Good morning to all of you. It's Saturday, January the 13th. I'm Ali Vels. We're just two days away now from the Iowa Republican caucuses, the first in the nation nominating contest that kicks off the 2024 election season. Caucuses, as you may know, originate from that old school political tradition that demands that participants physically attend a meeting in order to participate.

Caucus goers have to sign in.

They report to their respective precincts on Monday night.

Then beginning at 7 p.m. local time, representatives for each candidate give brief speeches in each precinct

before caucus goers vote for their candidate of choice in a secret ballot.

There's no early voting. There's no absentee voting. There's no mail-in voting in this instance.

And the process can take a little while. This could also be the coldest Iowa caucuses ever.

Current forecasts for Monday night include record sub-zero temperatures, which could affect turnout.

But at this point, a force of nature

might be the only thing that could prevent Donald Trump from winning and winning big.

The latest poll out of Iowa conducted by Suffolk University earlier this month shows the former

president leading the pack with 54% of likely Republican caucus goers saying that they plan to support him.

His closest rival, look at this.

Nikki Haley is 34 points behind at 20%.

If those numbers hold, Trump has the opportunity to smash the record for the largest margin

of victory in Iowa GOP history for a non-incumbent president.

It was president once, but he's not the incumbent now.

A record, by the way, currently held by Bob Dole, who won the 1988 caucuses by 13 points over

Pat Robertson.

Historically, however, Iowa has been a poor predictor of the eventual GOP nominee.

Bob Dole, who won Iowa, didn't win the GOP presidential nomination in 1988.

George H.W. Bush did, the distant third place finisher in Iowa that year.

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