The final efforts of candidates in the Republican primaries of Iowa, the first electoral event of the year in the United States, to mobilize their supporters, came up against the harsh winter conditions on Saturday which caused a cascade of flight cancellations and obstruct road traffic. The big favorite, former President Donald Trump, whose meetings on Saturday across this Midwest (central) state were canceled, assured in a video message to Republican voters that he would arrive “Saturday evening or in these waters” for the last two days of the campaign. The cold wave sweeping the entire state, described as “dangerous” by the American authorities, is “perhaps a good thing because our supporters are more motivated than anyone else”, he added.
Because the whole challenge for the candidates is to campaign in such conditions and above all to convince their voters to vote on Monday evening for this first meeting of the big primary ball. Temperatures in the capital Des Moines were around -17°C on Saturday and were expected to drop by more than 10 degrees overnight. The streets were deserted on Saturday, except for people engaged in snow removal operations, according to AFP journalists. Most of the flights supposed to transport the thousands of journalists, activists and campaign volunteers who came to attend the first major meeting of the 2024 presidential election have been canceled or redirected to neighboring states.
Virtual meeting
Former US Ambassador to the UN under President Trump, Nikki Haley, held two meetings in the state on Saturday. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has scheduled an afternoon meeting in Des Moines. The forty-year-old, who is currently in third place in the Republican polls, still hopes to be able to eat into Donald Trump’s dizzying lead. The billionaire’s campaign team organized a virtual meeting in the evening.
Donald Trump, four times criminally charged, in particular for having illegally attempted to reverse the results of the 2020 election, is counting on a resounding victory in Iowa to set in motion a dynamic ensuring that he is quickly designated candidate Republicans against Democratic outgoing President Joe Biden in November. Those around him are therefore urging the local authorities to do everything to “facilitate the conduct of the vote” on Monday evening.
Beyond Iowa, much of the country has been hit in recent days by heavy rain and snow brought by a winter storm that left several dead and deprived hundreds of thousands of homes of electricity. 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.