Trump wins big, period

He won 98 of Iowa’s 99 counties — the one he lost, in the county where the University of Iowa is located, he lost to Haley by a single vote, and even that might change in the final tally. And Trump won every group. He won women voters. He won men. He won urban, suburban, and rural voters. He won every age group over 30, losing only the 18-to-29 group. He won evangelical Christians. He won college graduates. He won those without a college degree. In short, he won everybody.

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Trump’s across-the-board victory is sure to push the anti-Trump forces to wage an even more desperate battle against him in the New Hampshire primary, eight days away. Of course, Trump is leading in the polls there, too, although not nearly as decisively as he did in Iowa. But in New Hampshire, the anti-Trump forces’ hope will be to convince enough Democrats and independent (known in New Hampshire as “undeclared”) voters to take part in the Republican primary and defeat Trump.

They tried that in Iowa, where the rules allowed a Democrat or independent to come to the GOP primary, register as a Republican, and vote right away. According to media entrance polls, 16% of the electorate Monday night identified as independent, while 2% were Democrats. At the caucus I covered, a precinct in the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny, there were a total of 180 votes. The party volunteers running the event told me that of that group, 25 people had registered as Republicans at the door. They didn’t have any further information on that group, but it is safe to say they kept Haley in the game in a precinct in which Trump and DeSantis were fighting it out — the final result was DeSantis with 58 votes, Trump with 57 votes, Haley with 56, Vivek Ramaswamy with eight, and Ryan Binkley with one.

Overall, in the entrance poll, Haley romped, just absolutely cleaned up, among voters who described themselves as “moderate” — she won 63% of them. The problem was those “moderate” voters made up only 9% of the total caucus electorate. Fifty-two percent of all voters described themselves as “very conservative,” and Trump won 61% of them, while 37% described themselves as “somewhat conservative,” and Trump won 47% of them. (One percent of voters described themselves as “liberal,” but that wasn’t enough to get any data on how they voted.)

The night was a blow to Haley, who was not only rising in the polls but, rich with GOP big-donor money, actually spent more money on advertising in Iowa than either Trump or DeSantis. After the results were known, Haley engaged in some bravado by claiming the caucuses had made the Republican contest a two-candidate race, meaning herself and Trump. That is not what happened. Instead, the caucuses showed that the “moderate” camp inside the GOP just isn’t big enough to put a candidate over the top. And at least on a really cold night in Iowa — as I left the caucus, it was 6 below zero where I was in Ankeny — not enough independents and moderates came out to push Haley to a win.

Then, there was DeSantis, who was relying on solidly conservative Republican voters who nevertheless want the party to move on from Trump. Among the 52% of the caucus electorate calling themselves “very conservative,” DeSantis won 26% to Trump’s 61% (and Haley’s 5%). Among the tiny “moderate” group, in which Haley won with 63%, DeSantis won just 7%, indicating that he really did attract conservative voters.

Monday night was do-or-die for DeSantis. The polls, especially the influential Des Moines Register poll, showed him slipping to third place behind Haley in the final days of the campaign. In the RealClearPolitics average of polls, DeSantis had fallen to 3 points behind Haley. The consensus among insiders, or at least those who didn’t work for the DeSantis campaign, was that DeSantis could not survive a third-place finish. In conversations in the last few days of the race, DeSantis’s surrogates and staffers said they just didn’t think the polls were accurate. They believed that DeSantis’s carefully built ground game would prevail over Haley when cold caucus night came.

They were right. Instead of losing by 3 points, DeSantis beat Haley by 2 points, 21.2% to 19.1%. DeSantis supporters were both relieved and eager to keep fighting. They were also really, really angry at media organizations that called the race for Trump so early that some caucusgoers hadn’t even voted yet. They had a point — that really shouldn’t happen again. It wouldn’t be hard for media organizations to agree on a time, immediately after all votes have been cast, to release projections.

Now, the race moves on to New Hampshire, where the more “moderate” Republican primary electorate, including Democrats and undeclareds, is better for Haley than DeSantis — but Trump still leads by 14 points in the RealClearPolitics average. And then, were DeSantis to keep slogging, the race goes to South Carolina, where Trump is extremely popular and most insiders believe will beat Haley in her home state. So if DeSantis goes on, there is a good chance he will lose to Trump in New Hampshire and then lose to Trump in South Carolina, on top of losing to Trump in Iowa. Where will that get him? Nowhere.

The fact is, the caucus confirmed what the polls had said for months. The Republican race is Donald Trump far ahead and a few other candidates far behind. If that dynamic continues, it will not come as a shock that the candidate who is far ahead will win.

Still, there has been an extraordinary amount of media interest in the Haley-DeSantis undercard battle. With all due credit to DeSantis’s effort, that is because so many in the Republican establishment, especially the donor class that has long been eager to get rid of Trump, so fervently want Haley to win. But her problem is painfully obvious: She strongly appeals to a group that is too small to propel her to victory.

In the Iowa campaign’s final days, Haley held a rally in Ankeny, which was something of a battleground in Iowa. (In the same period, DeSantis held two rallies in a building across the parking lot from where Haley held hers.) After Haley had finished, I spent a while talking with a married couple who had come from Johnston, 15 minutes away. (This was before the blizzard hit.) The husband was a retired lawyer, and the wife was a retired graphic designer. He was a lifetime Republican and she a lifetime Democrat. They both thought President Joe Biden and Trump are too old to be president; the man wondered what it was about our politics that has given us 80-year-old leaders. The woman’s concern with Biden’s age was that she worried Biden doesn’t have the energy, stamina, and creativity to defeat Trump in a general election. Despairing of that and not thrilled with Vice President Kamala Harris, either, she was putting her hopes on Haley to stop Trump.

I asked whether they thought there was an “educational divide” in the Republican Party, with college-educated voters tending toward Haley and non-college tending toward Trump. The man rejected that idea, saying he thought there was more of an urban-rural divide and noting he had several college-educated friends who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but do not support him now. The woman, the Democrat, objected to the idea of an “educational divide” entirely and said what was really going on was a “moral divide.” She spoke quietly, but she had the kind of intensity in her voice that shows when someone feels something really deeply. Stopping Trump was clearly her highest priority, and if it took voting for Nikki Haley in a Republican caucus, she would do that.

After the Haley rally, on the way out of town, I stopped in a store to pick up a few things. The cashier said she was concerned about yet another winter storm coming that evening — boy, was she right. I asked if she was planning to attend a caucus. “I went to a caucus several years ago and thought it was ridiculous,” she said. And besides, she added, she already knows who she supports. Who? I asked. Answering, she adopted that familiar sotto voce heard when some people mention a certain name in public places: “Trump.” She laughed and asked if I disapproved. I told her I was neutral and her views were fine with me.

The Democrats who support Haley are not alone. On Jan. 13, the New York Times published an article headlined “In Iowa, Nikki Haley Has the Attention of Democrats and Independents.” The paper noted that many Iowa Democrats viewed Haley as a “reasonable” Republican and said they would caucus for her in hopes of stopping Trump. It didn’t work, but they undoubtedly will keep trying.

By the way, as the man suggested, the idea of Trump and an “educational divide” turned out to be not quite right, or at least not fully descriptive. According to the entrance polls, Trump won caucus voters with a bachelor’s degree, 43% to Haley’s 23% and DeSantis’s 25%. Trump blew the competition away among those without a bachelor’s degree, whether they had never attended college, had some college, or had an associate degree. Only among those with an advanced degree did Haley win, with 38% to DeSantis’s 27% and Trump’s 25%. The problem, again, was that there weren’t enough of those voters to put Haley over the top.

So that was the big story of the effort to defeat Trump in Iowa. Yes, there were some groups, “moderates” and people with a J.D. or Ph.D., who really, really wanted to beat Trump. But there just weren’t enough of them in the Republican Party and among the Democrats and independents who ventured into Republican territory. Now, the same battle will be fought in New Hampshire, with a generally less conservative GOP electorate than Iowa. But the result could well be the same.