Takeaways from Iowa

Trump romped, DeSantis and Haley got stomped. But is there a silver lining for Joe Biden?

Images courtesy of ABC News

The Iowa caucuses are over, and surprise, surprise, Trump was the clear and big winner. But do the numbers hide trouble ahead?

With Trump receiving just over 50 percent of the caucus votes and his nearest rivals basically tied near 20 percent, this was pretty much a romp, just as the polling predicted. These numbers are telling given that the former president spent almost no time in Iowa, just dropping in from time to time to give speeches, while poor Ron DeSantis criss-crossed the state and visited every county there, only to wind up losing by 30 points.

It was no better for Nikki Haley, who had hoped that a late endorsement, influx of money and army of supporters from the Koch Network would put her solidly into second place, given her earlier momentum. Instead, she finished slightly behind DeSantis, meaning she will need a breakout in next week’s primary in New Hampshire to keep her candidacy alive.

So, with such a resounding victory for Trump in Iowa, is it basically over? Trump continues to dominate the national polls among Republicans, despite four criminal indictments, 91 felony counts, and civil rulings of fraud and sexual assault. And he’s leading by double digits numbers in most of the early primary contests. This is somehow still the guy GOP voters want.

Let’s look at some key takeaways and see how Trump’s big night both confirms his status as overwhelming frontrunner yet suggests that he may have several important vulnerabilities in the general election.

Trump won without even trying

The Iowa caucuses aren’t supposed to work this way. Back in 2016, Trump had to visit the state repeatedly and do what DeSantis did this year, getting to know as many people as he could. He wound up coming in second that year, behind Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), which also highlights how bad Iowa is at actually predicting the winner.

How much things have changed for Trump. He popped into the state only around a dozen times during the entire campaign, and each time he stole thunder from the other candidates. He wound up sweeping 98 of Iowa’s 99 counties, with him tied with Haley in the 99th. He even won the suburbs outside of Des Moines, where Haley had hoped to gain inroads. 

According to caucus entrance polling, Trump maintained strong support—some 65 percent of the vote—from non-college educated voters, including Evangelical voters who have mastered the art of looking past the Bible’s teachings in order to support a morally vacuous man. But Trump also received a plurality of 35 percent of the college educated vote, two percent more than Haley received, so there are lots of folks who really ought to know better who still don’t.

Haley stumbled at the end

Haley’s forward momentum had seemed promising, being among the only contenders to consistently gain support in the final months, even as she dodged and weaved around exactly how Trumpy to sound. But the final weeks of her campaign in the state were dogged by her gaffe around what the real cause of the Civil War was. (Narrator: It was slavery, Nikki.) And while Chris Christie’s departure from the race left Never Trumper Republicans without much of a home besides Haley, there were not enough of them to power her candidacy through to a strong second place finish in Iowa.

Enthusiasm may have played a big part. While Haley did fairly well in the polls, placing above DeSantis in most near the end, the numbers also showed a decided “meh” about her candidacy, especially compared to the Trump folks who couldn’t wait to cast their vote for him. (Trump told supporters who were ill to brave the weather and vote for him, even if they die trying.)

No one was going to die trying to vote for Haley, so when the snow and the cold struck unexpectedly, it depressed turnout levels significantly for the state, dropping from 187,000 in 2020 to just 110,000 on Monday.

Haley will need to rev up her supporters in New Hampshire and pull in many independents, who are permitted to vote in that state’s primary, if she hopes to close the gap with Trump there. A poor showing there will all but end her chances, and she would not want to be further humiliated in her home state of South Carolina, where Trump is more popular and polling higher than she is.

DeSantis should just give up

“At least he didn’t place third” is not a reason to stay in the race, especially after pouring so much time and tens of millions of dollars into Iowa. DeSantis, who in 2022 led Trump in the polls, had vowed to “fight back” against Trump and win the state outright, but instead trailed Trump in the end by 30 points. Nothing he did seemed to move the needle, even after securing the support of powerful political leaders like Gov. Kim Reynolds and Evangelical kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats.

Instead, wherever DeSantis went, his lack of normal human emotions followed him. His inability to perform basic retail politics wasn’t something that could be fixed, as pundit and former GOP strategist Rick Wilson of The Lincoln Project has long and rather colorfully held. Back in 2022, after the midterms and DeSantis’s triumphant reelection in his home state, Wilson had this to say, which proved prescient and correct:

But the biggest fantasy of the Republican world is that they finally bred the correct mutant strain of Trumpism, authoritarianism, and cute family in the form of Ron DeSantis.

Allow me a moment to detonate that dream. First off, in person, Ron DeSantis is a strange no-eye-contact oddball. Is he smart? At least academically, but smart and electable aren’t an overlapping Venn diagram. Is he a great candidate? Get the fuck out of here. A conservative governor with infinite financial resources at his disposal running in a conservative state against a spent-force three-time loser hated by both his old party and his new party? 

Winning Florida isn’t the flex DeSantis and his stans think it is.

DeSantis is now trailing badly in New Hampshire, and his second place finish in Iowa just above Haley isn’t going to suddenly reignite his campaign. Like Vivek Ramaswamy, who tried to tack to the right of Trump, DeSantis ought to slink off so he can plug himself back into a charging unit and eat his pudding with his fingers in peace.

The Big Lie is still with us in big numbers

Polling of actual caucus goers revealed some disturbing numbers, chief among them being how many Republicans still believe that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden. Some 68 percent of caucus goers surveyed still believe that lie, and the number rises to 90 percent of Trump’s supporters.

That so many Republicans, and in particular MAGA voters, continue to live in the upside-down will be both an obstacle for Trump’s challengers and a rallying cry for defenders of democracy in November. Indeed, the clearer it becomes that a huge sector of the country no longer believes in democratic principles, the more urgently millions of better informed Americans will vote.

Support for Trump crumbles at the important edges

One last thought to leave you with. It can be quite depressing to think about Trump winning 51 percent of the votes in Iowa, despite everything voters know about him and all the risks he poses to our nation as a would-be despot.

But seen another way, there were still 49 percent of Iowa caucus goers who preferred someone else. If Trump were running as an incumbent, that would spell real trouble. Just imagine if Biden’s opponents, whom he is rightfully ignoring, managed to sway nearly half of Democratic primary voters in the very first official contests in South Carolina or Nevada. The press would never let up about it. 

And while it’s certainly true that many of those voters will ultimately stick with their party and vote for Trump, there are some details in the numbers that should worry the Trump Campaign.

Late polling revealed, for example, that a plurality of Haley’s supporters—a full 43 percent—would rather vote for Joe Biden than Donald Trump if those were their only choices in November. Now, to be sure, some of those are independents and Democrats hoping to elevate Haley in the primaries. But a number of them are Never Trumpers who crossed party lines in 2022 to keep election deniers and extremists out of office.

Then there is this number: According to caucus entrance polling, 63 percent said that Trump was fit to be president even if he is convicted. That’s a terrible number, but it is another way of saying that, among diehard caucus voters, a full 37 percent of them believe Trump would be unfit to serve if convicted, or they are otherwise unsure. That’s still a huge number, and it is consistent with polling that shows Trump is vulnerable on this question.

Given these numbers, I would not be crowing just yet if I were Trump Campaign managers. Trump likely will sweep the primaries, but primaries don’t elect presidents. By the time the general election comes around, Trump may be a convicted felon, and the number of defectors from within the Republican party could grow significantly.