The most recent update on the five-thirty-eight poll has the former president polling at 50 percent in Iowa, a staggering 32 percent of his closest challenger, Florida governor Ron De Santis. Nikki Haley, deftly positioned as the most appealing alternative to Trump, has moved her support base from 3 per cent in July to 15.7 per cent. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is at 6 per cent despite blitzing all 99 counties in Iowa with personal appearances. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey is at 3.7 per cent while former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson has grabbed just 0.5 per cent of the Iowan imagination.

The figures suggest that a repeat of Trump’s experience at the Iowa caucuses in 2016, when he was eclipsed by Ted Cruz, is not credible. In that election, the fealty of the evangelical Christian voters was the main explanation for Cruz’s early victory. In the eight years since, all indications are that Mr. Trump will now attract those same voters into backing him for the Republican nomination when the caucuses take place next Monday evening, January 15th, across the state.

• Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
• Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
• Our In The News podcast is now published daily – Find the latest episode here