Iowa entrance polls show MAGA fans turned out for caucus: Live updates

The Missouri caucuses were called by the AP for Mr Trump at 12.40pm ET on Saturday. After Mr Trump won all the delegates at the Michigan convention caucuses, the news agency called the Idaho race at 6.58pm ET.

Both Idaho and Missouri cancelled the Republican primary to hold caucuses instead, handing control of the state nomination to a small number of party members.

Idaho last held caucuses in 2012, when only 45,000 people participated – about 20 per cent of all registered Republicans in the state. On Saturday, fewer than 40,000 votes were cast.

The timing could also have been a problem for some, with Idaho, which is in both the Mountain and Pacific time zones, holding its caucuses at 12.30pm or 1.30pm, while Missouri, which is in the Central time zone, held its caucuses at 10am local time.

A majority of voters – 73 per cent – say that President Joe Biden is too old to be an effective president. Forty-two per cent say the same about former President Donald Trump.

In a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted late last month, 47 per cent of survey respondents strongly agreed with the statement that Mr Biden is too old to be effective, while 26 per cent somewhat agreed. Fourteen per cent somewhat disagreed, and 11 per cent strongly disagreed.

For Mr Trump, 21 per cent strongly agreed that he’s too old, another 21 per cent somewhat agreed, 23 per cent somewhat disagreed, and 32 per cent strongly disagreed.

Concerns about Mr Biden’s age now threaten his re-election effort, even as both he and Mr Trump are showing signs of their age, often appearing to mix things up during public appearances. Mr Biden, the oldest serving president in US history, is 81, and Mr Trump, the third oldest president in US history, is 77.

Mr Trump was 74 at the end of his presidency, while the second oldest president, Ronald Reagan, was 77. He died in 2004 at the age of 93 after struggling with Alzheimer’s disease.

A majority of those who supported Mr Biden in 2020 – 61 per cent – now think he’s too old to be effective, according to the poll.

Nineteen per cent of those who voted for Mr Biden last time around and 13 per cent of those planning on voting for him again said in the survey that he’s too old to handle the job of being the commander-in-chief.

Mr Biden’s doctor said after his annual physical this week that he “continues to be fit for duty”.

Physician to the President Dr Kevin O’Connor wrote that Mr Biden is “a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief”.

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After announcing that the faces of January 6 rioters would be blurred to avoid their prosecution by the US Department of Justice, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared to reverse course on Friday, saying that it was taking too long.

Last year, Mr Johnson appeared to admit that House Republicans were protecting people who broke into the US Capitol, telling reporters in December that “we have to blur some faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against, and to be charged by the DOJ, and to have other, you know, concerns and problems.”

On Friday, with the release of 5,000 hours of raw footage, his office announced that rioters’ faces won’t be blurred “given the significant logistic hurdles involved and the importance of getting this work completed as responsibly and efficiently as possible”.

Alex Woodward reports:

Presidential candidate Nikki Haley was grilled by Kristen Welker on Meet the Press about whether or not she would stand by the RNC pledge she took to endorse the eventual winner of the Republican presidential primary.

“Do you still feel bound by that pledge?” Welker asked.

Donald Trump is currently leading in the GOP primary. Haley would be expected to endorse Trump if he is the nominee and she sticks to the pledge.

After skirting around the question, Haley finally answered Welker’s question directly: “No, I think I’ll make what decision I want to make.”

All three of the contests on Saturday were caucuses, which are more time-consuming and require more voter engagement, possibly benefitting Mr Trump as he has many fervent followers.

Caucuses usually have lower turnout than primaries since voters have to arrive at a specific time and stick around for a while to take part in the more labour-intensive process compared to pulling a lever in a primary.

Prominent Iowa pollster Ann Selzer spoke to The Independent about the caucus process late last year ahead of the first-in-the-nation contest. While caucuses vary from state to state, it’s usually the case that voters listen to a speech and then declare their support.

“Caucuses are designed for things to happen in the room on caucus night — there’s a moment in time where a representative from each campaign stands up and makes their pitch — they get a couple of minutes to do it,” she said, noting the importance of “person-to-person politicking at the last possible moment”.

“If you don’t know how to get the votes, [how to] get your name written on a piece of paper, you can lose that way,” she added at the time.

But the Trump campaign appears to have learned from its previous experiences, handily winning all the contests so far, caucuses and primaries alike.

Super Tuesday, the biggest day of the US presidential primary season, arrives early next month and promises to have a decisive if perhaps somewhat anticlimactic impact on the respective Republican and Democratic races.

As it stands, Donald Trump looks all but certain to be the GOP’s presidential candidate once again in 2024, having already chalked up big wins in the Iowa and US Virgin Islands caucuses and the New Hampshire and Nevada primaries.

All but one of his challengers have fallen away, leaving only the well-funded but under-performing ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley still swinging.

But even she may not make it to Super Tuesday (although she has promised she will), as the next Republican primary takes place in her home state of South Carolina and current polling indicates the Palmetto State’s former governor could be in for another trouncing on her home turf, a further humiliation after she scored fewer votes than the “none of these candidates” box on Nevada ballot papers.

“Is there any way we can call the election for next Tuesday?” a cocky Mr Trump gloated on stage in Las Vegas after that result.

“That’s all I want. I want to call the election for next Tuesday.”

However, if Ms Haley can somehow conjure a surprise victory in either South Carolina on 24 February or Michigan on 27 February, it will be game on for Super Tuesday and we could find ourselves with a very interesting evening indeed.

The Democratic contest is looking equally one-sided, with President Joe Biden seemingly nailed-on to be his party’s candidate again as he seeks a second term in the White House, despite concerns about his advanced age and consistently poor polling.

Following the withdrawal of Marianne Williamson, Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips remains the president’s last remaining rival and is surely too low-profile to make an impact, President Biden having comfortably won the New Hampshire primary without even appearing on Granite State ballots thanks to a grassroots write-in campaign.

Here’s everything you need to know about Super Tuesday in good time for its arrival.

Mr Trump has won every state in the Republican primaries so far. Ms Haley is his last challenger after Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out in January after the Iowa caucuses.

The former president remains the favourite of Republican voters and is leading President Joe Biden in some swing states, according to some recent polling.

However, other polls suggest that a sizeable number of Republicans, and America’s unaffiliated voters, won’t vote for Mr Trump in November.

Mr Trump is four points ahead of President Joe Biden in a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted in late February.

The poll, released on Saturday, shows Mr Trump at 48 per cent and Mr Biden at 44 per cent among likely voters – among registered voters, Mr Trump had 48 and Mr Biden 43 per cent.

In a hypothetical matchup with Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador and the last remaining Republican challenger to Mr Trump, Mr Biden came in at 37 per cent to Ms Haley’s 46 per cent.

Forty-seven per cent of likely voters said they were strongly disapproving of Mr Biden’s handling of the job.