Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: KEVIN DIETSCH / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP 22:18 p.m. on January 13, 2024

A winter storm has been wreaking havoc in the US state of Iowa since Friday, three days before the first election of the year for Republicans. On January 15, this Midwestern state is set to kick off the big ball of primaries, in which Donald Trump is the clear favorite, if voters turn out to cast their ballots.

The last-ditch efforts of the candidates in the Iowa Republican primaries, the first election of the year in the United States, to mobilize their supporters, were on Saturday confronted by the harshness of winter that has caused a cascade of flight cancellations and hampered road traffic. The front-runner, former President Donald Trump, whose rallies across the Midwestern state on Saturday were canceled, said in a video message to Republican voters that he would arrive "Saturday night or in those waters" for the final two days of campaigning. The cold snap sweeping across the state, described as "dangerous" by U.S. authorities, is "maybe a good thing because our supporters are more motivated than anyone else," he added.

Because the challenge for the candidates is to campaign in such conditions and above all to convince their voters to go and vote on Monday evening for this first meeting of the great ball of the primaries. Temperatures in the capital Des Moines were around -17°C on Saturday and were expected to drop by more than 10 degrees overnight. Streets were deserted on Saturday, except for people engaged in snow removal operations, according to AFP journalists. Most of the flights that were supposed to carry the thousands of journalists, activists and campaign volunteers who came to attend the first major event of the 2024 presidential election have been cancelled or redirected to neighbouring states.

Virtual meeting

The former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President Trump, Nikki Haley, held two meetings Saturday in the state. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has scheduled an afternoon rally in Des Moines. The 40-year-old, who is currently in third place in the Republican polls, still hopes to be able to nibble away at Donald Trump's dizzying lead. The billionaire's campaign team held a virtual meeting in the evening.

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Donald Trump, who has been charged with four criminal charges, including for illegally trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, is counting on a resounding victory in Iowa to set in motion a dynamic that will ensure that he will be quickly nominated as the Republicans' nominee against Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden in November. In his entourage, the local authorities are therefore urged to do everything possible to "facilitate the conduct of the vote" on Monday evening.

Beyond Iowa, much of the country has been battered in recent days by heavy rain and snow brought by a winter storm that has killed several people and left hundreds of thousands of homes without power. An airport in the nation's third-largest city, Chicago, was closed Friday due to snow and ice, with hundreds of flights canceled across the region and nearly 2,000 nationwide.