So here we are at last. The voters have started to speak and what they’ve said so far is quite different from how the race had been portrayed in the media. Nate Silver estimates that through mid-December, Donald Trump dominated 54 percent of the media coverage of the Republican primary campaign. Meanwhile, he got 24 percent of the vote in Iowa. Ted Cruz, who won Iowa with more votes than any Republican has ever gotten in the caucuses and had a commanding showing across all demographics, got just 5 percent of media coverage.
The Trump bubble didn’t burst in Iowa, exactly. In 2004, Howard Dean led Iowa comfortably for months, before finishing a distant third, with just 18 percent of the vote_less than half of what John Kerry took home. Dean got schlonged. Six weeks later, he was out of the race.
Trump’s performance, where he barely held on to edge out Marco Rubio for the two-slot, was more of a deflation than a collapse. Suddenly the normal laws of politics_a need for organization, the danger of high-negatives, a susceptibility to attacks_mattered for him. The results in Iowa make 2016 look less like an insane, black-swan event and more like a conventional, recognizable political cycle. Heck, in his low-key, gracious concession speech, Trump even sounded like a conventional politician.
The good news for Trump is that his position in New Hampshire is strong. Granite State Republicans have a history of rewarding populist candidates; he should do at least as well as Pat Buchanan did. And while Iowa suggests that Trump’s core is smaller than it appears, it’s still a core. He got more caucus votes than Mike Huckabee did in 2008 or Rick Santorum did in 2012. There’s no reason_none_to think that Trump fades away six weeks from now.
Instead, the Iowa results and the calendar ahead suggest a serious two- or three-man man race that should extend into the foreseeable future. Cruz has a real base of support. So does Trump.
The wild card is Marco Rubio. Rubio’s third-place Iowa doesn’t change the strategic picture of the race. But it might be a big tactical advantage. Like Trump, Rubio also got more votes than Huckabee ’08, which is a real achievement in a state where he wasn’t a natural fit. He showed that he can do well with evangelicals, social conservatives, and moderate Republicans. And he led the field among Republicans looking for their best bet to win in November.
The question is how much of the momentum from Rubio’s Iowa surge will spill over into New Hampshire. This is the last time you’ll hear me say this: Rubio doesn’t care if he finished second or third, so long as he beats Kasich-Christie-Bush. If he does that, then none of those candidates has any remaining rationale to continue their campaigns. And as they (and Ben Carson) disappear, Rubio stands to pick up (at least) a plurality of their support. (In Iowa, Christie, Bush, Fiorina, and Kasich pulled 9 percent of the vote. Absent them, Rubio might have won going away.)
Rubio’s problems, however, are fourfold. (1) New Hampshire voters often swing contrary to Iowa, see McCain/Clinton 2008; (2) Rubio has backslid in New Hampshire over the last four weeks and is now caught in a muddle with Kasich and Bush; (3) Everyone will be gunning for Rubio this week, especially at the debate on Saturday_no one has incentive to attack anyone else; (4) If Rubio can’t put away the three-headed establishment monster, his life becomes very difficult and if he finishes behind two of the heads_which is not inconceivable_his entire campaign could stall. Heck, for all we know, Rubio could finish behind all three of them. For Rubio, it really is the lady or the tiger.
Yet there’s reason to think that some of the Iowa momentum could carry over. On the one hand, Jon Huntsman got 17 percent of the vote in New Hampshire in 2012, which suggests that New Hampshirites have a weakness for awful candidates who predicate their campaign on a distaste for Republican voters. Which is good news for John Kasich! But on the other hand, the 2012 primary was an outlier because Mitt Romney had something like favorite-son status. His victory was assured, leaving people free to cast meaningless protest votes.
This time, the race is in flux and there is a serious choice for the direction of the party between Trumpian nationalism and more traditional conservatism. Any voters who care about this need to figure out if they support Trump or Cruz/Rubio. To vote for Bush-Christie-Kasich is basically to abstain from a critical ideological fight over the future of the party.
You should also expect more Republicans to start coming off the sidelines with endorsements and money this week, and Rubio is positioned to do very well here, too. South Carolina’s Tim Scott started the movement on Tuesday, endorsing Rubio in the immediate aftermath of Iowa. He was first, but he probably won’t be the last.
By this time next week we’ll know who won_or more importantly, who lost_the battle of New Hampshire. And we’ll have a much better sense of who the final grouping will be.
