On Monday, Jan. 15, the state of Iowa held their caucuses for the 2024 Republican presidential primaries. NBC repeated that former president Donald Trump won with 51 percent of the vote and gained a whole 20 delegates. Ron DeSantis, who came in second, won only 21.2 percent of the population and gained only eight delegates, while Nikki Haley came in third with 19.1 percent of the vote and seven delegates. Despite this victory, MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough said that Iowa was actually bad news for the former president despite his victory. The Hill reports Scarborough saying that 50 percent of Iowa Republicans refusing to vote for Trump was ill news for someone seeking to win the general election; despite this, however, Trump maintains a comfortable lead over his Republican opponents.
Trump’s sound victory in the Iowa caucuses prompted Republican candidates Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy to drop out. The Guardian reported Hutchison saying that his principled message failed to gain support in the state of Iowa. He would, however, stand by his campaign. As a firm anti-Trump Republican, Hutchinson would defend his words to jeering and booing crowds. As NBC News reports, Ramaswamy’s poor showing in Iowa convinced him to drop out of the race and endorse Trump. Only two other candidates, excluding Trump, remain: South Carolina Governor and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, both of which came under fire recently after statements regarding racism and the United States.
CNN reports that during an interview with Fox News, Nikki Haley said that “America was not a racist country.” Her campaign later corrected the statement by saying that while America has seen racism, it is not a fundamentally racist country. During a CNN town hall DeSantis echoed Haley’s statement by saying “the U.S. is not a racist country” and continued by saying that the United States was built upon a system of equality among all. He went on to say that this equality was not universally applied and that the U.S. has had to overcome many flaws to get to the place where it is today, writes The Hill. This controversy comes only days after Haley failed to cite slavery as the cause of the American Civil War. The Washington Post writes that Haley’s knack for avoiding controversy seems to have come to an end. The contentious comments made during the New Hampshire town hall could alienate some much-needed New Hampshire voters. Haley went on to correct her previous statement about the Civil War but would incite more scrutiny after saying, “I had Black friends growing up.”
FiveThirtyEight shows Trump leading the polls significantly, but if either DeSantis or Haley prevails in their consistent jockeying for second place soon they might gain the momentum to seriously contest the former president. In the midst of such critical elections, it is important to stay informed and trust in the election process.
