Iowa election results: Donald Trump wins 2020 swing state

President scores victory in state he also took in 2016 but which Obama won in two previous elections

Donald Trump has defeated Joe Biden in Iowa, according to the Associated Press, giving the president a repeat victory in the 2020 swing state where he defeated Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points in 2016.

Mr Biden visited the state several times during his primary campaign ahead of the state’s election-opening caucus but made few stops in the state in the months that followed.

Though it awards a relatively small number of electoral votes (six), a winner in Iowa has gone on to win the White House in the last four presidential election cycles. Barack Obama won the state in 2008 and 2012 before the president flipped it – now twice – to a Republican win.

Polls reported a tight race in the largely white and rural state as the president sought a repeat victory, leaning on a handful of midwestern swing states to send him back to the White House.

He visited Dubuque on Sunday, and his daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump visited the state on Monday. The president also held rallies in Omaha and Des Moines during the candidates’ midwestern barnstorm ahead of Election Day, while vice president Mike Pence also campaigned in the state.

The president won decisively in rural counties, while the former vice president won metro areas. Results showed that the former vice president flipped just one county – Clinton – that the president won in 2016.

The president rallied support from Republican-leaning farmers on his promises to boost US agriculture and the passage of the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, as the state was hit hard for severe Midwestern flooding.

With 95 per cent of the expected vote counted by the time the AP called the race, Mr Trump led by roughly 8.3 percentage points, or about 128,000 votes out of almost 1.6 million ballots counted.

Mr Biden finished fourth during Iowa’s caucus, a signal among analysts that his chances to emerge as the party’s nominee were slim, before his definitive Super Tuesday primary victories.

The state has crawled to Republican domination in recent years despite rocking to Democratic presidential victories over the last two decades, including a pick for Al Gore over George W Bush in 2000.

Of counties that previously went for Mr Obama, 31 flipped to Trump in 2016.

State governance, including Governor Kim Reynolds, also is dominated by Republicans.

Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst also declared victory in her tossup race against Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield.

The loss marks another blow to Democrats’ race to flip the US Senate, which would give Democrats a majority in Congress.

Iowa has suffered one of the nation’s highest infection rates from the coronavirus, eight months into the public health crisis that has infected millions of Americans. The state recorded consecutive record-breaking daily case counts in recent days, with more than 2,800 confirmed infections reported on Saturday, following 2,600 cases on Friday.

At his rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Friday, the former vice president said that Mr Trump had “waved the white flag” against the pandemic.

The Democratic candidate, hoping to reverse 2016 losses in midwestern swing states, has sought to win back a suite of battlegrounds like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where late-counted ballots could determine 2020’s victor.