Iowa didn’t just give political junkies their first set of results to pore over; it gave them their most accurate look yet at the moods, priorities, and preferences of the 2016 electorate.
Unlike polling done by media outlets, academic institutions, and the campaigns themselves, entrance and exit polls survey people who are on their way either into or out of voting booths — not “registered voters” or “likely voters,” but actual voters. That certainty lends such polls an unmatched authority, and makes them among the best sources observers have for understanding elections.
After studying this year’s Republican entrance polls from Iowa, the result of Edison Research’s interviews with 1,794 voters at 40 randomly selected caucus sites around the state, here are seven lessons to be learned from Monday’s voting:
1. Donald Trump’s “New York Values” Hurt Him
The single most striking statistic in the entrance polls is the result of a simple question caucus-goers were asked: What quality is most important to you in a candidate?
Respondents were given four options — “Can win in November,” “Shares my values,” “Tells it like it is,” and “Can bring needed change” — and 42 percent, a clear plurality, chose “Shares my values.” Cruz won 38 percent of those voters, followed by Marco Rubio at 21 percent, Ben Carson at 15 percent, and Rand Paul at 7 percent.
Just 5 percent of them caucused for Trump.
RELATED: The Trump Slump
Correlation is not causation; it’s impossible to know the precise relationship between Cruz’s attack on Trump’s “New York values” and Trump’s abysmal showing among the single biggest respondent group on that critical question. But it’s clear from many months of polling that Iowans were already suspicious of Trump’s background and thus susceptible to Cruz’s argument. He first used the line two days before the January 14 debate in South Carolina, and though Trump outmaneuvered Cruz when the subject was raised on stage, it had been planted in the public consciousness, and the Texas senator’s campaign made sure it stuck. Down the home stretch in Iowa, Cruz ran a devastating TV ad featuring video of Trump’s 1999 interview with Tim Russert, in which he said his New York upbringing made him “pro-choice in every respect” and gave him views that were different than those he would have if he were from Iowa.
Whatever the impact of Cruz’s attacks — and specifically, of that ad — it’s safe to conclude that Trump’s own words contributed to his crippling performance among Iowa’s “values voters.” And that’s a serious concern for the real-estate mogul as he faces a gauntlet of religious states after New Hampshire.
2. The Evangelical Share of the Electorate Grew
In 2012, entrance polls of Iowa’s GOP caucuses showed that self-described Evangelicals (or “born-again” Christians) were a majority: 57 percent to 43 percent. The belief among Iowa Republicans heading into 2016 was that those numbers would remain relatively static, or perhaps even decline thanks to new caucus-goers attracted by Trump. Pollsters seemed to agree; the final Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics survey before the caucuses projected that just 47 percent of GOP participants would be Evangelical.
RELATED: Life, Liberty, and the Constitution: What Mattered to Iowa’s Evangelicals
But Monday’s entrance polls showed just the opposite: 62 percent of Republican caucus-goers considered themselves Evangelical or born-again Christians, compared to just 38 percent who didn’t — a net increase of eight points from 2012. Among that group, Cruz won easily, earning 33 percent of the vote while Trump and Rubio took 21 percent apiece.
A core argument from Cruz’s campaign is that religious Republicans have stayed home in recent years, and that he will bring them back to the voting booth. The unexpected uptick in Evangelical vote-share helped put Cruz over the top Monday, and if a similar surge materializes as the race moves to South Carolina on February 20 — and then to the conservative southern states that dominate Super Tuesday on March 1 — he, more than any other candidate, stands to benefit.
3. Trump Did Not Dominate First-Time Caucus-Goers
Speaking of Trump and the expected impact of Iowa’s first-time voters . . . well, it wasn’t quite what anyone expected.
On the one hand, nearly half of all Republicans surveyed in the entrance polls — 45 percent — said it was their first time caucusing. That’s much higher than what most of the campaigns expected, and represents a significant increase from 2012, when 38 percent of participants were new to the process.
RELATED: Ted Cruz’s Long Road to Iowa Victory
With so many first-timers on the Republican side, a Trump victory would seem assured. And he did indeed win a 30 percent plurality of new caucus-goers. But it was hardly a blowout: Cruz won 23 percent of the same group, Rubio won 20 percent, and Carson won 9 percent.
Trump’s rivals feared he could win Iowa by attracting droves of new caucus-goers and winning an overwhelming plurality of them. (Some feared as many as half.) But as the Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter has noted, “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” While Trump inspired many newcomers to show up and support him, he also inspired plenty of others to show up and oppose him. Whether that trend continues could ultimately determine his chances of winning the nomination.
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4. The Biggest Issue for Iowa Republicans Wasn’t What You’d Expect
It’s the economy, stupid — or so Republicans thought in 2012, when Mitt Romney was nominated on his strengths as a businessman and turnaround specialist. 2016 was thought likely to be a national-security election, with Republicans predicting that terrorism would be the No. 1 issue for voters shaken by the rise of ISIS and its affiliates worldwide. Then Trump’s emergence in mid-summer brought immigration to the fore, much to the chagrin of establishment Republicans, and Cruz’s path to the nomination suddenly seemed much more plausible given the outcry against “amnesty” from the party’s base.
EDITORIAL: A Good Night for Conservatives
Yet none of these three issues — “economy/jobs,” “terrorism,” or “immigration” — registered as the chief concern for Iowa Republicans. What did? “Government spending,” and by a healthy margin, with 32 percent of caucus-goers naming it as their priority, followed by economy/jobs at 27 percent, terrorism at 25 percent, and immigration at 13 percent.
That pecking order was highly unpredictable — as were the candidates thought to be strongest on each issue. Trump, understandably, won 44 percent of voters who named immigration as their top issue. But Rubio bested the famous businessman among economic-minded voters, 30 percent to 24 percent. Cruz beat them both on those most concerned with terrorism, taking 33 percent to 26 percent for Rubio and 21 percent for Trump. And the Texas senator also won among deficit hawks, claiming 27 percent to Rubio’s 21 percent and Trump’s 19 percent.
5. “Marcomentum” Was Real
Sometime in January, Rubio’s campaign created the hashtag #Marcomentum to argue that he was surging down Iowa’s home stretch, after spending most of the last few months in a distant third behind Cruz and Trump.
Crowds swelled across Iowa for the Florida senator in the race’s final days, and there was no shortage of anecdotal evidence to suggest that late decision-makers were breaking toward Rubio. There was empirical evidence, too, in the form of internal polls from multiple campaigns, all of which showed Rubio coming on strong in the last week of the race.
RELATED: The Rubio Comeback
The entrance polls on caucus night confirmed those suspicions: Rubio won a plurality (28 percent) of the 16 percent of voters who said they’d decided “just today,” and an even bigger plurality (31 percent) of the 19 percent who said they’d decided “in the last few days.” (Cruz was the top choice both of the 10 percent who chose a candidate “sometime last week” and the 20 percent who did so “in the last month.” The biggest chunk of caucus-goers, 35 percent, said they’d made up their mind over a month ago. Trump won that group easily, claiming 39 percent of their support.)
For Rubio, whose campaign has always been fixated on peaking at the right time, the question is now whether the momentum from his late Iowa surge carries into New Hampshire, where with a strong showing he could potentially put away his competition for establishment-oriented voters.
6. The College and Non-College Lanes Are Completely Muddled
If and when a GOP presidential primary becomes a binary contest, it typically features two broadly defined groups of voters. The “establishment” wing includes wealthy, white-collar, college-educated, and less-religious voters; the “conservative” or “anti-establishment” wing is home to middle- and low-income, blue-collar, non–college-educated, and religious voters. (Ron Brownstein has dubbed these groups “managers” and “populists.”)
To predict and determine which candidates will emerge as the leaders of these respective factions, the most important divide to study, in public surveys and in entrance/exit polls, is that between Republicans with and without college degrees.
For a long stretch of summer and fall, polling suggested that Trump had the capacity to consolidate the support of non-college Republicans. On the other side, there were no signs of coalescence whatsoever. Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie, Cruz, and, yes, Trump were all splitting the votes of college-educated Republicans.
RELATED: Demographics and the Iowa Republican Caucus Results
Monday’s entrance polling in Iowa further muddled the picture on both sides. The split was essentially even — 51 percent of caucus-goers had a college degree and 49 percent did not. Among college-educated Republicans, Rubio won a slight plurality, taking 28 percent to Cruz’s 25 percent and Trump’s 21 percent. Among those without a college degree, Cruz won 31 percent, compared to 28 percent for Trump, 17 percent for Rubio, and 10 percent for Carson.
These numbers show how fluid (and crowded) the race is at this early stage, with no candidate yet able to consolidate a majority or meaningful plurality of college-educated or non-college-educated voters behind him. The stakes are especially high here for Rubio: Whereas Cruz and Trump are likely to battle at length for the majority of non-college votes, he has an opportunity to claim a clear majority of the college-educated GOP electorate much earlier on in the race. But it won’t be easy with Bush, Christie, and Kasich — all of whom were essentially non-factors in Iowa — competing heavily for those same voters in New Hampshire on Tuesday.
7. So Much for the Year of the Outsider
For all the talk of GOP voters craving an “outsider” — recall the stretch last summer when Trump, Carson, and Carly Fiorina together took more than 50 percent in national polls — the Iowa entrance polls show political experience is still in demand .
Respondents were asked a question identical to one from the 2012 entrance polls: “What is [the] best preparation for being president?” The results showed an even split: 48 percent said “Be from outside the political establishment” and 46 percent said “Have experience in politics.”
#related#The latter percentage actually represents a notable increase from 2012, when only 36 percent of Republican caucus-goers responded, “Working in government.” (The majority, 54 percent, said “Working in business.”)
It’s not just the exit polling that demonstrates a diminished appetite for a political outsider. Carson, once polling as the front-runner in Iowa, dropped dramatically after a string of foreign-policy misstatements, and finished with less than 10 percent of the vote on Monday. Fiorina, for her part, won less than 2 percent in Iowa and is fighting to get onto the debate stage in New Hampshire after being the only remaining candidate left off due to her low poll numbers.
— Tim Alberta is the chief political correspondent for National Review.