Former President Donald Trump cruised to an easy victory on Monday night in the Iowa caucuses, the lead off contest in the 2024 Republican presidential nominating calendar.
The Fox News Decision Desk made call for Trump at 8:31pm ET, a half an hour after the caucuses got underway across the Hawkeye State.
The former president's lightning-fast win in Iowa gives him an early victory in his bid to return to the White House.
The big unanswered question is whether former ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would finish a distant second place behind Trump.
CLICK HERE FOR LIVE IOWA CAUCUS UPDATES FROM FOX NEWS
Multimillionaire biotech entrepreneur and first time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has relentlessly campaigned across Iowa in recent months, stood in a distant fourth place as the results from more than 1,600 precincts across the state were reported in to the Iowa GOP.
"I feel great," Trump told Fox News Digital's Brooke Singman minutes after his victory was called by numerous networks. "I am greatly honored by such an early call."
"It really is an honor that, minutes after, they’ve announced I’ve won—against very credible competition — great competition, actually," Trump said.
Trump made history last year as the first former or current president to be indicted for a crime, but his four indictments, including charges he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss, have only fueled his support among Republican voters.
And heading into Monday's caucuses, Trump enjoyed a massive lead in public opinion polls in Iowa and in national surveys in the GOP nomination race.
Trump will likely end up winning by the largest margin in the history of Iowa's Republican presidential caucuses.
But a big question as Monday night unfolded is whether Trump will capture a majority of the vote in the caucuses. Rival campaigns and many political pundits argued that if Trump failed to top 50% of the vote, he wouldn't meet expectations.
Ahead of the caucuses, Trump and his campaign took aim at the high expectations he faced in Iowa.
"No one has ever won the Iowa caucus by more than 12%," Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita told Fox News Digital on Saturday, as he pointed to the late Sen. Bob Dole's 1988 caucus victory. "I think the public polls are a little rich."
And Trump, speaking with reporters on Sunday, said "there seems to be something about 50%."
"I think they're doing it so that they can set a high expectation. So if we end up with 49%, which would be about 25 points bigger than anyone else ever got. They can say he had a failure, it was a failure. You know fake news," he argued.
Trump, who narrowly lost the 2016 Iowa caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, assembled a formidable get-out-the-vote machine in the state over the past year.
DeSantis, who was convincingly re-elected to a second term as Florida governor 14 months ago, was once the clear alternative to Trump in the Republican White House race.
However, after a series of campaign setbacks over the summer and autumn, and after getting hammered by negative ads, DeSantis saw his support in the polls erode.
Haley grabbed momentum during the autumn and caught up with DeSantis for second place in polls in Iowa and in national surveys in recent weeks.
Haley also surpassed DeSantis and surged to second place and narrowed the gap with Trump in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first primary and second overall contest in the GOP nominating calendar, eight days after Iowa's caucuses.
