The first-in-the-nation primary contests in Iowa and New Hampshire may not be until January, but judging by the national polls, the Republican race appears to be over already. At the beginning of the year, former President Donald Trump seemed to be struggling, with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) closing in. But after being indicted by New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the former president jumped out to a huge lead and has remained there for months. As of this writing, Trump boasts a 40-point lead over DeSantis in the RealClearPolitics average.
Are Republican primary voters ready to Make America Great Again? Maybe so, but maybe not.
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It’s important to bear in mind that, with the exception of political professionals, pundits, and the terminally online, most people are not thinking all that much about the primary. The news that they are hearing is mostly favorable, from their perspective, to Trump. Republican voters believe that these indictments are a put-up job, an effort by Democratic prosecutors to criminalize politics, and they have accordingly rallied to his banner. But they’ve simultaneously told pollsters time and again that they remain open to other candidates.
And the political universe looks different in the early states in the nominating process, especially Iowa and New Hampshire. Trump certainly has the edge there, but it does not seem like an impending coronation.
This should not come as a huge surprise. The early states are where candidates have poured the most time and resources into campaigning, voters there are more engaged, and thus Trump does not look as formidable. These voters are hearing more from the other candidates, rather than the national story of Trump’s indictments, and so actually doing what national voters claim to be doing: keeping an open mind and considering their options.
RealClearPolitics has Trump at 43% in Iowa and 44% in New Hampshire. Moreover, his numbers in both states have remained flat for months, even as his national numbers have enjoyed a boost with his various indictments. This is good but not great, given Trump’s status in the party. Granted, he maintains a large lead, but that is because non-Trump voters are scattered across half a dozen candidates. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) looks strong in Iowa, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie does in New Hampshire, and DeSantis is in the mix in both places.
The importance of these two states cannot be understated. In the last 50 years, the only nominees in either party who won the nomination without carrying at least one of them are Bill Clinton in 1992 and Joe Biden in 2020. Just as Trump’s indictments altered the information stream that voters received in 2023, so will the back-to-back results in Iowa and New Hampshire possibly reframe the electoral landscape in early 2024. Time and again, candidates have seen their national polling numbers collapse when they lose in the early states.
Yet there are more than a few reasons to think Iowa and New Hampshire are problematic for Trump. The first and most obvious is the Trump campaign, or lack thereof. The former president is not really running anything like his rivals are. Judging strictly by the national polls, this might make sense. He looks like an incumbent president in those polls, far above the fray. Why should he deign to compete? But in Iowa and New Hampshire, he looks more like a strong front-runner, somebody with an edge but who still must close the deal. Far from trying to do that, Trump has gone out of the way to be antagonistic, picking fights in Iowa with the popular governor, Kim Reynolds, and prominent evangelicals such as Bob Vander Plaats. To be sure, it is highly unlikely that these tiffs are going to cost Trump many votes. The significance is the mindset the former president has: The nomination is his by right, and everybody else needs to fall in line. He’s not trying to solidify his existing support, let alone expand it.
Additionally, there is a lot of money out there that will be spent against Trump, not so much in negative ads but rather in campaigns for other candidates. Those resources are going to be overwhelmingly dedicated to Iowa and New Hampshire in the next five months. This is something that incumbent candidates almost never have to deal with. Their opponents rarely amount to more than token resistance. And just how much money will Trump have available to spend? He has raised an impressive amount this year, but a lot of it has gone to his legal bills. Is he going to have the ability to go on an advertising blitz to counter late-breaking momentum from one of his opponents?
Iowa poses additional challenges for Trump. It’s a caucus state, where the vote is conducted by the Iowa GOP under a byzantine set of rules, which privilege the most engaged voters. Unsurprisingly, turnout for the Iowa caucuses is always lower than turnout in primaries. That works to the advantage of candidates with strong, grassroots organizations and those with ties to the Christian evangelical community, which has historically dominated the proceedings in the Hawkeye State. Trump has little organization this year, and his relationship with Iowa evangelicals has always been fraught, as his recent fight with Vander Plaats indicates. In fact, the pre-caucuses polls in 2016 had Trump ahead by about 5 points, but he lost by 4 points.
What’s especially interesting about both states is their propensity to break extremely late in the cycle. Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are pretty comfortable kicking the tires on candidates all through the summer and fall before settling on a candidate in the winter. The last three winners of the Iowa caucuses, for instance — Ted Cruz in 2016, Rick Santorum in 2012, and Mike Huckabee in 2008 — were barely registering in the polls around Labor Day. They shot up late, and rapidly. Democratic caucusgoers have likewise been prone to late breaks, with Barack Obama in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004. Candidates who felt the wind at their back in late August have often been hit with a cold wind in their face in January.
Trump’s biggest advantage in both states is that the field remains fragmented. If we assume that the former president’s floor is 35%, that will probably be enough to win so long as there are three or more serious alternatives to the ex-president. That was an advantage he enjoyed in 2016. His rivals spending time punching one another rather than going after him or dropping out. If the day of the caucuses arrives and DeSantis, Scott, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, and Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) are all still in the race, drawing support, it’s an easy bet that Trump’s 35% will be more than enough. Even more so in New Hampshire, where Christie is drawing an additional 10% of the vote.
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What needs to happen is for the non-Trump candidates to make sure that Iowa and New Hampshire voters get a close look at them but have the self-awareness and humility to acknowledge when they’ve been found lacking. “Zombie” candidacies, with no realistic path of winning but still drawing a non-negligible share of the vote, will be a boon to the Trump campaign, just as they were in 2016.
To reframe the opening question: Is this a real race where other candidates have a shot, or is this all sound and noise, signifying nothing before Trump’s eventual coronation? Who knows yet? This is, at least for now, Schrodinger’s primary. Just as Schrodinger’s cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened, this primary is real and imaginary until Iowa and New Hampshire speak. If Trump loses one or both or wins narrowly, it will be a race. If he wins both handily, it won’t be. There are reasons to think that Trump could lose early, but we won’t know for sure until the leaves have fallen from the trees and the winter frost has rolled in.
Jay Cost is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a visiting scholar at Grove City College.
