Dem
51
GOP
49
There's been time for the dust to settle, and for various entities to collect a little bit of data. And while Donald Trump's victory in the Iowa caucuses certainly speaks to his dominance over the Republican Party, it also hints at some issues that could come back to haunt him in the general election.
To start, in our write-up, we took note of the very low turnout. Though there are numerous possible explanations for that, one of those is that Trump fanaticism is fading. We've noted many times that wildly enthusiastic votes are worth exactly the same as any other votes. So, it's not a big deal if someone isn't motivated enough to show up to caucus, as long as they're motivated enough to show up to vote in November. That said, voting in November also takes time, and could also require many people to deal with cold weather. So, if enthusiasm IS waning, it could be a problem for Trump come general election time.
There's also another enthusiasm issue hinted at by the topline numbers, though taking notice of it is something of a matter of framing. In the lead-up to the caucus, there were many outlets pointing out that Trump was about to score the most lopsided win of any non-incumbent in the history of the Iowa Republican caucuses. This is true, and he did pull that off. And when you frame it that way, it sounds really good. However, Trump is not a random non-incumbent; he's a former president. And if you compare him to other presidents who have run in the caucuses (i.e., incumbents), he actually did very poorly. Republicans usually cancel their caucuses when an incumbent is running, but if we take a look on the Democratic side of the aisle, Bill Clinton got 98% of the vote in 1996, while Barack Obama did the same in 2012. The one incumbent Republican to face a caucus in the last 40 years is... Donald Trump, who got 97% of the vote in 2020. All of those numbers are, as we understand it, much larger than 51%
Perhaps the fairest comparison to Trump, since Grover Cleveland lived and died long before the Iowa caucuses existed, is Al Gore. Gore was not running as a former president in 2000, but he was a sitting VP, and someone who was strong enough that he scared off most of the competition. He got 63% of the vote in his Iowa caucus. Now, you could point out that the Democrats' way of doing caucuses tends to favor strong performances from the winners (since the supporters of non-viable candidates have to re-cast their ballots for viable candidates, or else cast no ballot at all). There is something to that. However, here's another (hypothetical) way to think about it, courtesy of MSNBC's Joe Scarborough: If Barack Obama was running this year, do you think he would collect just 51% of the vote?
Now let's talk about the demographic underpinnings of Trump's victory. Back in 2016, Trump got a little less than 25% of the Iowa caucus votes, while last night he got a little over 50%. Most of that "growth" is because turnout was much higher in 2016; he actually got around 50,000 votes each time. Nonetheless, The Washington Post did a breakdown of where his votes came from 8 years ago as compared to where they came from this week. And the upshot is that he's doing even better with rural and evangelical voters as compared to 2016, but noticeably worse with urban and educated voters. You don't want to draw firm conclusions from a small, somewhat wonky sample. But we would be remiss if we did not point out that the swing states largely will swing on the votes of the latter demographics, and not the former.
And finally, the polls. When Ann Selzer released her final pre-caucus poll, it was the topline numbers that got all the attention. However, there was some interesting stuff on page six. Specifically, among likely caucusgoers, 11% said they planned to vote for Joe Biden in the general, while another 14% planned to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or for a third-party candidate. Undoubtedly, that 25% was not there to vote for Trump, but to vote for protest candidates like Nikki Haley. Further evidence of that comes from an NBC Poll wherein 43% of Haley supporters said they would vote for Biden over Trump. The point here is that when, say, Al Gore got 63% of the Democratic vote in 2000, he could reasonably count on most of the remaining 37% to come home eventually. In Trump's case, it looks like half the people who didn't vote for him on Monday will not be coming home. And this is in Iowa, where the demographics are very favorable to Trump.
One other poll we will mention: The Washington Post's entrance poll (same thing as an exit poll, except that people are queried on the way in, instead of the way out). That poll found something that has already popped up in a bunch of other polls: a sizable percentage of Republican voters would find a Trump conviction to be "disqualifying." In this particular case, 31% said so. Breaking it down further, 49% of Haley voters, 33% of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) voters, 6% of Vivek Ramaswamy voters and 10% of Trump voters feel that way.
It is not at all clear what "disqualifying" means to these voters, exactly. Would they vote Biden to keep Trump out of power? Would they vote third party? Not vote at all? Overcome their cognitive dissonance and vote Trump anyhow? Presumably, all of these things would happen in some measure. What's clear, however, is that a conviction would cost him a chunk of votes, likely more than he can afford to lose. This is especially true among Republican voters who are already casting about for an alternative candidate.
Again, you don't want to read TOO much into the views of a small subset of voters in a smallish, wonky state. That said, we've seen endless "Warning signs for Biden" pieces this cycle. So, it's worth noting that, even under circumstances about as favorable for Trump as possible, there are warning signs for him, as well. (Z)