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Predictably, Donald Trump has won the Iowa caucuses. Here are nine quick takeaways:
Iowa generally doesn’t do a good job of predicting who is going to win the Republican primary because it’s much more conservative and much more evangelical than the rest of the country. Trump didn’t even win the Iowa caucuses in 2016, losing out to Ted Cruz and barely scraping second place over Marco Rubio. In a normal cycle, winning Iowa is a sign that you’re the guy dominating the socially conservative, evangelical lane of the race. But those guys don’t usually end up winning the primary. Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012, Ted Cruz in 2016 - all won Iowa, all lost in the end.
This time around the GOP primary is not normal. It’s a barely contested race dominated by one candidate whose core supporters identify with him fervently. About two-thirds of Iowa caucus-goers believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden and a similar number identify as members of the MAGA movement.
The margin of Trump’s victory hence isn’t a sign of narrow strength with evangelicals, but rather of general strength with the GOP electorate. On the other hand, it’s worth reflecting on just how well Trump has the evangelical vote locked down, which is due in no small part to his role in getting Roe v. Wade overturned. The fact he didn’t get outflanked to the right by a Huckabee or a Santorum (or dare I say, a Pence) is a sign of strength.
Drilling down into the results by county, the rural vs. urban divide that you would expect to see is present. Trump dominated in rural places like Fremont County and Buena Vista County, but he performed less well in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Johnson County, which is the home of the University of Iowa. That’s a sign of weakness heading into the general election, which will be decided by places which look much more like Des Moines than Fremont County.
In Polk County and Dallas County - which include Des Moines and many of its suburbs - Trump didn’t even break 40%, with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis combined getting over 50%. That seems to suggest that there might be an extremely narrow path forward for one of those candidates if only the other would drop out before the next contest in New Hampshire. But we also shouldn’t exaggerate anyone’s chances against Trump, and unfortunately both DeSantis and Haley have plenty of incentives to stay in the race as long as possible in the hope of being the last candidate standing if Trump goes to prison or has a heart attack or something.
Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out straight after the results, in which he clocked up a pitiful 7.7%. That result wasn’t a surprise to anyone, and probably a more significant influence on his decision to leave now was that the Trump campaign had started to target him for brutal attacks in recent days. Ramaswamy’s real game - toadying up to Trump in the hope of getting the VP nod or becoming a MAGA media star - has been evident for a long time. Criticism from Trump jeopardises that strategy, and at the first sign of it he’s dropped out - and promptly endorsed Trump.
If Trump crushes the opposition in New Hampshire a week from now, many pundits will say the race is already over. That might be a positive thing, because horse race-style media coverage of polls, turnout and opposing candidates tends to normalize Trump and portray him as a regular candidate rather than as someone on trial for attempting to terminate American democracy. The sooner everyone admits his victory is inevitable, the sooner the scrutiny of his record and promises can intensify.
Trump’s Iowa victory speech was a blend of vague calls for togetherness and insanely hard-line anti-immigrant rhetoric. The former sounded strange coming from a man whose campaign has called his critics “vermin” and promised to “crush” their “sad, miserable existence”. Maybe this was a crude attempt at a pivot before voting in more moderate New Hampshire or even to signal a turn towards a more moderate tone for the general election. Either way, don’t expect it to last.
By far the most concerning part of the speech was the part about immigration, which was even more unhinged than the infamous “murderers and rapists” speech of 2015. He described immigrants entering the country as predominantly made up of the mentally unwell and terrorists, many coming from “countries that most people have never heard of”. He also pledged a level of deportation not seen since the 1950s, which seems to be a reference to his campaign’s promise to set up mass detainment camps and deport millions of people. Trump seems to want to make this plan to brutally radically reshape American society the centerpiece of his campaign. The sooner we can stop talking about Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and start talking about that, the better.