It only took 30 minutes for CNN to call the Iowa caucuses for former President Donald Trump.
Trump is walking away from Iowa with 51% of the vote, winning all but one of Iowa’s 99 counties. The only county he did not carry, Johnson County, hosts the University of Iowa and is the most Democratic County in the state (Joe Biden won 70% of the vote there in 2020). Despite what should be a serious demographic disadvantage, Trump only lost the county to Haley by one vote. The improvement in Trump’s performance from 2016 (the last time he had any real competitors) to 2024 is illuminating. In 2016, Trump won a grand total of 37 counties in Iowa. In 2024, he won 98 counties and took home more than 60% of the vote in 43 of them. His performance was everything he could have hoped for, and it has put the Trump campaign in an even more commanding position than expected.
Trump improved upon his 2016 numbers with every single demographic group, gaining the most ground with Evangelicals (+31). The only groups where Trump still lagged behind his competitors were college graduates and young people. The 18–29-year-old vote was largely split between Haley and DeSantis, with Trump coming in third place (only slightly better than Vivek Ramaswamy according to CNN entrance polls). Still, even with college graduates Trump put up a better performance. 37% of Iowa voters with a college degree backed him, a noticeable improvement over the 21% of college grads that voted for him in 2016.
Despite the good night, there were serious warning signs for the Trump campaign. For one thing, think about those college graduate numbers. Trump did 15% better with them than in 2016, and he was still only winning a bit more than a third of them. These weren’t a representative sample of educated suburban voters, either: they were obviously overwhelmingly registered Republicans. If Donald Trump is still struggling with these voters despite a hapless opposition and a friendly voting population, his campaign should be profoundly concerned about the general election.
Some Trump supporters (and assorted right-wing idealogues) have dealt with the clear evidence that they are alienating educated suburbanites by suggesting that the Republican party no longer needs white college graduates. Following the caucuses, Senator Josh Hawley tweeted, “Trump’s victory tonight showcases once again the changing GOP base. This is a working class party now. The DC Republicans need to figure it out.” Unfortunately for so-called “right-wing populists” like Hawley, this just isn’t true. The 2022 midterms showed conclusively that traditionally educated suburban voters are still an important part of any successful Republican coalition. To not only alienate them but declare that you don’t even need them is openly courting disaster.
Another red flag for the Trump campaign came from the CNN entrance polls. When asked the question: “Is Trump fit for the presidency, if convicted of a crime?", 31% of Republican caucusgoers said no. If even 75% of those who currently say no stick to their guns in November, Trump risks losing votes to third-party candidates and depressed turnout, which could sink him in key battleground states like Nevada or Wisconsin. These are states that were decided by 10-20,000 votes and could be seriously impacted in the event of a Trump conviction.
That does not, however, erase the scope of his success last Monday. Iowa has shown that the GOP is still the party of Trump, and his commanding victory in Monday’s caucuses calls into question the continued viability of both the Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley campaigns. Although neither candidate technically underperformed, (DeSantis actually did a bit better than most polls were projecting) they did fail to prevent Trump from winning more than 50% of the vote. The rationale for challenging Trump this primary season was that as long as the former President didn’t win an outright majority of primary voters, there was still a path to victory for one anti-Trump candidate if the other dropped out. This was always a dubious theory. At the moment it is complete speculation that the average DeSantis voter would back Haley over Trump (or vice versa). DeSantis’s support in Iowa came from rural Evangelicals and mainline Protestant urbanites, neither of whom Haley is well-positioned to win over. Similarly, much of Haley’s strength has come from Independents and even registered Democrats, groups that are attracted to her traditional Republican foreign policy and relatively moderate stance on abortion and culture war issues. It is hard to believe that these voters would support DeSantis, who is widely perceived as Trump without the legal baggage.
Barring massive polling errors in either South Carolina or New Hampshire, it’s hard to make a compelling case for either DeSantis or Haley’s campaigns continuing into Super Tuesday. Haley is currently trailing Donald Trump by 14% in New Hampshire, making the race much closer than Iowa but still a long shot for the Haley campaign. Haley has had just one week to move the needle in a more favorable direction for her, something that would be difficult at the best of times. Recent developments may have stripped her of even this dubious path to victory. After Iowa concluded on the night of January 15th, former biotech CEO Vivek Ramaswamy suspended his campaign. Ramaswamy was the closest thing to a viable fourth candidate, and since he dropped out the vast majority of his supporters have backed Trump in New Hampshire, shoring up the former President’s support. At the moment, the possibility of a Haley upset seems to have slipped into impossibility. Without a New Hampshire upset, Haley is unlikely to make it to South Carolina. Even if her campaign held on until the South Carolina primary, (scheduled for February 24th) current polling shows her trailing Trump by 29%. Haley is only 52 years old (pretty young for a politician) and will likely run again in the future. That would be significantly more difficult if she suffered an embarrassing loss in her own home state.
For DeSantis, the math is even worse. Ron is currently polling about 5% in New Hampshire, and generously about 7% in South Carolina. It’s hard to imagine Republican donors being willing to spend money to keep his campaign afloat after what would be three primaries without a single win to his name. Perhaps the DeSantis campaign is banking on Trump having a heart attack before Super Tuesday.
In all likelihood, New Hampshire will be the end of this Republican primary season. No clear path to victory (or even survival) appears to be awaiting any of Trump's competitors. What that ending looks like, however, will determine the shape of things to come. And that remains to be seen… at least for a few more days.
I’m still hoping for the heart attack!😂