He will leave in a month, on January 15 with the caucuses in Iowa, the race for the Republican nomination which could, according to all current forecasts, lead to one new coronation as Donald Trump's candidate. A race that in a certain sense is already historic, since the favorite is a former president, who faces 91 indictments in 4 different proceedings, two for attempting to subvert his electoral defeat in 2020.
Looking at the dates of the various electoral rounds, it will be more of a marathon than a race, with the first phase being particularly slow. In fact, if in 2020 it took the Democrats 27 days to conclude the first part of the primaries – the one preceding the so-called Super Tuesday in which, on March 5, dozens of states will vote together and usually decides the fate of the nomination – This year it will take Republicans 40 days to complete the process.
The most salient stages they will be in New Hampshire, where the actual primaries will take place on January 23rd, followed by those of Nevada, February 8th, South Carolina, February 24th, Michigan, February 27th. During this period there will also be voting in Idaho, Missouri, the District of Columbia and North Dakota.
Experts quoted by abcnews believe that this slow first phase, with larger pauses than usual between one round and another – 16 days between the vote in New Hampshire and that in Nevada and another 16 before that of South Carolina – could be “chaotic”. But even this extra time could give Trump's opponents – who currently has an advantage ranging between 30 and 40 points – more time to find a way to coordinate, and perhaps unite behind a single name against him.
Since his landslide re-election in Florida in 2022, Ron DeSantis was considered Trump's most dangerous challenger, even from the tycoon himself, who for months has hammered the governor with attacks. But in recent months his position has weakened, also due to the fact that his far-right message appears not dissimilar to the former president's Maga. In short, he is moving in the same terrain as the tycoon, trying to “sell a Trump Lite version to voters who instead want the caloric version”, writes Politico, which also underlines how DeSantis has so far appeared awkward during the electoral campaign.
Nikki Haley's position is different, Trump's former UN ambassador, who has another trump card on her side: the fact that she was governor in one of the first states to vote in, South Carolina. A possible victory for her in this state could therefore allow the 51-year-old of Indian origin to conclude the first phase of the primaries as an effective alternative to the Trump-De Santis duel.
It should be noted that for weeks senators, observers and important Republican financiers – such as the Koch oil companies – have begun to bet and invest on Comet Haley, also considering its ability to attract independents and, above all, women. And this is agitating the other candidates, so much so that the last two debates – which we must remember were all deserted by Trump, who considers them a useless exercise given his obvious victory – have turned into a sort of “everyone against Haley” .
According to Josh Putnam, a political scientist specializing in the primary process, however the first indications of how the primaries will go – that is, if they are a useless liturgy, an announced nomination will be made or, surprisingly, they will become competitive – they could arrive as early as the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primaries.
If Trump wins both with a large advantage, his opponents will have little use for the longer pauses between one round and the next to make up for the deficit. But if he were to be defeated in one or both states, or win by a narrow margin, then – explains Putnam – the anti-Trump forces will be able to exploit the long pauses to try to unify the front around a single candidate.
A very crowded party, the field of candidates for the Republican nomination has progressively narrowed, due to ua series of waivers, starting with that of Mike Pence, Trump's former vice president who on January 6 refused to participate in the plot to steal Joe Biden's victory. Tim Scott, the only African-American Republican senator elected in Haley's South Carolina, also retired.
Among the candidates still in the running and with a slight chance of gaining visibility, there is a political outsider, Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur who makes his battle against 'woke' liberalism his strong point. He is also the son of Indian immigrants. Instead, Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, is an experienced politician who went from being a great ally of Trump to his heated critic for his protests over alleged electoral fraud in 2020.
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