Former president Donald Trump won the Iowa Republican Caucus by the largest margin in the event's history

Following a distant fourth-place finish, Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the race

Unlike in other states, Iowa uses a “caucus” system to nominate presidential candidates

Under that system, instead of heading to the polls, voters congregate at churches, community centers, or schools to listen to voters argue in support of the candidates and vote accordingly

Iowa is the first state in the Republican presidential primary, and as such, it is widely viewed as a tone-setter that decides which candidates will emerge as major contenders

This year, the Iowa caucuses were held on Monday. Many parts of Iowa are experiencing extreme cold, which raised questions around turnout. Iowa’s capital city of Des Moines saw wind chills of -35°F on Monday evening

With Trump leading in the polls by 30+ points, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy vied for second place

Going into the event, Donald Trump polled at 51% versus Haley’s 17% and DeSantis’s 16%

Soon after results started coming in, many major news outlets declared Trump the winner

That provoked anger from DeSantis’s campaign, which called it “outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had the chance to vote”

“The media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example,” his campaign said

With 95%+ of the vote in, former president Donald Trump won 51% of the vote, followed by DeSantis at 21.2% and Haley at 19.1%

Ramaswamy was a distant fourth with 7.7% of the vote. On Monday night, he dropped out of the race

He endorsed Trump, saying, "There needs to be an America First candidate in this race"

Continue checking this article over the course of the day for further results and updates

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