ON CAUCUS DAY, THE IOWA EXPECTATIONS GAME. Des Moines — The Iowa caucuses campaign began in earnest in the summer of 2023 and will end tonight, Jan. 15, 2024. What is remarkable about the campaign is that in all those months, the fundamentals of the race never really changed.
On June 1, 2023, former President Donald Trump led the field with 47.7% of the vote, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Now, Trump leads the field with 52.5%. He has never given up the lead or even come close to giving up the lead at any moment in the intervening months.
Back then, two other candidates, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, combined for 30.6% of the vote. Today, the two combine for 35.5%. So, in all that time, Trump has gone up about 5 points, and DeSantis-Haley has gone up about 5 points. The basic structure of the race has remained unchanged.
Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!
Obviously, DeSantis and Haley have switched places. The DeSantis experience in Iowa has been one long slide downward, from 25.3% on June 1, 2023, to 15.8% today. DeSantis never fell off a cliff. He never fell to zero. He just inched downward, unable to catch on in Iowa. For her part, Haley stood at just 5.3% on June 1, 2023. She went nowhere in the Iowa polls until September, after she performed well in the early Republican debates. Since then, Haley has moved up to 18.7% today in the RealClearPolitics Iowa average.
So the two players in the race for second place moved around, but the main dynamic of the race — Trump far ahead, pursuers far behind — never changed.
That doesn’t mean the election night expectations of each candidate haven’t changed. Trump, of course, is expected to win big. But how big? Everyone agrees that if Trump can win more than 50% of the vote Monday night, even just a tiny bit more than 50%, that would be a hugely dominating result for him. For this reason: If Trump were to win more than 50%, he could say to Republicans that a majority of voters in the first state supported him, so that even if all the anti-Trump candidates’ support were added together, they still couldn’t beat Trump. Let’s end it right here, Trump will say.
The opposite will be true if Trump comes in with less than 50%. Then, his opponents can say a majority of voters chose someone other than Trump. Let the race begin, they will say.
Of course, Trump could fall short of 50% and still win big. Remember that the record-winning margin for a contested Iowa Republican primary is 12 points, achieved by Bob Dole in 1988. What if Trump wins by 20? He will shatter that record, but his opponents, and many in the media, will declare it a disappointment and say the campaign has now become a horse race. So the question is, by how big a margin does Trump need to win? Over 50, but if not over 50, by an overwhelming margin. Of course, an overwhelming margin is in the eye of the beholder.
Haley used to have no expectations at all. But now, having surpassed DeSantis and moved into second place, her rising status has raised expectations. What if she does not win 20% of the vote, her level of support pegged in the final Des Moines Register poll of the race? And what if she does not beat DeSantis? Her campaign won’t end — she is clearly moving on to New Hampshire, where, with the hold of independents and Democrats, she has her highest level of support in any early-voting state — but after all the hype, third place would be a huge disappointment. Haley would come out of Iowa a diminished candidate.
Finally, there is DeSantis, the man who has the most to lose in Iowa. He quite openly put everything he had in Iowa, spending the most time here, visiting every county, acting like a candidate who had to score in Iowa or go home. Just look at his polling in New Hampshire, where he was fourth in the RealClearPolitics average until the departure of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Now, he is third by default, a long way behind Haley and, again, far, far behind Trump. So what does he have to do in Iowa? A number of analysts believe that if DeSantis finishes in third place, behind Trump and Haley, that’s the end for him. It would be quite a comedown from last June, when he was far behind Trump but also 20 points ahead of Haley. But the fact is DeSantis’s campaign, once seen as the brightest hope for Republicans who wanted to move beyond Trump, could end in Iowa.
For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on Radio America and the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found.
