US Election 2016: Will Donald Trump’s coalition of the fed-up turn their anger into votes?

Eric Bowen is the reason that a reality television star and property tycoon may be on the cusp of a moment nothing less than remarkable.

The 53-year-old plumber is angry, fed up. He voted for Barack Obama eight years ago, but nothing has changed. Only a businessman can fix things, he says.

Just as dismayed is Mike Shamsie. In fact, the 58-year-old from across the river in Illinois would admit to being furious, to have had it up-to-here with the politicians who have done this to the country. Trish Duffy is not happy either. She is not entirely sure who she will vote for, but she has been drawn to see the man who “talks to this anger”.

More than seven months after he announced, with characteristic showmanship and self-assurance that he was running for the White House, Donald Trump has been carried to the Republicans’ pole position on a wave of frustration and disgruntlement. But this evening is a crucial milestone in his hoped-for trajectory to the White House: the first time anyone will actually get to cast a vote for him in the 2016 presidential election.

The final poll before tonight’s Iowa caucus, published late on 30 January, put the 69-year-old a full five points clear of his nearest Republican rival, Senator Ted Cruz, in the state.

And even if he was not about to thank God for his strong showing, Mr Trump was happy to suggest he had been borne to this point by the support of evangelical Christians as he addressed supporters – and the simply curious – in the town of Davenport. Sitting on stage with Jerry Falwell Jr, the president of Liberty University and son of the late preacher and activist Jerry Falwell Sr, Mr Trump embraced the endorsement from a section of the electorate he has courted vigorously.

Two weeks ago, Mr Trump took the pilgrimage made by all Republican candidates to the university’s Virginia campus, and addressed students in an attempt to burnish his religious credentials. As it was, he rather fluffed his lines, mis-speaking the name of one of the Bible’s chapters, leading some on the religious right to question how genuine was his embrace of God. Yet it was sufficient to earn him the backing of Mr Falwell, something rivals such as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz surely coveted.

On stage, Mr Trump thanked Mr Falwell, who he said was certainly “a man of faith”. “Maybe I’m a little bit not as good as he is in that way. But I’m good,” he added.

Earlier, he described Mr Falwell’s comment that of all the Republican candidates he was the most like the late Mr Falwell Sr, who died in 2007, as “the best endorsement for me”. Mr Falwell, who stressed he endorsed Mr Trump purely on his own behalf, not his college’s, added: “I did so because the country is at that point.”

Yet if the evangelicals have helped push Mr Trump to where he stands, both polls and numerous interviews with his supporters in Iowa suggest that the billionaire has made the frustrated voter his bedrock. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll suggested that 73 per cent of voters intending to cast their vote in November’s presidential election believe the US is heading in the wrong direction.

Most strikingly, such disaffected people make up a majority of the supporters of both Mr Trump (87 per cent) and the Democratic contender Bernie Sanders (54 per cent), who has pushed himself to within a couple of points of Hillary Clinton.

Such individuals include men such as Jim Bodenpick, a 78-year-old who was being yelled at by his wife to hurry into the theatre where Mr Trump was about to speak late on 30 January. Mr Bodenpick was concerned about the economy, and about what he said was a government planning to declare “martial law” and take away all the guns. In all his many years, he said, he had never seen everything so “upside down”.

It may be tempting, especially from afar, to mock or question such comments and the belief that salvation rests in the hands of a man previously best known around the world as the host of The Apprentice. But in a nation of growing inequality and crumbling infrastructure, of surging globalism and mounting uncertainty, the frustrations expressed are real.

As the polls underscore, the same emotions and sense of dislocation are expressed by many of those turning out in support of Mr Sanders, though his thoughts on the solutions to America’s challenges may be very different. (One man, Marshall Lang, 28, who attended a Sanders rally in Davenport the night before, said if he were not backing the Vermont senator he would be voting for Mr Trump. “I’m a nationalist,” he explained.)

Mr Trump describes his entry to the race as nothing less cinematic than a rescue story. He did not particularly want to run for the White House, he told the crowd, but rather he and his wife were reluctantly acting out of a sense of duty, and in response to the plight of the nation.

He said the afternoon on 16 June when he swept down the stairs at Trump Tower in New York to meet the media and announce his candidacy was like “the Oscars”.

“I took a deep breath. I said let’s do this,” Mr Trump claimed. “What is happening to our country is so bad.”

And when asked about his solutions to the nation’s woes, such lack of doubt electrifies his answers. “We will beat Isis very quickly folks.” President Trump would have secured the release of the prisoners held by Iran “in 48 hours”. “We’re going to bring the jobs from the countries that have taken them. We’re going to bring these jobs back.”

And so it went on: confronting Muslim extremists, forcing Apple to manufacture its products in the US, promoting gun ownership to prevent attacks like that in Paris that took 130 lives, handling immigration better. “You don’t have a country without borders.”

The angry and disgruntled and frustrated people cheered and clapped, and got to their feet and waved placards.

Donald Trump, the man who may yet make the journey from reality television to the most powerful office in the world, smiled and waved. “You’re good people.” On the evening of 1 February, he will find out whether they number as many as the polls say.