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They are fighting for second place behind Donald Trump: Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis

Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP

In the US state of Iowa, the Republican presidential primaries begin on Monday (19 p.m. local time, Tuesday 2 a.m. CET). According to polls, former President Donald Trump is the clear favorite to challenge incumbent Joe Biden in the November election. His strongest rivals within the party are former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Republicans in Iowa vote in the traditional form of caucus, where party members meet in schools, churches, gymnasiums or living rooms. President Biden's Democrats, on the other hand, are voting in Iowa for the first time in an email process lasting several weeks. With them, Biden is practically a presidential candidate, he has no serious competitors. The primaries continue on January 23 in New Hampshire, when both Republicans and Democrats will vote.

The overview of the Republican field of candidates:

Donald Trump

The former president wants to move back into the White House and his chances are not bad. The series of indictments against the ex-president – including the storming of the Capitol in January 2021, the taking of classified documents from the White House and financial fraud – has not harmed his popularity among the right-wing base. On the contrary, the right-wing populist is portraying himself as the victim of a party-politically controlled judiciary and has thus even fuelled the cultic veneration he enjoys in large parts of his party.

In the polls for the Republican field, Trump has a huge lead with a nationwide average of over 60 percent. And whether his legal entanglements can still cause the 77-year-old to stumble in the race for the White House is currently not foreseeable. While the states of Colorado and Maine excluded Trump from the primaries for his role in the storming of Washington's Capitol in January 2021, California, Michigan and Minnesota decided otherwise and rejected such efforts.

The legal battle over Trump's primary bid will be decided by the country's Supreme Court, which has announced a hearing on February 8. On the Supreme Court, conservative justices are clearly in the majority – three of them were nominated by Trump.

Ron DeSantis

The arch-conservative governor of the state of Florida, Ron DeSantis, takes a tough line on migration policy, positioning himself to the right of Trump on the issue of abortion. DeSantis presents himself as a champion against a left-wing "woke" ideology. The 45-year-old was long considered Trump's most dangerous rival within the party and was harshly attacked by him. In the meantime, he is wrestling with Haley for second place behind Trump with poll ratings averaging around twelve percent.

DeSantis has fired employees several times and relaunched his campaign, but even these steps have not yet given his candidacy the final boost he wanted. Kim Reynolds, the popular governor of Iowa, supports DeSantis, which has had a positive effect in recent polls.

Nikki Haley

The daughter of Indian immigrants, she was formerly governor of the state of South Carolina and US ambassador to the UN under President Trump. Although she was part of Trump's government team, she is now distancing herself from the ex-president. The 51-year-old has openly criticized Trump's lie of "fraud" in the 2020 election, and she has also warned of "chaos" in the event of Trump's re-election. In the polls for the Republican primaries, Haley is averaging about 11.5 percent, according to the website »FiveThirtyEight«.

Haley has earned a reputation in the Republican Party as a solid conservative who is able to address issues affecting women and POC more credibly than many of her peers.

Vivek Ramaswamy

The 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur and millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy caused a stir last year with his provocative demands: The son of Indian immigrants wants to raise the voting age to 25 and dissolve the Federal Police FBI and the IRS. In the meantime, Ramaswamy has become quieter, and his poll numbers have plummeted into the low single digits. Ramaswamy is an ardent supporter of the former president. He announced that he would pardon Trump if elected.

Asa Hutchinson

Ramaswamy shares the status of the blatant outsider with Asa Hutchinson. The former governor of Arkansas launched his candidacy for the White House in April by calling for Trump to resign to deal with his court cases. Hutchinson, 73, has cited his experience at the helm of his deeply conservative state as proof that he can offer good policies to Republican voters with tax cuts and job-creation initiatives.

Hutchinson only qualified for the first Republican debate and received zero percent support in polls conducted by the Reuters news agency.

Ryan Binkley

Texas pastor and businessman Ryan Binkley is also polling at zero percent for Iowa. Binkley said he had "heard calls from the Lord about what is needed in our country" in recent years, prompting him to launch the presidential campaign. Topics of his election campaign include balancing the federal budget and reforming the immigration policy of the education system.

He criticized both leading Democrats and Republicans, telling the Des Moines Register in May 2023 that they were "really struggling to unite their own party, let alone their own country."

czl/AFP/Reuters