As Iowa Republicans gather on Monday to choose their presidential candidate, a host of big questions surround the potential return of Donald Trump and the future of democracy in the US.
Ongoing court cases against Trump, the frontrunner, loom large. Threats against elections officials and judges in Trump-related cases raise the possibility of political violence in a tense election year. For some Republican voters, the belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump remains a core part of their ideology.
Trump also faces the prospect of being removed from the ballot over his role in the 6 January insurrection. Legal decisions using the 14th amendment as a basis for removing the former president from the contest will be heard by the US supreme court in February.
The former president has vowed to retaliate against his enemies, go after Joe Biden and his family, and weaponize the justice department for his political goals in a second term in office predicted to center around retribution.
Trump’s legal liabilities and heated rhetoric are not turning off his base of voters – they remain steadfast supporters of the Maga movement and think the cases against him are part of a conspiracy to keep him out of office. For voters choosing other candidates, though, the former president’s court woes and penchant for whipping up chaos have turned them off.
A poll of likely Republican caucus voters in Iowa found that 61% said their support of Trump would not be affected by a potential criminal conviction before the general election. The NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll says 19% of Republican caucus-goers in Iowa go even further – they would be more likely to back Trump if he is convicted – though 18% said the opposite.
Jamie Copher, a 52-year-old Trump supporter who works in sales and marketing, voted for the first time in 2020 for Trump because he “ran this country like a business”, she said at a rally in Indianola, Iowa. She thinks Biden did not receive 81m legal votes in the 2020 election and that the election was a fraud, but she does not think the 2024 election could be stolen because “too many Americans are going to be watching”. (There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.)
“I heard before that they were going to steal the 2020 election and, to be honest with you, I didn’t think any Democrat was smart enough to be able to steal an election and didn’t realise they’ve been stealing elections since pretty much before I was alive. I’ve learned a lot about the election system and I love it so I’m getting more involved locally,” she said.
The potential of Trump being removed from the ballot because of the 14th amendment will not prevent Copher from voting for him.
“I’m writing that man’s name in and I don’t care if he has a VP or not because I believe he never conceded. He’s still my president.”
Cathy Kurtinitis, a 69-year-old Trump supporter, described January 6 as “overblown” and said the 2020 election should have been investigated more than it was, pointing out that Biden did not campaign in person much or draw the crowds Trump did.
Asked if she was confident that Trump would beat Biden in 2024, Kurtinitis replied: “Apart from the machinations of the deep state, yes.”
Trump’s supporters have not been put off by his language in recent months on the campaign trail, where he has vowed to be a dictator for a day after resuming office and called his political opponents “vermin”.
Gary Leffler, 62, does not buy in to the notion that Trump would be a dictator. “Well, if he was going to do that he would have done it the first time, so what we say in Iowa is that’s a bunch of hogwash.”
For the Republicans who are trying to avoid a Trump return, the concerns around the frontrunner are more of a turn-off. They do not like how his words tend to require clarification after the fact, though they are not always sure if he intends to incite violence or means exactly what he says. And they are looking for a future president who does not bring such baggage, which they see as a distraction, even if they also believe the 2020 election was not fair and the legal cases are politically motivated.
The former UN ambassador Nikki Haley’s supporters were more likely to say a conviction would hinder their support of Trump in a general election in the NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll.
Haley, seen as likely to place second in Iowa, has more crossover appeal to moderate and independent voters. Some of her supporters in Iowa said they did not believe the 2020 election was stolen and thought those involved in the insurrection were rightly held accountable, but that the court cases against Trump could backfire and only solidify his support.
Jim Baker, a 61-year-old from San Diego who came to Iowa to help Haley’s campaign in the final days of the caucus, said he thought Trump lost to Biden, but that Biden had done a “poor job” as president.
The 2024 election should be about finding the right person to lead the country forward, Baker said. “Donald Trump is not that person.”
Still, he was not sure if the threat of political violence could come true or if it was more of Trump’s rhetoric. “There’s a lot of bark,” he said. “I don’t know how much bite there is. There’s a lot of bark. Yeah, he loves to bark and he loves to thrive on barking.”
Supporters of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, were less likely to turn against Trump if he is convicted compared with Haley supporters, according to the NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll.
Some supporters of DeSantis, who typically polls in third place in the Republican contest, said the prospect of electing Trump again, particularly while he faces ongoing civil and criminal cases, was too risky. Some said they were tired of the Trumpian brand of politics.
Kent Christen, a 53-year-old analyst from Cedar Rapids, said the former president was careless when he talks, though he did not think Trump was necessarily telling people to be violent.
“I think the issue is there’s not much delta between his brain and his mouth,” Christen said. “And it’s more and more difficult these days for people to clean up his message behind him. He gives people too many opportunities. Chaos follows him. He’s like an instrument of chaos. I’m kind of tired of all that. That’s the biggest reason I’m tired of him.”
Amy Christen, a Cedar Rapids special education teacher who attended a DeSantis rally this weekend, said she did not think a Trump loss would lead to political violence, but she thought the left could become violent instead.
“I will definitely see violence if Biden loses. I don’t know why the left – we saw the summer of love – we saw it in Seattle, in Portland, in Kenosha, we’ve seen it in Minneapolis,” she said, referring to the 2020 protests after George Floyd’s murder. “They’re angry. They’re violent.”
