Whether it was the weather, or the moribund state of the race, turnout looks to have been way down in the 2024 Iowa caucus compared to the last serious GOP race there in 2016. We’re on track for something in the neighborhood of ~120,000 votes cast this cycle, versus 181,000 back in 2016.
Population increases alone would have otherwise suggested a number equivalent to or higher than that. So do we blame the weather, or do we blame the state of the race?
WEST DES MOINES—Never Back Down Founder and former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli reflects on DeSantis lagging far behind Trump, telling National Review inside the Florida governor’s election night party that he “overperformed public expectations.”
Iowa’s Kim Reynolds is one of the most successful Republican governors in the United States. After a relatively close first election in a swing-y state in 2018, she won reelection with 58 percent of the vote in 2022. Republicans grew their majorities in the Iowa General Assembly in 2020 and 2022. She gave the GOP response to Biden’s state of the union address in 2022. She was chairwoman of the Republican Governors Association.
On policy:
- She signed a heartbeat bill
- She is moving the state to a flat tax while still running budget surpluses
- She signed constitutional carry
- She signed an election-integrity bill
- She is raising teacher pay while expanding school choice
Reynolds endorsed DeSantis. And nobody much cared.
Okay, if there is anything else to watch in this, it’s whether Nikki Haley finished in third. As it stands now, it looks like she’s going to squeak out a second place finish. But her rise has been going on since last November, with no corresponding surge for DeSantis. I think it would be a disappointment for her to come in behind him.
DeSantis is finishing so far behind Donald Trump after investing so much in the state, that I don’t think it really matters where he finishes. Why was he unable to convince others of his virtues as an executive?
Iowa governor Kim Reynolds endorsed Ron DeSantis on November 7. DeSantis’s polling average on FiveThirtyEight was 17 percent on November 7. Evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who has never endorsed a loser in GOP Iowa caucuses, endorsed DeSantis on November 21. DeSantis was polling at 18 percent on November 21. He looks likely to get about 18-20 percent of the vote tonight. The endorsements did not seem to do anything to raise his vote share.
Phil, I said, “maybe by last Wednesday, the goose was cooked, the cake was baked, and there just weren’t that many remaining undecided caucus-goers to influence.” Twenty percent of caucus-goers remaining persuadable or undecided in the last few days is more than I would have expected! But the fact remains that both DeSantis and Haley, and their respective campaigns, decided the best strategy in that final debate was to go negative, get nasty, keep bringing up the same opposition research over and over again, and in the case of Haley, mention “DeSantisLies.com” so many times that the viewers at home might fear she had a stroke. It was a terrible approach for the night that represented their biggest audience for their closing argument. In crunch time, both campaigns decided, “let’s go negative.” If one or the other had chosen a more positive, confident, optimistic and can-do persona, maybe one of those two candidates would have done better.
One of the more interesting observations I’ve seen made during primary season — I credit it to Liam Donovan — is that so many of DeSantis’s in-state Iowa backers (think Vanderplaats, Reynolds, etc.) were inclined to him over the otherwise formidable Trump (who has always led in all polls) because they resented Trump’s refusal to play the “Caucus season game” — the retail politicking, heavy focus on ground game in-state, investment of resources and local hiring — and were determined to instead go with a candidate who affirmed their electoral relevance.
The bet has not paid off.
With 72 percent of votes counted, DeSantis and Haley are in a tight battle for second. The latest returns — which you can find here — show DeSantis with 21 percent, and Haley with about 19 percent. So far, Trump, already declared the winner, is still retaining more than a majority of the vote in Iowa.
In the closing weeks of the campaign, DeSantis hammered Trump for deporting fewer people than Obama, and for never building the border wall. This was all part of his broader argument that he was more disciplined and effective at getting actual results. But entrance polls showed caucusgoers who named immigration as their top issue went for Trump by a three-to-one margin, 61%-20%.
Waukee, Iowa—When National Review asked the Ron DeSantis surrogate at Sugar Creek Elementary School for his reaction to national outlets calling the race for former President Donald Trump, he looked aghast.
“If that’s the case, that’s just absolutely irresponsible. We hadn’t even voted in either precinct,” he said in the lobby of the central Iowa elementary school, which had very spotty wifi. “That’s a big screw-up.”
But most caucus-goers interviewed by National Review shortly after the race was called were far less surprised by the announcement, even those who caucused for other candidates.
DeSantis supporter Catalina Boss let out a long sigh, but said she wasn’t at all surprised that Trump ran away with it.
Doug Stout, a Nikki Haley supporter, predicted earlier this evening that the state party will have 95 percent of the votes tabulated by tonight. “So it’s not like that call would last until tomorrow if something horrible happened and they were wrong,” he said, adding that they use sample precincts to extrapolate roughly what the overall results will look like. “It was clear that nobody was going to get more than he did.”
Stout said that it was tough choice between supporting DeSantis and Haley, adding that she is more “personable” of a candidate. He’s optimistic she will perform well in New Hampshire’s open primary on January 23.