With severe winter weather set to impact Iowa around the same time as the state’s GOP presidential caucus, political analysts have weighed in on how the expected blizzard might affect the prospects of former President Donald Trump and others.
The Iowa caucus is set to take place on Monday, marking the official start of the primary season for the 2024 presidential election. As the first major contest for the Republican primary process, it is often considered a bellwether test for candidates with a shot at winning the nomination, though success in the Hawkeye State has not always indicated the eventual party nominee.
The caucus will also notably mark the first direct test of Trump’s electoral strength since the 2020 presidential election when he lost to Joe Biden. While polls indicate that he is the favorite to secure the GOP nomination, polls have become increasingly unreliable in recent years.
Now, a major winter storm is set to rip through Iowa around the same time as the caucus, leading to concerns over a weakening of voter turnout. Different political analysts have given differing views on how the weather will impact Trump’s chances in the state. Appearing on MSNBC on Sunday, Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser at The Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded by former Republicans who oppose Trump, said that the situation favored the former president.
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“This time around, I think, if I were Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, I would be cursing the weather gods, because they’ve worked very hard to get people enthusiastic enough to get out and caucus,” she said. “It’s already a serious time commitment to go and caucus, it’s not like you just go in and cast your ballot, it takes several hours, it’s a whole thing…But the people who are the most engaged, the most enthusiastic are the ones who will brave the weather to go do this, and that’s clearly Trump supporters.”
Setmayer predicted a weakened turnout overall for the caucuses that would benefit Trump, though she also noted that the former president would likely not need the advantage to win.
Conversely, during an appearance on Meet the Press, NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd said the weather would favor Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, noting that “weird things happen” in elections with low turnouts.
“Donald Trump has benefitted from big turnouts,” Todd said. “The higher the turnout has been in general elections…the more Trump voters have come. So, is there a complacency issue that Trump has to worry about?… It should be a real advantage for Ron DeSantis. Here’s the guy who has been building an organization longer than any other campaign, he’s got the [Iowa] governor [Kim Reynolds] on his side who’s got a built-in organization. This is why you build an organization, is when the weather drops unexpectedly: are you going to get your people out? So in theory, I think this is all setting up really well right now for Ron DeSantis.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s office via email for comment.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, a poll from The Des Moines Register, NBC News, and Mediacom Iowa published on Saturday found a considerable lack of enthusiasm for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s candidacy in Iowa amid the icy weather, which one pollster called “on the edge of jaw-dropping.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.