No surprises in Iowa caucus results, experts say, but tough road ...

The Iowa Republican caucuses did not deliver any big surprises Monday night, political experts said, but show a more difficult path forward for candidates hoping to displace former President Donald Trump as the frontrunner to become the GOP presidential nominee.

Preliminary results approved by Iowa Republican Party staff show that Trump won the 2024 Iowa GOP caucuses by a historic margin, earning 51% in the first-in-the-nation contest. He came ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in second place by a nearly 30-point lead. DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley had a much closer margin, earning 21.2% and 19.1% on caucus night respectively.

In his victory speech late Monday night, Trump celebrated his win with supporters, thanking Iowans for helping his campaign cruise to victory, saying that campaign staff told him the race would be tighter than he expected.

“They said, ‘well if you win by 12%, that’s a big win. That’s going to be very hard to do,’” Trump said. “Well, I think we’ve more than doubled that, I guess. Tripled that, maybe.”

Earning more than half of Republican caucusgoers’ support — and by a margin of 30 percentage points — delivered record-breaking wins for Trump. The previous record was set by Bob Dole’s 13-percentage-point win in the 1988 Republican caucuses. He also exceeded the highest support in competitive caucuses, outperforming George W. Bush’s lead in the 2000 GOP caucuses at 41% and Walter Mondale’s 1984 Iowa Democratic caucus win of 48%.

Though the caucus results show strong support for Trump, Tim Hagle, a political science professor at the University of Iowa, said said that his caucus win was more reflective of races where an incumbent is challenged than it is an open nominating cycle, like the Republican 2016 race or Democratic race in 2020. He compared Trump’s win to former President Jimmy Carter’s victory against former U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy in the 1980 Democratic caucus, when Carter won by 28 percentage points.

“Even though Trump isn’t actually an incumbent, he effectively is, you know, a former president running for a second non-consecutive term,” Hagle said. “And given his support, and everything that’s going on, and he basically was running as an incumbent, because he refused to debate the other people and wasn’t appearing with them at multicandidate events.”

Hagle said Trump’s Iowa victory was expected — polls have long shown Trump leading the GOP field in Iowa, as well as in other early states. But some critics have challenged the conduct and reporting surrounding caucus night. News organizations including the Associated Press and CNN called the race by 7:30 p.m. Monday, before many precinct caucus locations had concluded voting.

DeSantis, who has focused most of his attention on Iowa in the lead-up to the nominating cycle, criticized media outlets for calling the race early during his watch party speech but promised to continue his campaign into other early state contests.

““It is absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote,” DeSantis Communications Director Andrew Romeo said in a statement Monday. “The media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example yet.”

Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann released a statement Tuesday saying the decision to call caucus results so quickly was “highly disappointing and concerning.”

“One of the key differences between the Iowa Caucus and a standard primary election is that Iowans have the chance to listen to presidential candidates or their surrogates and deliberate to make an informed decision,” Kaufmann said.  “There was no need to rush one of the most transparent, grassroots democratic processes in the country.”

Though Trump won the Iowa caucuses, the race is far from over. Next up is the New Hampshire primary, Jan. 23, where polls show Haley has a better chance at overtaking the former president. Aggregated polling data by FiveThirtyEight shows Trump at 43.5% and Haley at 30.6%, and DeSantis at a far distant third with 5.4%.

Chris Larimer, a political science professor at the University of Northern Iowa, said the difference in participation between caucuses and primaries could play a decisive factor when comparing results in Iowa and states like New Hampshire and South Carolina. Though the Saturday Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll results showing Haley in second place did not help her campaign make it ahead of DeSantis on caucus night, the poll revealed Haley’s base of supporters looked different than her competitors.

Of likely GOP caucusgoers who planned to support Haley, 39% identified as independents and 11% as Democrats, while 78% of both Trump and DeSantis supporters identified as Republicans, and only 1% as Democrats. Haley could see more support from voters in primary elections, Larimer said, as casting a ballot in a primary election does not require the time and travel commitments as the caucuses.

However, the Iowa Poll also found that Haley supporters were much less enthusiastic than Trump and DeSantis supporters. A majority,  49%, of likely caucusgoers planning to back Haley said they were only “mildly enthusiastic” to caucus for her. While winning second place in Iowa could have helped build momentum for her campaign as a viable Trump alternative, Larimer said that low motivation may still impede her campaign in upcoming contests.

“The challenge for the Haley campaign then is, she may have more positive feelings among Democrats and independents, but I just wonder about the level of voter enthusiasm for those two groups of voters to go to participate,” he said. “I think it’s easier for them to say, ‘Hey, I’m willing to do that in a primary because it’s easier to participate,’ but I still think there needs to be a little bit of a nudge to get them out.”

Though DeSantis finished ahead of her in Iowa, Haley repeated calls that the Republican nominating race was down to her and Trump while speaking at a post-caucus event in West Des Moines Tuesday.

“When you look at how we’re doing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina and beyond, I can safely say tonight, Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race,” Haley said.

Caucuses generally have lower participation than primaries already — but the 2024 caucuses also had lower participation than in previous GOP nominating cycles. Data compiled by Larimer found that turnout averaged 117,110 in open Iowa GOP caucuses, reaching a high of more than 186,000 participants in 2016 contest. In 2024, the state Republican party reported 110,298 Iowans participated.

“This is an even smaller slice of the Republican electorate than we normally see in caucuses,” Larimer said. “And so when you move to states with primaries, as that electorate expands, does that do anything to make the race more competitive? I think where Trump finished — how far ahead he finished — that makes that potentially difficult. But I think we still need to keep that in mind.”

The 2024 caucus night was the coldest on record. Though participation fell below average, Hagle said that based on poll results heading into the caucuses, no particular candidate was tremendously hurt by the lower-than-average attendance.

“It doesn’t seem like it really made that much of a difference except that a few thousand, or several thousand people just didn’t turn up,” Hagle said. “Which is not unexpected, again, given the severity of the weather.”