Blizzard freezes 2024 field in final sprint to Iowa caucuses

(CNN) — The blizzard that hit Iowa on Friday left the 2024 Republican presidential field frozen heading into the final weekend before Monday night’s caucuses, with candidates paring back their schedules and campaigns grappling with questions about whether people will turn out amid record-low temperatures.

Former President Donald Trump scrapped most of his Iowa campaign schedule this weekend, canceling three of the four rallies he’d planned to hold and announcing telephone events instead.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley – who polls suggest are battling for a second-place finish and an opportunity to claim momentum when the race shifts to New Hampshire on Tuesday – both canceled what was expected to be a busy day of campaigning Friday.

As a dangerous Arctic blast hits the central United States, Iowa is expected to have its coldest caucuses ever, and its coldest January day in at least five years, on Monday — with subzero temperatures and wind chills as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

Heading into a weekend that is traditionally jam-packed with candidates sprinting across Iowa, it’s not clear whether 2024 contenders will be able to hold campaign events at all — or whether voters will fight the frigid conditions to attend them.

The weather left Republican presidential contenders and their aides wondering aloud who would show up to the caucuses — and what their campaigns could do in the meantime.

“I definitely know I’m not in South Carolina anymore. It is beyond cold,” Haley said in a tele-town hall, addressing voters over the phone who she’d planned to meet in person in Fort Dodge.

She urged those on the call to wear layers Monday night, in case there are lines that stretch outdoors.

“I know it’s asking a lot of you to go out and caucus, but I also know we have a country to save. And I will be out there in the cold, and I know Iowans take this in a very serious way,” Haley said.

Haley’s campaign Friday night said she would hold events Saturday in Cedar Falls, Iowa City and Davenport.

DeSantis, at his Urbandale campaign headquarters alongside Texas Rep. Chip Roy, told reporters he isn’t sure whether the subzero temperatures will help or hurt him Monday night.

“Nobody can forecast what the turnout is going to be. Anyone that tells you they can do that is not being honest. It’s a major wildcard,” DeSantis said Friday.

DeSantis’ campaign and his super PAC, which has played an unprecedented role in organizing for DeSantis in the early-voting states, could play an especially important role, he said.

“The reason why you do an organization is because something like this can happen,” DeSantis said. “There’s a machinery that goes with a caucus, no matter what, but especially now with what the weather’s gonna be like.”

His best pitch to Iowans who might be deterred by the freezing temperatures: “You’re never going to have an opportunity to have your vote count more, pack more of a punch than on Monday night.”

He is scheduled to attend events in Atlantic, West Des Moines and Davenport. But DeSantis cancelled a planned stop in Waterloo.

“I’m a Florida boy, born and bred, and yet here I am in negative temperatures. I am not going to cancel – if people are willing to come out and hear from me, I’m going to show up all the way until the end of this caucus. You’re gonna see me everywhere,” DeSantis told the dozens of Iowans gathered to hear him speak in Council Bluffs, Iowa on Saturday.

“I can tell you this, if you’re willing to go out there and you’re willing to brave the elements on a cold, windy, snowy January night for me and do that for a few hours, I’ll fight for you for the next eight years and we will turn this country around,” he added.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson canceled an Iowa City meet-and-greet Friday night because the brewery at which it was going to be held had closed due to the weather. Instead, he attended Cinch World’s Toughest Rodeo in Des Moines.

Trump’s campaign kept a Sunday event in Indianola on his weekend schedule. But aides canceled plans for Saturday in Sioux City and Atlantic, and Sunday in Cherokee.

Conditions left few alternatives. Sioux City, for example, announced a snow emergency and prohibited parking on downtown streets — including near the theater where Trump’s campaign had scheduled a rally.

“It’s going to be a little bit of a trek, nobody knows how exactly we’re going to get there, but we’re going to figure it out. And we wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Trump said in a video posted to X. “We have record cold weather, record snowfall, record everything, but we will not miss it.”

Still, Trump’s aides projected confidence that low-turnout caucuses wouldn’t dramatically alter the race.

“I will reject any assertion by any campaigns that bad turnout is going to impact one campaign or the other,” top Trump aide Chris LaCivita told reporters Friday.

He touted the Trump campaign’s organizational efforts and said that for Trump, who polls have consistently shown with a massive lead in Iowa, “the pool of people we have is so much larger.”

“You guys have seen the lines that people have stood in just to go to a rally,” he said. “I’m not worried about lines at a caucus site.”

Trump, in the video posted to X, also speculated that the weather might help him Monday.

“You have the worst weather, I guess, in recorded history,” he said. “But maybe that’s good, because our people are more committed than anybody else — so maybe it’s actually a good thing for us.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Ebony Davis, Veronica Stracqualursi, Kit Maher, Kate Sullivan and Kristen Holmes contributed to this report.

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