DES MOINES, Iowa–Former President Donald Trump won the 2024 Iowa Caucus with record-shattering vote totals.
On Jan. 15, which was also the coldest Caucus Night on record, President Trump made history in two categories.
He became the first Republican candidate to win more than 50 percent of the votes in a caucus with multiple contenders.
President Trump drew a 51 percent share of the vote. His next-closest competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, attracted 21.2 percent. The difference of nearly 30 percentage points smashed the previous record for the biggest Republican margin of victory, 12.8 percent, set in 1988.
The third-place finisher in Monday’s Caucus, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, attracted about 19 percent of the votes, trailing Mr. DeSantis by about 2 percentage points.
Ms. Haley also won Johnson County in eastern Iowa by a single vote, according to tallies from the Iowa GOP.
Thus, that lone vote robbed President Trump of his full sweep of all 99 counties—which many of his allies had trumpeted on social media before the final tally.
After seeing his disappointing share of less than 8 percent and a fourth-place finish, Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy withdrew from the race and announced he was endorsing President Trump.
All the totals above were recorded with 99 percent of the votes counted, according to The Associated Press (AP).
During his victory speech at the Iowa Events Center, President Trump struck a unifying tone. “I really think this is time now for everybody in our country to come together,” he said. “We want to come together. Whether it’s Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, it would be so nice if we could come together and straighten out the world.”
Several hundred ardent fans and volunteers, who laid the groundwork for his big win, celebrated jubilantly with the former president. He credited his family and his supporters for paving the path to his big win.
But the AP had declared President Trump as the winner so swiftly, just 31 minutes into the caucusing process, his guests had not yet arrived.
The AP says its decision became clear after an analysis of early returns and a survey of caucus-goers “both showed Trump with an insurmountable lead.”
More than 110,000 Iowans cast ballots in the caucuses, far short of nearly 187,000 recorded during the last competitive caucus in 2016. Still, many people considered this year’s turnout to be respectable considering that temperatures dipped to -3 degrees Fahrenheit in the Des Moines area, feeling like -10 with the wind chill.
For many months, polls had shown that President Trump held a commanding lead over all his Republican rivals.
In the final days of the Iowa contest, the four remaining major candidates battled inhospitable pre-caucus weather. Winter storms dumped several inches of snow throughout the state, leaving many roads impassable. After the snow slowed, strong winds created massive snowdrifts and produced life-threatening wind chills.
Mr. Ramaswamy continued to hold events, while other candidates canceled some appearances during the final few days before caucus night.
After a blizzard warning expired on Jan. 13, President Trump resumed campaigning with an in-person rally in Indianola, south of Des Moines, on Jan. 14. An overflow crowd of more than 800 people turned out despite temperatures hovering at roughly minus 17 degrees.
A second in-person rally for President Trump had been slated for Cherokee, a 3 1/2-hour drive under normal conditions. But with many roads still slow-going because of compacted snow, the Trump campaign replaced that event with a “tele-rally” via livestream.
Thomas Hagle, a professor at the University of Iowa, told The Epoch Times that the inhospitable weather added more unpredictability to the contest.
A dangerously cold wind chill factor was “likely to deter some people from turning out” on caucus night, but it would be hard to say which candidate’s supporters would be most affected—and to what degree—Mr. Hagle said on Jan. 14.
“Older people might be particularly concerned about the severely cold weather, but they are also the most reliable voters. Younger people have lower turnout in general, and less experience with the caucuses, so they might be likely to change their minds about attending,” he said.
“Even assuming that turnout will be down because of the weather, it’s hard to say which, if any, of the campaigns will be affected more. Each campaign’s ground game will be important in this respect.
Momentum Versus Organization
Pollster Rich Baris, in his Big Data Poll of Iowa released on Jan. 12, said the three lesser-performing candidates were in a “statistical dead heat” in Iowa.“This has become a classic case of momentum versus organization,” Mr. Baris said in a press release. “Ambassador Haley has momentum, albeit potentially fizzling, while Governor DeSantis has touted a superior organization.
“Mr. Ramaswamy appears to have a little of both, though he remains challenged by his failure—at least thus far—to break through with key demographics critical to the Iowa Republican Caucuses.”
Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Ramaswamy both campaigned extensively in Iowa; Ms. Haley ramped up her presence in the state somewhat later in the game, largely thanks to an endorsement that, unlike many such votes of confidence, came with added firepower.
“Americans for Prosperity endorsed her, and I think that’s a big reason she’s doing better in Iowa [than previously],” said Gary Leffler, a 62-year-old former congressional candidate who remains well-connected in Iowa political circles.
“Before that, she didn’t have a ground game.”
Joan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation magazine, criticized Americans for Prosperity’s (AFP’s) late-November 2023 endorsement of Ms. Haley as “too little, too late.” Ms. Walsh also predicted that President Trump would win the Republican nomination just as he did in 2016 because of “vain politicians again splintering the anti-Trump vote.”
Tone Set for Next Contests
The Iowa result has implications for the next presidential-preference contests in other states, Mr. Hagle said.A big victory for President Trump “would likely blunt momentum that Haley has in New Hampshire,” Mr. Hagle said before the caucuses.
“If Trump wins Iowa, New Hampshire, and then in South Carolina, it would seem to be very difficult to stop him unless some extraneous event shakes up the race,” he said.
As for Mr. DeSantis, he needed a strong showing in Iowa “to argue that he has momentum and he plans to go to South Carolina after Iowa,” according to Mr. Hagle.
But if Ms. Haley had tied or beaten Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, she would have had “more momentum in New Hampshire and might be able to get very close to Trump there, or maybe even beat him.”
“That would give her momentum going into her home state of South Carolina,” Mr. Hagle said.
The goal was for Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis “to do well enough in Iowa to be able to make the case that they are the most viable Trump alternative,” he said.
