Iowa Republican Caucus LIVE: Follow Daily Mail's coverage as thousands brave the state's deep freeze to vote with Trump heading for a blowout win

After more than a year of campaigning, the Republicans vying to be president will finally face a vote tonight.

Thousands in Iowa will brave the dangerous sub-zero temperatures to support their candidates in the first contest of the GOP primary.

DailyMail.com will have continous coverage of all the developments throughout the day, before voting begins at 7pm Central Time. (8pm ET).

Here is everything you need to know about what will happen.

Donald Trump said backing Vivek Ramaswamy in the Iowa caucus would be a ‘wasted vote’ as he ramped up attacks on his Republican rival.

The former president has changed his tune on the biotech entrepreneur, who is running fourth in the polls.

He has accused Ramaswamy of ‘deceitful campaign tricks’ in the build-up to the first Republican primary contest.

On Monday monring, he sent out an all-caps message on Truth Social.

A VOTE FOR VIVEK IS A WASTED VOTE. I LIKE VIVEK, BUT HE PLAYED IT TOO “CUTE” WITH US. CAUCUS TONIGHT, VOTE FOR DONALD J. TRUMP, BUILD UP THE NUMBERS!!! IN NOVEMBER, WE MUST TAKE OUR VERY TROUBLED NATION — A NATION IN DECLINE — BACK FROM CROOKED JOE BIDEN AND THE RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS AND THUGS WHO ARE DESTROYING IT. MAGA!!!

A foot of snow and sub-zero temperatures are not going to stop Eli Weltman from knocking on his 22,385th door of the campaign.

His Ariat cowboy boots disappear into the fresh snowfall as the 20-year-old Californian makes his way from sidewalk to doorstep in Marion, a small city in eastern Iowa.

Laura Scherbaum, 39, opens the door and listens to his 30-second pitch, describing how he is working for Never Back Down, an independent group backing Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Republican primary.

It is a win. She fills in one of his ‘commit to caucus’ forms and says she will turn out on Monday to give her support to the Florida governor as he seeks the Republican nomination to take on Joe Biden in the presidential election.

It seems a long time ago that DeSantis was a rising star and the frontrunner to win the race. In Iowa, the first state to choose its preferred nominee, polls now put him about thirty points behind Donald Trump.

But the super PAC Never Back Down is all in. If it can’t win the state for DeSantis, then it is trying to use its huge fundraising machine and ground game to deliver him to a strong second place finish, cementing him as the best alternative to Trump.

And with more snow coming and temperatures forecast for as low as minus 7F on Monday, anything could still happen if people stay home.

Do Iowa’s voters actually predict who will become president?

The short answer is no.

Since the caucuses got their modern start in 1972, they’ve only correctly predicted who would win the presidency three times when an incumbent wasn’t on the ballot.

The first time came in 1976, when a peanut farmer turned Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter won the state for the Democrats.

Carter wasn’t well known, but his efforts in Iowa catapulted him to the White House, where he served one term after beating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford, who took over after President Richard Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal.

The only time the caucuses picked a Republican president happened in 2000, when Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the son of former President George H.W. Bush, handily won the Iowa caucuses.

Iowans tend to vote for more conservative candidates – like Bush – so the candidate who became the Texas governor’s chief rival, Sen. John McCain, focused more of his attention on winning the New Hampshire primary, which he did.