U.S. presidential election heats up as frigid Iowa tests Trump

Mr. Trump and his leading rivals, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, were forced to cancel appearances in the home stretch as the threat to Monday’s turnout added intrigue to a campaign season that is already something of an unknown quantity.

Voters venture into sub-zero temperatures on Monday to kick off the Republican presidential nomination race with the Iowa caucuses, the first major test of whether runaway front-runner Donald Trump is as much of a sure thing as he appears.

With a commanding lead in polls, the ex-president is expected easily to win the Midwestern state’s first-in-the-nation vote as he bids to be the Republican standard-bearer against President Joe Biden in November.

But Iowans may have to contend with the coldest conditions in the modern era of presidential election campaigns, with blizzards and a potential wind chill of -26 degrees Fahrenheit (-32 degrees Celsius) forecast.

Mr. Trump and his leading rivals, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, were forced to cancel appearances in the home stretch as the threat to Monday’s turnout added intrigue to a campaign season that is already something of an unknown quantity.

Despite his apparent strength, Mr. Trump has been indicted four times since he was last a candidate, and is preparing for the potential collapse of his business empire in his native New York in a civil fraud trial.

“If DeSantis’s massive ground effort, coupled with a recent Haley surge, can drag Trump under 50% by several points, that will be the first meaningful sign that Trump can be defeated,” said political analyst Alex Avetoom, who worked on Republican John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“However, this paradigm-shifting reality -- that Trump could be defeated -- happens if, and only if, the rest of the field consolidates behind one anti-Trump candidate.”