Former President of the United States Donald Trump handily won the caucus in the state of Iowa, held on Monday night (15), which is the first contest within the long process of primaries that will define the Republican Party candidate at November presidential elections.
With 100% of the polls counted this Tuesday morning (17), Trump received 51% of the votes, almost 30 points more than the second place, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis (21%). 110,298 people participated in the caucuses, 41% less than in 2016, when a record was set with around 187 thousand voters.
Third place was former governor of South Carolina and former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, with 19.1% of the vote. In fourth place, with 7.7%, was businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who announced his withdrawal from the primaries after learning the result.
The Iowa caucus distributes only 40 delegates out of the total 2,429 that are at stake throughout the Republican caucus process. Thus, Trump was left with 20 delegates, DeSantis with eight, Haley with seven and Ramaswamy with three, despite his withdrawal. There are still two delegates to be appointed pending the final result.
To date, the biggest Republican victory in this process in Iowa was that of Bob Dole in 1988, with 37.35%, almost 13 points ahead of second place, Pat Robertson (24.57%), and very far from second place, George HW Bush (18.59%), who would become the party's nominee and the winner of the election for the White House.
The Iowa caucus marks the beginning of the Republican primaries for the presidential election, a process with which the party chooses the candidate who will face the current president, Joe Biden, of the Democratic Party, at the polls in November.
Shortly before the first screenings by the American press, the former Republican president appeared at one of the voter meeting places to meet supporters. He repeated his traditional anti-immigration speech and was met with applause.
“We did a job like, frankly, no one has done in a long time. When I was in the White House, there was no terrorism, there were no people coming (irregularly) into our country. We didn't have an invasion, with people who, frankly, are coming from all over the world”, said Trump in a tone of criticism against Biden's administration, which is facing a serious migration crisis.
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