Iowa: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Reckoning with what the first real results of 2024 are telling us.
Yesterday, Iowans braved a frigid winter evening to participate in a caucus that delivered Donald Trump a historic victory. And, as tradition has long held, there are only three tickets out of Iowa. Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley got “their tickets punched,” and both Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchison have withdrawn from the race.
What do last night’s results mean for the race moving forward? Here are the good, the bad, and the ugly of the first real results of 2024.
The Good
While there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth last night as Donald Trump historically secured 51% of the vote, the results nevertheless serve as a reminder that Trump doesn’t quite dominate the Republican electorate to the extent it is often claimed he does.
The most unusual aspect of the 2024 primaries is that Republican voters are treating, and viewing, Trump as an incumbent candidate. This has created some conflicting understanding of whether Trump does well or does poorly when he secures a bare minimum majority. 51% is a historic victory in a competitive Iowa caucus, but for true incumbents, the vote share in a non-competitive primary looks a lot more like the 97% that Trump received in 2020.
So, is Trump running away with a historically devastating victory, brushing aside his challengers and demonstrating the GOP is still united behind him? Or, is he a barely popular re-run benefitting from the momentum of perceived incumbency but showcasing an opening for an alternative candidate if the non-Trump vote can coalesce behind a single candidate?
Given that Iowa is a dramatically socially conservative state that has, in the past, given nods to the likes of Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz, I tend to look at last night’s results falling more into the latter of the above two questions. If half of Iowa Republicans chose to reject Trump, that suggests neither Trump nor Trumpism is as dominant in the GOP as so many suppose. Whether that means Trump might face a serious challenge in the primary is left to be seen, but looking beyond electoral politics, the Iowa results suggest there may be more than ashes to build from when the Trump era ends, whenever it finally ends.
The Bad
Neither Nikki Haley nor Ron DeSantis performed as needed to be able to claim any additional momentum coming out of Iowa. Perhaps, as DeSantis claimed, they both “punched their ticket out of Iowa,” but things could definitely look better for both candidates moving on to the next stage of the race.
For Nikki Haley, she failed to get above 20% and ended up 2% shy of edging out against Ron DeSantis. While this may not necessarily impact her momentum in New Hampshire, she failed to knock DeSantis out of the race, and that could make building toward a victory in South Carolina far more difficult.
While Haley definitely performed better in Iowa than most thought she would up until a few weeks ago, the expectations got raised for her late in the game to the point that her over-performance is being viewed by pundits and voters alike as an under-performance. This is, perhaps, unfair to the realities of the Iowa race, but sometimes that’s just how politics works.
As for DeSantis, his results are devastating to his chances of securing the nomination. He has essentially been running a single-state campaign ever since he announced, placing the entire justification for his candidacy upon scoring a win or a near win in Iowa. And yet, the difference between Trump’s results and DeSantis’s was larger than DeSantis’s vote share!
The Iowa results are a resounding indictment of DeSantis’s campaign messaging and strategy. MAGA, and even cursory MAGA, roundly rejected Ron DeSantis last night, while Haley’s vote share is a testament to just how much DeSantis shattered his early coalition by chasing after MAGA votes.
While DeSantis did well enough for him to justify remaining in the race, it’s unclear what opportunity he has for a comeback. His polling does not look promising in either New Hampshire or South Carolina, and it’s hard to envision a strong showing on Super Tuesday without showcasing strength against Trump in Iowa.
The difficult reality to reckon with for non-Trump Republicans isn’t so much Trump’s vote total as it is the split decision between DeSantis and Haley. The Iowa results point to one clear and unavoidable reality: no one is going to get close to beating Trump if the non-Trump vote remains divided and bickering.
The Ugly
The 2024 Iowa caucuses showcased two ugly, disturbing problems.
First, legacy media continues to demonstrate why so many Americans have come to distrust them. By announcing Trump as the winner of the Iowa caucus only thirty minutes after voting had begun, they broke a traditional rule of political news to wait until the polls had closed before projecting results. This created a perception, if not a reality, of suppressing turnout and altering the final tally.
The difference between turnout in 2016 and 2024 in Iowa is tremendous. Eight years ago, a record 187,000 Republicans voted in Iowa. Last night, only 110,000 Republicans participated in the caucus. That’s only 15% of registered Republicans in Iowa! 2024’s vote total falls short of even 2012, when 122,000 votes were tallied.
Sure, the historically cold temperatures and blizzard conditions also had a say in voter turnout, as well as the sense that the race was not truly competitive. But it stands to reason that phones buzzing letting people know that Trump had already won before the process had even gotten rolling at least had some impact on if people decided to cast a ballot or, even if they did, who they cast it for.
Second, despite my earlier optimism about Trump’s vote total, the sad and ugly reality is that, after everything that Trump has said and done, it is still very demoralizing to watch a majority of votes go to a man like him. I could roll through issue after issue that should singularly discredit Donald Trump as a serious political candidate, but it seems the totality of disqualifying words and actions overwhelms the public space with so much filth that it now seems normal and routine.
With how historically unpopular both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are, you might think that one of America’s political parties would be motivated to give Americans a more palatable choice. But the voters in both parties seem more inclined to shove their guy down America’s throat, to revel in forcing a “binary choice” upon a sick and tired American public, than they are to find choices that voters can vote for instead of having to decide who to vote against.
While I remain a long-term optimist, it’s hard to confront the ugly realities of our present circumstances.
Justin Stapley received his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Utah Valley University, with emphases in political philosophy, public law, American history, and constitutional studies. He is the Founding and Executive Director of The Freemen Foundation, the Editor in Chief of the Freemen News-Letter, and is also a Federalism Policy Fellow at UVU’s Center for Constitutional Studies. @JustinWStapley