Former President Donald Trump cruised to an easy victory on Monday night in the Iowa caucuses, the lead off contest in the 2024 Republican presidential nominating calendar.
The Fox News Decision Desk made call for Trump at 8:31pm ET, a half an hour after the caucuses got underway across the Hawkeye State.
The former president’s lightning-fast win in Iowa gives him a crucial early victory in his bid to return to the White House.
“We want to thank the great people of Iowa,” Trump said in a caucus victory speech in Des Moines, the state’s capital and largest city.
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More than two hours after Trump’s victory was called, the Fox News Decision Desk projected that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would edge former ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for a distant second place behind Trump.
“They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us,” DeSantis said in a speech to supporters, as he referenced the onslaught on negative attacks and ads he faced from his rivals.
“Because of your support, in spite of all of that that they threw at us, everyone against us, we’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa,” he touted.
Multimillionaire biotech entrepreneur and first time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who relentlessly campaigned across Iowa in recent months, finished in a distant fourth place as the results from more than 1,600 precincts across the state were reported in to the Iowa GOP.
Sources confirmed to Fox News that Ramaswamy would suspend his campaign.
Trump, speaking with Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman after his victory was projected, said he was “greatly honored by such an early call.”
“It really is an honor that, minutes after, they’ve announced I’ve won—against very credible competition — great competition, actually,” Trump said.
Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita posted to social media a photo of the former president backstage at his Iowa campaign caucus night headquarters, along with his son, Donald Trump Jr., giving the thumbs up sign in front of a TV tuned to Fox News, with the chyron “TRUMP PROJECTED TO WIN IOWA CAUCUS.”
Trump made history last year as the first former or current president to be indicted for a crime, but his four indictments, including charges he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss, have only fueled his support among Republican voters.
And heading into Monday’s caucuses, Trump enjoyed a massive lead in public opinion polls in Iowa and in national surveys in the GOP nomination race.
Trump will likely end up winning by the largest margin in the history of Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses.
Trump was also on track to capture a majority of the vote in the caucuses. Rival campaigns and many political pundits had argued that if Trump failed to top 50% of the vote, he wouldn’t meet expectations.
Ahead of the caucuses, Trump and his campaign took aim at the high expectations he faced in Iowa.
“No one has ever won the Iowa caucus by more than 12%,” Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita told Fox News Digital on Saturday, as he pointed to the late Sen. Bob Dole’s 1988 caucus victory. “I think the public polls are a little rich.”
And Trump, speaking with reporters on Sunday, said “there seems to be something about 50%.”
“I think they’re doing it so that they can set a high expectation. So if we end up with 49%, which would be about 25 points bigger than anyone else ever got. They can say he had a failure, it was a failure. You know fake news,” he argued.
Trump, who narrowly lost the 2016 Iowa caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, assembled a formidable get-out-the-vote machine in the state over the past year.
LaCivita emphasized that the campaign put an emphasis on volunteer support.
“They know the area and they know who’s caucusing in their area and they’ll be following up with them, making sure they vote,” he told Fox News this past weekend. “Our focus and our premium has been on people.. and we think it’s going to bear fruit in a big way.”
DeSantis, who was convincingly re-elected to a second term as Florida governor 14 months ago, was once the clear alternative to Trump in the Republican White House race.
However, after a series of campaign setbacks over the summer and autumn, and after getting hammered by negative ads, DeSantis saw his support in the polls erode.
Heading into the caucuses, DeSantis was betting that his vaulted ground game in Iowa, which is heavily reliant on the aligned super PAC Never Back Down, would carry him across the finish line.
DeSantis, who made Iowa the major focus of his White House bid, predicted on “Fox News Sunday” that “we’re going to do well on Monday. We’ve got an unbelievable organization.”
And as the voters were still being counted, the DeSantis campaign emphasized that “they threw everything at Ron DeSantis. They couldn’t kill him. He is not only still standing, but he’s now earned his ticket out of Iowa. This is going to be a long battle ahead, but that is what this campaign is built for. The stakes are too high for this nation and we will not back down.”
The AP and numerous news networks projected Trump’s victory as people were still casting ballots at many caucus sites across Iowa.
The DeSantis campaign blasted the move, with spokesman Andrew Romeo charging that the early call was “absolutely outrageous” and claiming that “the media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example yet.”
Haley, who finished narrowly behind DeSantis, grabbed momentum during the autumn and caught up with DeSantis for second place in polls in Iowa and in national surveys in recent weeks.
She also surpassed DeSantis and surged to second place and narrowed the gap with Trump in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first primary and second overall contest in the GOP nominating calendar, eight days after Iowa’s caucuses.