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At minus 30 degrees, things are not good enough to save the country. And 30 degrees below zero is what the thermometer marked in the capital of Iowa, Des Moines, yesterday Sunday at eight in the morning (three in the afternoon in Spanish peninsular time). Improving on the present, the wind made the wind chill - that is, what the skin feels as true temperature - 50 below zero. The Republican primaries that begin today in Iowa have, thus, as protagonists not so much politicians as cold and snow.

Mother Nature has prevailed over politics with this glacial surge just when the Earth warming is most being talked about, and five of the six candidates vying for the White House nomination have suspended most of their events. Donald Trump took to the Internet on Saturday night to address his supporters, while former South Carolina governor and former U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley pulled phone calls. Yesterday, Sunday morning, however, the snow had stopped and at 12:25 Donald Trump had a rally in the town of Indianol, at <> below zero.

Temperature goes hand in hand with surveys. The 30 degrees below freezing are also the points that Trump has in the polls ahead of Haley, the candidate with the second highest voting intention. And the 50-degree wind chill equals the percentage of the vote that the former president aspires to.

Snow has conquered Iowa, and Trump the Republican Party. With 91 criminal charges under his belt, Trump is on track for the biggest victory ever achieved in Iowa by a non-presidential candidate.

But the cold snap has introduced some uncertainty. Although it is expected that all roads will be open today, the wind chill will be 40 below zero and driving at more than 30 kilometers per hour is foolhardy. Add to that the fact that caucuses – the caucuses in which primaries are discussed and voted on – take time, and turnout at the polls is virtually certain to be low.

Start of the campaign

The Trump campaign has already begun using the storm for electoral purposes. On Wednesday at 12 p.m., Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake explained to EL MUNDO at the Des Moines airport that "they are going to say that Trump is less popular than what the polls indicate because many people are not going to be able to vote." At the same time, conspiracies, which are an essential part of the Republican Party, had determined that the bad weather was a consequence not of winter, but of the power of Trump's enemies.


That's how conspiracy theoristLaura Loomer had posted a message on the social network X (formerly Twitter) saying that Nikki Haley's followers had altered Iowa's climate through the HAARP upper-atmosphere research system to cause a snowfall that would hurt Trump. At Trump's rally in Indianola, some argued that the cold weather was not Haley's fault, but the fault of the Davos globalists, who begin their annual meeting today and don't want the world to know how Trump is going to return power to the citizens.

Finally, at a rally of Vivek Ramaswamy - which has no chance - a woman blamed the cold on the particle accelerator on the Swiss-French border, also put at the service of the meteorological offensive of the enemies of freedom. There are multiple interpretations that do not include, curiously, the possibility that Iowa will be frightfully cold in winter, but that describe a panorama, if not meteorological, then psychological, of many voters in these primaries.


Whether it's the work of nature or Davos, the storm doesn't benefit either Trump or Ramaswamy, who have more support in rural areas. Of course, these are not very significant from a demographic point of view. Iowa is a huge producer of corn, but the state's agriculture is dominated by large landowners who control immense, fully mechanized plantations in which GM cereals are grown according to guidelines set by computer programs.

So, while Haley and DeSantis may be able to scratch some percentage thanks to the risk of Trump voter freezing — compounded by the fact that Trump supporters tend to be older — the fish — or, in the case of Iowa, corn — is already sold. Trump is going to sweep a state he lost in 2016, in his first battle for the White House.

The only hope for her rivals is a miracle that was perfectly summed up by Jennifer Turner, a disenchanted 41-year-old Trumpist who is a single mother and works at a flower shop in the Des Moines metropolitan town of Urbandale. "I don't believe in polls. I've never had one done to me and I don't know anyone who has had it done, so I think they have a trick, and that Trump is going to do worse than you think," he told this newspaper shortly before his candidate, Ron DeSantis, began what was going to be his last rally before the suspension of the campaign due to the cold.

But you didn't have to go to the polls to be skeptical of Turner's thesis. There were about 450 people at DeSantis' rally. Of those, about 120 were journalists, and another 80 were campaign members and volunteers. The audience did not exceed 250 voters, that is, just over 50% of the attendees. In Indianola, Trump has gathered 1,000 supporters, even though it is a town of 15,800 people and DesMoines a city of 700,000. The polls may lie, as Turner says. But attendance at rallies is hard to manipulate.

  • United States
  • Donald Trump
  • U.S. Republican Party