Icy battle for democracy in Iowa with Trump expected to win caucuses in an avalanche

A cold coming we had of it. Icy winds blow across the plains, numbing the face and cutting to the bone. Stranded cars and tractor trailers lie abandoned at the side of highways. Snow is piled high on the side of every road in the state capital, where giant icicles hang off buildings. Candidates’ yard signs and children’s playgrounds have been enveloped by a white blanket.

Welcome to Iowa, often described as the centre of the political universe at this stage of the US electoral cycle, but currently feeling more like the outer reaches of our solar system.

It is here, amid wind chills of around -40F (-40C), that Monday will witness the dawn of the 2024 presidential election, the first since the insurrection of 6 January 2021, when US democracy itself hung by a thread.

The brutal weather has proved timely for reporters in need of something to talk about ahead of some particularly anti-climactic Iowa caucuses. Democrats are not actively engaged this time, while the Republican race has never been such a foregone conclusion: Donald Trump in an avalanche.

The only suspenseful questions on what is expected to be the coldest caucus night ever are: will Trump exceed 50% of the vote and will Nikki Haley, a former US ambassador to the UN, eclipse the one-time rising star Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida?

A third place finish could snuff out DeSantis’s singularly joyless effort, which has come to resemble a death march in a state that demands retail politics in its purest form. At an event at his campaign office in a drab building in West Des Moines on Saturday, a Queen hit boomed out from loudspeakers: “Don’t stop me now / I’m having such a good time, I’m having a ball.”

The harsh reality is that this is still Trump’s party and