Iowa Caucus results live: Trump claims early win while DeSantis takes second

Ron DeSantis’s campaign accused the media of “election interference” for projecting Donald Trump as the winner of the Iowa caucuses while voting was still taking place on Monday evening.

The Associated Press and other news organisations projected Mr Trump as the clear victor of the first contest in the Republican primary campaign just 30 minutes after voting began, with over 50 per cent of the vote.

Richard Hall has the story:

Anti-woke biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy also failed to cut into Mr Trump’s support even though he at times became a stand-in for the former president at the initial Republican primary debates that Mr Trump declined to attend.

Gustaf Kilander reports from Washington, DC:

Former president Donald Trump overwhelmingly won the Iowa caucuses on Monday evening in the first official contest of the Republican presidential primaries.

Mr Trump posted a double-digit victory in Iowa eight years after he lost the Iowa caucuses to Sen Ted Cruz of Texas. The former president far-outpaced his nearest competitor, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations in his administration.

Mr Trump’s victory in Iowa will break Bob Dole’s record for a margin of victory of 13 points in 1996 and George W Bush’s 10.5-point victory in 2000. Both candidates went on to become the Republican nominee for president, a future that seems all but certain for Mr Trump despite dozens of criminal charges against him.

Instead, she ended the night in a close third — all the while declaring that, despite Mr DeSantis pulling off his own sort-of victory, that it was now a “two-person race”.

She now heads to New Hampshire, boosted by her rising poll numbers but with her momentum blunted, at least to some degree, by the lack of a result here tonight.

John Bowden reports from Clive, Iowa: