Dem
51
GOP
49
Yesterday, Iowa held its ice-cold Republican caucuses. As expected, Donald Trump won in a walk, though on the strength of a rather limited number of votes.
Here are the numbers with >95% of the votes in:
| Candidate | Votes | Percentage | Delegates |
| Donald Trump | 56,260 | 51.0% | 20 |
| Ron DeSantis | 23,420 | 21.2% | 8 |
| Nikki Haley | 21,085 | 19.1% | 7 |
| Vivek Ramaswamy | 8,449 | 7.7% | 3 |
| Ryan Binkley | 774 | 0.7% | 0 |
| Asa Hutchinson | 191 | 0.2% | 0 |
| Chris Christie | 35 | 0.0% | 0 |
| Other | 84 | 0.1% | 0 |
Beyond Trump's expected, and clear-cut, win, what sticks out the most is the abysmal turnout. In total, 110,298 votes have been counted; with greater than 95% of the vote in, that number isn't going to climb much higher. By contrast, the last time there was a competitive Republican race (2016), 186,874 people showed up to caucus.
What, exactly, does this tell us about Trump's candidacy? Honestly, we don't know. The poor turnout could be due to flagging enthusiasm for him. It could be due to the frigid temperatures. It could be due to the fact that the 2024 race is not competitive. It could be due to there being two NFL playoff games on TV on Monday. Truth be told, it's probably all of these things, in some measure. In any case, Trump's big win is on the strength of votes from 7.8% of Iowa's Republican voters (56,260 of 718,901), and 2.7% of all Iowa voters (56,260 of 2,083,979).
That said, the Iowa results do confirm that Trump is the runaway frontrunner. Where you want to really keep the low turnout in mind is in the case of any and all assessments of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Nikki Haley. As you can see, DeSantis finished second, which is better than expected per the last week of polling. But he did it on the strength of 3.2% of Iowa's Republican vote and 1.1% of Iowa's overall vote. If we consider his small, 2,335-vote lead over Haley, he managed to attract 0.32% more of the Republican vote than she did, and 0.11% more of the overall vote.
In other words, this was hardly a miraculous, campaign-affirming result for DeSantis. He and Haley are neck-and-neck, and are both way behind Trump. The Florida Governor is also about to hit a run of states that are much less friendly to him than Iowa is. What we are saying here, in so many words, is that DeSantis should still drop out. A nominal second-place finish, powered by a relatively trivial number of votes, most certainly does not reveal some hidden reservoir of political strength. However, given the kind of man he is (and, frankly, the kind of woman his wife is), he will presumably soldier on for another week or two before bowing to the inevitable.
As for Haley, so much for the Big Mo. Third place is third place and, more importantly, she's clearly not even in the same ballpark as Trump. She should really drop out, too, although in her case, keeping things going for a while longer is more justifiable than for DeSantis. At least she might make a decent showing in New Hampshire. DeSantis, for his part, might not outpoll the out-of-the-race Chris Christie.
Anyhow, there will be much talk about Iowa for the next 24 hours or so, and then everyone will forget the Hawkeye State for the next 4 years. The New Hampshire primary is next Tuesday (January 23), and in between now and then, there are not just one but two Republican candidates debates (on Thursday and Sunday). Dear God, why? (Z)