Does the 2024 Republican primary start, and end, in Iowa?
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
If Donald Trump had his way, his path to the 2024 Republican presidential nomination would be secured this week. Ahead of Monday’s Iowa caucuses, he has all the right ingredients: big leads in polls, a strong ground operation, and hoards of supporters across Iowa committed to caucus for him.
“We’re going to win the Iowa caucuses in a historic landslide,” Trump told his followers repeatedly through the fall.
But in recent days, Trump seems to be tempering expectations. At a campaign event Sunday in Indianola, Iowa, Trump said he’d view a 12-point victory — the standing Iowa record, set by Bob Dole in 1996 — a success.
“You can’t sit home,” Trump said at a rally Sunday. “If you’re sick as a dog … even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it.”
The Trump campaign’s strategy seems to convey the same — that unless his followers turn out on Monday, any previous predictions are worthless. Instead of traditional rallies, Trump has dotted the state holding “commit to caucus” events. His top supporters are branded “precinct captains,” responsible for turning out voters to each caucus location. And his campaign rolled out a new, “Schoolhouse Rock”-style video to educate voters on how, where and when to cast their votes.
Related
All this leads to Monday, when Iowans across the state will brave what is forecasted to be the coldest caucus night on record to register their choice. After a weekend of snowstorms, Iowans will gather for caucuses at 7 p.m. amid a wind chill of negative 30 degrees.
The weather has been miserable enough to wreak havoc on the final week of campaigning. Each of the candidates canceled or moved events online in recent days, citing unsafe road conditions and frigid temperatures.
It was unsurprising, then, that the biggest campaign news Saturday night was the release of a new poll from the Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom, widely considered to be the gold standard in projecting the Iowa caucuses. It showed Trump with a massive lead: nearly 50% of likely caucus-goers say they’ll support him.
A silver lining for the other candidates? Nikki Haley (20%), who polls in second, has passed Ron DeSantis (16%). But both still trail Trump by a huge margin, and though some suggest we could see a repeat of 2016 — when Trump led in the final poll, but Sen. Ted Cruz won the caucuses — others are less bullish.
“It’s always possible that (Trump’s) lead could narrow or that it could change,” Ralph Reed, chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said on a call with reporters Thursday. “But in my conversations with people on the ground, we’re not seeing anything like the dramatic shift that took place in 2016 between, say, mid-October and early December that caused (Cruz) to jump into the lead.”
Both DeSantis and Haley remain hopeful about their chances on Monday. In the early fall, DeSantis seemed like the odds-on favorite to upset Trump, racking up endorsements from local officials and benefitting from his super PAC’s stout ground operation. In recent months, his PAC, Never Back Down, canceled door-knocking operations in other states to instead canvass Iowa, and in November, DeSantis earned a major endorsement from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.
Related
In last chance Iowa debate, Haley and DeSantis try to catch Trump
Amid snowstorm, pro-Nikki Haley canvassers make final pitch to Iowa voters
But DeSantis’ decision to essentially run a one-state campaign may have backfired. Even after all of his focus on Iowa, DeSantis is several points lower in this latest Des Moines Register poll than he was in the first poll, last August. And post-Iowa, he’ll go on to New Hampshire and South Carolina, where he has endorsements from plenty of local Republicans, but few on-the-ground resources.
Even some of his biggest donors have tempered hopes. Gregory Cook, the founder of doTERRA and a member of DeSantis’ national finance committee, acknowledges the effects of both Trump’s grassroots and the inclement weather could have on DeSantis.
“I expect that Gov. DeSantis will do well in Iowa, but not as well as he had hoped,” Cook said. “I have always taken the long view on Gov. DeSantis as I believe he will be a leading presidential candidate in 2028 regardless of the 2024 outcome.”
Meanwhile, Haley has benefited from a slow rise both in Iowa and nationally, starting around the second GOP debate and accelerating around the holidays. She earned an endorsement from Americans For Prosperity, the Koch family’s flagship arm, in late November, giving her access to millions of dollars and a robust ground operation. In the subsequent month-and-a-half, pro-Haley canvassers with AFP have knocked over 200,000 doors across Iowa.
But a series of miscues have given fodder to her opponents: first, omitting slavery as a cause of the Civil War, and later, joking that New Hampshire voters will “correct” the result of the Iowa caucuses.
Some attendees at recent Haley events seem less interested in these incidents, and much more perturbed by Haley no longer taking questions at events. Into December, Haley concluded most town halls with a question-and-answer session; in recent weeks, Haley has slipped out of events after posing for photos with some voters.
In a state where voters are used to close, personal contact with presidential hopefuls, the act feels like a slight to some. At an event in Ankeny, Iowa on Thursday, Ron Greiner — a health insurance salesman — hoped to ask Haley how she plans to replace Obamacare. When Haley never addressed the issue in her stump speech, Greiner shouted out a question; a campaign staffer quickly approached Greiner and told him to “not say anything.”
“She didn’t answer, did she?” Greiner said afterward.
Related
While Haley and DeSantis jockey for an assumed second place, there’s one huge question mark: entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s stuck around in the race despite polling in single digits. The Ramaswamy campaign claims polls are not accurately portraying the demographics — like young voters and first-time voters — that Ramaswamy targets.
Perhaps most notably, Trump publicly critiqued Ramaswamy for the first time Saturday, a deviation from Trump’s usual warmness toward the candidate some call “Trump 2.0” — and a sign the former president may be wary of Ramaswamy’s ability to peel away voters who would otherwise caucus for Trump.
“Momentum is there,” said Jake Chapman, one of Ramaswamy’s Iowa co-chairs. At a Sunday morning event near Des Moines, Chapman said, about 50 attendees were expected; closer to 150 showed up, braving negative-17-degree temperatures. “I’m confident we are going to shatter expectations and surprise the establishment!”
Regardless, all signs point to a Trump victory in Iowa. But the freezing, snowy weather — mixed with the uncertainties of a complex caucus system — leave the door cracked open for a surprise.
“Obviously, Trump has a very enthusiastic base of support,“ Drew Klein, an Iowa-based regional vice president for Americans For Prosperity, said. “But If Trump is telling his supporters he’s up by 30 points, I think some of those voters start to say, ‘Well, do they actually need me to get out and go to the caucus, if he’s going to win anyway?’”
