Turnout tactics and confident challengers: How Donald Trump won Iowa

At a school west of Des Moines, Iowa, on Monday evening, voters gathered as early as 5:30 p.m. to cast their votes. The caucus meeting would not begin until 7 p.m., but with the icy roads and subzero weather — the outdoor temperature was minus 5 degrees — several attendees wanted to arrive as early as possible.

But a series of accidents kept delaying the start time. First, the plumbing at Crestview School of Inquiry went out, sending some attendees scrambling in search of a restroom. Then word arrived that a clerical error on the state party’s website had sent some voters to the wrong precinct site. Those who had already arrived, about 110 of them, voted to move the start time back to 7:20, to allow latecomers affected by the mix-up to still vote.

While attendees were still giving speeches on behalf of the candidates — and before anyone had picked up pencils to vote — The Associated Press called the race for Donald Trump.

That left some attendees fuming. “I don’t think they should call it before the race is over,” said Diana Taub, a Florida native who flew to Des Moines to campaign on behalf of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “They have rules. So why are they calling it when the race isn’t over?”

Because Iowa’s contest was a caucus and not a primary, The Associated Press considers the 7 p.m. start of caucus meetings as the equivalent of polls closing in a primary election. The AP reached its conclusion by analyzing early returns from caucus sites and a pre-caucus survey.

At 7:31 p.m., when AP projected Trump as the winner, less than 3% of votes had been counted; in many locations, like at Crestview School of Inquiry in Clive, Iowa, votes had yet to be cast. Other news organizations quickly followed, projecting Trump as the winner: CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC.

The early call was initially met with fury by Trump’s opponents. A DeSantis spokesperson released a statement calling the announcement “election interference.” “The media is in the tank for Trump,” DeSantis communications director Andrew Romeo said, “and this is the most egregious example yet.”

But as the night progressed, it became increasingly clear that Trump was, in fact, the runaway victor. As votes poured in throughout the state, Trump hovered around 50%, while his two closest challengers — DeSantis and Nikki Haley — bounced back and forth in the upper teens or low 20s. As of Tuesday afternoon, with 95% of votes counted, Trump sat at 51%, with DeSantis at 21% and Haley at 19%.

Trump won 98 of Iowa’s 99 counties, only losing Johnson County, the more left-leaning home of the University of Iowa. Haley won Johnson County by one vote.

Two Republican candidates promptly dropped out of the race Monday night or Tuesday morning: Vivek Ramaswamy, who received less than 8% of the vote, and Asa Hutchinson, who received less than 1%.

Inside Trump’s voter turnout strategy

Kathy Pietraszewski usually leaves Iowa in the winter. Her husband is a stroke survivor and struggles with the cold weather. But this year, Pietraszewski decided to stay. “Trump needs us here,” she said — as one of Trump’s “precinct captains,” she had been trained to help organize and encourage voter turnout at one of the nearly 1,700 precinct locations throughout Iowa.

When her local Republican Party needed a caucus chair to lead a precinct site, though, Pietraszewski volunteered, deferring the Trump precinct captain responsibilities to a friend so she could oversee the voting at her precinct.

As voters arrived at Crestview School in Clive on Monday night, Pietraszewski helped them register to vote, passed out ballots and gathered donations for the local Republican Party. She led a voice vote nominating herself as caucus chair and another woman, Randi Perez — who served as Trump’s precinct captain — as recorder (the person who would count and submit the votes at the end of the night).

When it came time for campaign surrogates to deliver speeches on behalf of their candidates, Pietraszewski invited them to the front. One person spoke on behalf of Ramaswamy. Another, for DeSantis, and two for Haley. One even pushed for Liz Cheney, the former U.S. House member from Wyoming that has flirted with a presidential bid. “That’s what democracy is all about,” Pietraszewski said, as the Cheney supporter finished his speech. “I love it.”

But when it was the Trump surrogates’ turn, the two caucus leaders — Pietraszewski, the chair, and Perez, the recorder — delivered speeches. Pietraszewski put on a red “Make America Great Again” hat for her speech, and removed it upon concluding.

“The 2020 election, we know, was stolen,” she said, echoing a false claim Trump makes frequently. “We can’t let that happen again.”

Similar spectacles occurred at caucus sites throughout the state, a key cog in Trump’s on-the-ground strategy: to push voter turnout by training a host of volunteers as “precinct captains,” creating a grassroots web of organizers that could ensure Trump support at each caucus site.

The strategy paid off. While Trump’s top challengers blitzed Iowa for the last nine months, Trump made infrequent appearances in the state, instead sending surrogates on his behalf. And when he did visit Iowa, instead of holding traditional rallies, Trump hosted “commit to caucus” events — where attendees would fill out “caucus commit cards” with their names and contact information, learn how and where to participate in the caucuses, and be chosen as precinct captains.

In recent weeks, Trump’s campaign took the voter education efforts a step further, creating a “Schoolhouse Rock”-style video that promised to teach voters “everything you need to know about how to successfully caucus for President Trump.”

The focused get-out-the-vote efforts were key to Trump’s victory, said Chris Carr, the national political director on Trump’s 2020 campaign. “President Trump’s team is a team of professionals — Susie Wiles, Chris Lacavita, and Alex Latcham,” Carr said.

Overall voter turnout dipped in 2024, with just over 110,000 voters participating in the caucus, compared to over 180,000 in 2016 — the last competitive Republican primary. But Trump managed to turn out over 10,000 more voters than he did in 2016, when he finished second in Iowa to Sen. Ted Cruz.

DeSantis, Haley optimistic despite big loss

Minutes after the AP called the race for Trump, the mood at the DeSantis watch party was still hopeful. Supporters and donors bounced around the ballroom in the Sheraton hotel in West Des Moines, checking their phones and sipping drinks. “That was pretty ridiculous,” Patti Sullivan, a woman wearing a “Mamas for DeSantis,” shirt, said. “But a lot can still happen.”

Even as more results trickled in, showing DeSantis trailing Trump by nearly 30 percentage points, the crowd remained jovial. When DeSantis finally took the stage just before 10:30 p.m., he was greeted by cheers and chants of “Ron, Ron, Ron!”

DeSantis’ comments largely resembled a victory speech. He thanked his campaign staff and volunteers for their work. He derided the attacks he’d faced from other campaigns: “They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us,” he said.

“Because of your support in spite of all of what they threw at us,” DeSantis said, “we got our ticket punched out of Iowa.”

But DeSantis finished with just 21% of the vote, edging out Haley by less than two percentage points but trailing Trump by a wide margin. DeSantis failed to win any of Iowa’s 99 counties, and despite his campaign claiming it had collected over 60,000 “caucus commitment cards” from Iowa voters, less than 24,000 Iowans cast votes for DeSantis.

DeSantis largely ran a one-state campaign, staking his chances on Iowa, where he expected to distinguish himself as a no-nonsense governor and culture warrior. After emerging as Trump’s top challenger last summer, he slowly slipped in polls, despite receiving an endorsement from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Late in the race, DeSantis was bolstered by support from out-of-state surrogates, who flooded Iowa to knock doors and participate in rallies. But his message never seemed to register enough support from Iowans themselves to challenge Trump. Even at DeSantis’ standing-room-only watch party Monday night, a large portion of the crowd were visiting Iowa, coming to observe the caucus or volunteer for DeSantis. The first seven attendees I spoke to were out-of-staters: Three from Florida, three from Virginia and one from nearby Nebraska.

Haley struck an optimistic tone Monday night, too, claiming that her third-place finish made the 2024 Republican primary a “two-person race.”

“When you look at how we’re doing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina, and beyond, I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race,” she declared — between her and Trump.

Haley received a jolt of momentum late in the race, topping DeSantis for the first time in a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll last week. She benefited from an endorsement from Americans For Prosperity Action in late November, which gave her near-instant access to a war chest of funding and a robust, door-to-door canvassing operation. But it wasn’t enough to top Trump or DeSantis, who’d focused near-exclusively on Iowa.

Heading to New Hampshire, Haley is polling in a dead heat with Trump, while DeSantis is in single digits. Haley has the endorsement of New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.

But even if Haley wins New Hampshire, the next contest is her home state of South Carolina, where Trump is polling over 30 percentage points ahead of Haley.

Haley declined to participate in an NBC News debate scheduled for Wednesday in New Hampshire, saying she would not attend unless Trump did. DeSantis previously committed to participate.

“We’ve had five great debates in this campaign. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them,” Haley said in a statement. “He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it.”

The statement encapsulated a frequent strategy by both Haley and DeSantis: They have been quick to criticize Trump for skipping debates, but they have hesitated to criticize Trump for much else. They have both denounced lawsuits attempting to bar Trump from the ballot, and they have hesitated to comment on the 91 criminal charges Trump faces.

When asked how she feels about Trump facing charges for sexual assault, Haley told CNN on Tuesday that she hasn’t “paid attention to his cases.”

“All I know is he’s innocent until proven guilty,” Haley said.