So 49% of an older, whiter, and more evangelical electorate voted against Donald Trump in a low-turnout Iowa election made up of roughly 110,300 caucusgoers. That’s higher than the average attendance of the Taylor Swift “Eras” tour—about 72,500—but not by very much.
Ron Brownstein/The Atlantic:
What Trump’s Victory in Iowa Reveals
The result also offers him some warning signs.
Yet amid all these signs of strength, the entrance poll offered some clear warning signs for Trump in a potential general election—as did some of the county-level results….
Also noteworthy was voters’ response to an entrance-poll question about whether they would still consider Trump fit for the presidency if he was convicted of a crime. Nearly two-thirds said yes, which speaks to his strength within the Republican Party. But about three in 10 said no, which speaks to possible problems in a general election. That result was consistent with the findings in a wide array of polls that somewhere between one-fifth and one-third of GOP partisans believe that Trump’s actions after the 2020 election were a threat to democracy or illegal. How many of those Republican-leaning voters would ultimately support him will be crucial to his viability if he wins the nomination. On that front, it may be worth filing away that more than four in 10 college graduates who participated in the caucus said they would not view Trump as fit for the presidency if he’s convicted of a crime, the entrance poll found.
Again, the caucusgoers are far more conservative than the general electorate. And if they think that a conviction makes Trump unfit, what’s the rest of America think?
The Associated Press:
Here’s how Trump won in Iowa - and why the caucus was practically over before it began
Trump performed strongly in small town and rural communities, where about 6 in 10 caucusgoers said they live. He won with white evangelical Christians, who are nearly half of the caucusgoers. He excelled among those without a college degree.
If there is a reason for pause in his Iowa success, it is that many of the must-win states in the November general election are more urban, more suburban, more racially diverse and have slightly more college graduates as a percentage of their adult population than does Iowa.
And Martin’s not the only one saying it:
The Messenger:
Biden Surrogate Says Trump’s Easy Iowa Win Actually Shows His ‘Weakness’
The Illinois governor said that if Trump wins both South Carolina and New Hampshire, then the race is 'probably' over
“Almost half of the base of the Republican Party showing up for this caucus tonight voted against Donald Trump,” Pritzker told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Monday after she asked about projections that Trump would be “the overwhelming winner.”
In the end, the former president garnered 51% of the Iowa Republican vote.
Pritzker, who also serves as an adviser to President Joe Biden's reelection campaign, says the results of the caucus can be interpreted differently.
"Think about that. I mean, this is the most famous Republican. He’s the guy who, you know, basically built the modern Republican Party, the MAGA Republican Party that the Democrats are running against, and half the people in that party didn’t vote for Donald Trump," Priztker told Maddow before the final numbers came out.
Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo:
Let’s Face It: Trump’s Iowa Result Was Pretty Weak
The final result shows Trump getting 51% of that vote.
That is not just a plurality win, the metric customarily used to judge this contest. It’s actually an absolute majority. Barely. (DeSantis has 21.2% and Haley 19.1%.) But everyone now recognizes that Trump is running as the de facto incumbent. Certainly he’s running as the universally recognized leader of the GOP. And yet he has only barely managed a majority in a state which, unlike say New Hampshire, is pretty tailor-made for his politics. To put that characterization into context, while Iowa is today is a fairly red state, it has long had a reputation as a state which has a very liberal Democratic Party and a very conservative GOP. The Iowa GOP caucus electorate especially is made up of a high percentage of conservative evangelical voters. It’s overwhelmingly rural. By any fair measure, 51% of those voters is underwhelming.
“Here's the composition of Republican caucusgoers vs the gen pop (from the [Cooperative Election Study])”:
White: 97% vs 69%
65 or older: 43% vs 22%
White evangelical: 54% vs 22%
Bachelor's or more:53% vs 35%
Rural: 43% vs 20%
And, again, it's 150K folks. There are 260M adults in the US. [final turnout was closer to 108K]
Sure, weather played a role. But if there were more Trump voters willing to crawl over broken glass, he’d have had a bigger win. And what’s also notable are the reports of bored spectators at Trump rallies leaving early. It’s all part of a bigger picture.
See McKay Coppins/The Atlantic:
You Should Go to a Trump Rally
For many Americans, the former president has become an abstraction. They should see for themselves what his campaign is really about.
If one thing has noticeably changed since 2016, it’s how the audience reacts to Trump. During his first campaign, the improvised material was what everyone looked forward to, while the written sections felt largely like box-checking. But in Mason City, the off-script riffs—many of which revolved around the 2020 election being stolen from him, and his personal sense of martyrdom—often turned rambly, and the crowd seemed to lose interest. At one point, a woman in front of me rolled her eyes and muttered, “He’s just babbling now.” She left a few minutes later, joining a steady stream of early exiters, and I wondered then whether even the most loyal Trump supporters might be surprised if they were to see their leader speak in person.
My own takeaway from the event was that there’s a reason Trump is no longer the cultural phenomenon he was in 2016. Yes, the novelty has worn off. But he also seems to have lost the instinct for entertainment that once made him so interesting to audiences. He relies on a shorthand legible only to his most dedicated followers, and his tendency to get lost in rhetorical cul-de-sacs of self-pity and anger wears thin. This doesn’t necessarily make him less dangerous. There is a rote quality now to his darkest rhetoric that I found more unnerving than when it used to command wall-to-wall news coverage.
The Associated Press:
Nikki Haley says she won’t debate Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire unless Donald Trump participates
The move also could be a result of the last debate which featured only Haley and DeSantis, in which Haley didn’t perform as well as expected, and DeSantis ultimately ended up beating her for second place in Iowa.
Well, duh.
Cliff Schecter and Stephanie Miller: