Iowa Predictions & Potential Trajectories

If Donald Trump loses tonight’s Iowa caucuses, it will be the biggest upset in presidential election history. Nothing would come close. I considered writing a few thousand words proving it, but I decided to spare you. Just trust me on this one — no one up 33.8 points in an average of polls has ever lost a presidential contest.

But that’s not to say there isn’t any drama. There are two things to watch for tonight: Trump’s percentage of the vote, and who of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis finishes in second. The former will test Trump’s vulnerability, and the latter will determine whether anyone can take advantage of it.

You know I think Trump will win this nomination pretty easily, but I’m open to Iowa changing my mind. Let’s get to some…

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Predictions

Prediction #1: Of the five major candidates remaining, Asa Hutchinson will finish sixth.

As the former governor of Arkansas, he’s unquestionable a “major” candidate, but you need a microscope to see his polling numbers nationally and in Iowa. He’s been on a hopeless mission similar to Chris Christie’s, trying to beat back on the Trumpy waves drenching the new Republican Party, but he hasn’t been as good at it. He qualified for a single debate before we got scared of his demon eyes and cast him back from whence he came. In the over 30 Iowa polls done in the last year, he has never hit higher than one percent. He may have hope that Christie’s 3 or 4% in Iowa will migrate over to him, but those voters almost certainly see more value in going to Haley or DeSantis, candidates who actually have a prayer to block Trump’s nomination.

So who leaps ahead of him? Watch out for businessman and pastor Ryan Binkley, who has run a faith-based campaign that may appeal to evangelicals who supported Mike Pence or Tim Scott but can’t quite stand Trump’s phony Christianity, Ron DeSantis’s wishywashy abortion stance, or Nikki Haley’s footsy with moderates.

Prediction #2: Vivek Ramaswamy finishes in fourth place.

It’s the PPFA lock of the night! Call your bookies. What he does afterward is what has me more interested. If he finishes a surprising third place, that would be seen as beating expectations and blow some wind into his sails heading into New Hampshire. But if after a fourth place finish he senses Haley or DeSantis is gaining on Trump, he may drop out so that his 5% of support in New Hampshire can help Trump stave them off.

He may have hoped for an Iowa surprise today — no one has worked harder, and he’s won a lot of converts with his big brain and aggressive rhetoric — but Trump finally turned on him over the weekend, so that’s out. Unsurprisingly, the normally combative Ramaswamy turtled. “It’s an unfortunate move by his campaign advisors, I don’t think friendly fire is helpful. Donald Trump was the greatest President of the 21st century, and I’m not going to criticize him.” He’ll talk tough to everyone else, but for the big guy he’ll happily neuter himself.

Prediction #3: Trump clears 50%.

I admit this is me bracing for the worst. I would not only prefer Trump to not be the nominee, but I also root for a competitive primary.

Unless either DeSantis or Haley can keep it to within 20 points, which would mean they’re flirting with a respectable 30-point performance themselves, Trump’s performance against the field is what matters most tonight. Earlier this month I lay down Trump at 50% as the most important threshold of the caucuses: “The most obvious marker, barring an improbable run from DeSantis or Haley cutting Trump’s lead to single digits in a 51-42 situation, would be if Trump falls below 50%. . . . [I]f we can say that more Iowa voters voted against him than for him, that can be seen as a tiny crack in the Trump facade.”

That still feels right to me. As a former President who polls around 60-65% nationally, why would most Iowans prefer his opponents? That’d be a mark against his inevitability, and it could at least provide a key talking point to Haley and DeSantis.

However, I think Trump gets to a majority. Unlike many Iowa stretch-runs, which usually have a lot of late polling movement in favor of underdogs, this cycle has seen Trump add a bit to his lead in the last month. The Real Clear Politics average of Iowa polls has him with average lead of 33.8 points, up about 5 points in the last month, and he’s up to 52% as an average, about as high as he’s been this cycle.

Of the last 12 polls, he’s hit at least 50% in 10 of them, and in the others he came in at 49 and 48:

We also see that two of the last six polls have him up by over 40, which hadn’t happened since a Trump-loving and perhaps predictive Emerson poll in May. He is on his way to the biggest blowout in the history of the Republican Iowa caucuses, and no one can stop him.

The best argument that he stays under 50 comes from the fact that the best poll in the business, Ann Selzer’s poll (the NBC News/Des Moines Register survey) has him at just 48, down 3 points from their early December poll. If he’s at 48 and trending down according to the gold standard of polling, it’s reasonable to conclude he’ll finish in the mid-to-high 40s. (In optimistic moments, I even allow myself to believe it, but those moments are fleeting.)

However, a deeper reading of the poll suggest he may hold on to a majority after all. The enthusiasm gap between Trump and his competitors is predictably large.

On what’s projected to be a cold night of caucusing, where Iowans have to brave the night and their neighbors, it strikes me that a higher percentage of Trump voters will turn out than DeSantis and Haley supporters. The great Selzer survey might be a hundred percent accurate saying Trump has the support of 48% of potential Iowa caucus-goers, but if even a marginally higher portion of them turn out compared to the other candidates, he’ll win over 50% of the vote.

Prediction #4: Haley edges DeSantis for second place.

If Trump is held under 50, that would be the most important result of the night. If he goes above 50, however, the elimination match between Haley and DeSantis takes center stage.

The polling alone suggests Haley should win second place comfortably. Check out DeSantis’s green line and Haley’s red line in the rolling RCP average over the last six months:

DeSantis had gone from rivaling Trump to, just in the last week, third place. Haley has risen consistently since the debates began and has secured a two-and-a-half point lead in the average. DeSantis settled into a rolling hills situation, but is currently trending down while Haley trends up. In past Iowa caucuses, someone’s strong finish usually carried them right through caucus day. Just ask Huckabee 2008, Obama 2008, Santorum 2012, and Rubio 2016, whereas falling numbers kept going down, as we saw with many of their opponents.

But DeSantis does have something going for him (besides his great record as a Governor for this Republican Party that few seemed to care about), and that is the nature of this contest: Iowa has caucuses, not a primary. Were it a primary, I’d say it’s clear that Haley was our second place finisher, but DeSantis — and more to the point, the Never Back Down super PAC that supports him — has built an extraordinary organization. Extraordinary organization can capture a greater percentage of one’s voters than weaker organizations can. For this one, you can ask Cruz 2016 and Buttigieg 2020, who punched above their polling numbers by having strong footprints across the state.

Organizations not only get voters to caucus sites, but they allow organization within caucus sites. Campaigns try to staff precincts with leaders who can speak on behalf of the candidate, persuading undecided voters to come over to their side or their own voters from deserting them in the midst of a strong case by another advocate. (Unlike the old Democratic caucuses, however, there is no eliminating “nonviable” candidates followed by a second round of voting. The first round is it.)

DeSantis and Never Back Down have engaged in a massive door-knocking campaign and now have captains for every precinct in the state. I don’t see evidence that Haley matches that organization, partially because she has put just as much effort into New Hampshire, whereas DeSantis has been all in on Iowa. And on top of all that, those enthusiasm numbers from the Des Moines Register poll show Haley badly lags in the metric.

So why will Haley hang on? Momentum + Christie’s absence. It was already projected to be a close finish between her and DeSantis, and I think the 4% of so that would have gone to Christie will keep Haley in second. As for her enthusiasm gap, we should remember that voting against someone can be just as motivating as voting for someone. Joe Biden had an enthusiasm gap against Trump in 2020, but Trumpism on the ballot turned out a lot of people to vote for the Democrat, myself included. Haley is counting on independents and disaffected Republicans to prop her up, even if they don’t see her as the ideal candidate. That should help.

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Trajectories

Finally, let’s consider the paths this primary can take depending on tonight’s results.

Let’s put Trump’s results into three buckets:

1. Trump runs up the score into at least the high 50s or even 60s (57+). This would send a message that the primary is over. Undecided voters in New Hampshire decide in his favor so as not to prolong the inevitable and circle the party’s wagons.
2. Trump shoots par: low- to mid-50s (50-56). This would align with polling. He would happily take it, as it probably means his strong polling in later states is trustworthy and there’s not some hidden opposition to him within the party. His chances of winning the nomination climb a couple percentage points. This result is my expectation.
3. Trump bogeys by finishing below 50%. This would be seen as a bad result. Although he would braggadociously remind us it’s still the best result in the history of the Republican caucuses, we’ve also never had a former president run in them before. Why is most of the party voting against him? It’s a clear narrative for his opponents moving forward. Meanwhile, if he’s in the 40s, that frees up a lot of percentage points for Haley or DeSantis to get into the 20s. Maybe they both do, or maybe one approaches 30. If either gets within 20 points of him, when his Iowa polling lead was in the mid-30s and his national polling lead in the 50s, that would be a shock and put New Hampshire in play.

The trajectories of Haley and DeSantis are dependent on the above.

• Scenario 1) If Trump runs up the score, there will be few voters left for them. Let’s say Trump hits 60, and we’ll give Ramaswamy and others about 10 combined. That leaves just 30 points total for Haley and DeSantis. I don’t see either falling to 10, so that leaves them each in the teens somewhere against Trump’s towering 60 points. In this scenario, Trump triumphs in New Hampshire and everywhere else. Haley and DeSantis would end up among the more pathetic also-rans in primary history.
• Scenarios 2a) If Trump is in the low 50s, that can free up Haley or DeSantis to get into the 20s and claim some semblance of beating expectations. In Scenario 2a, let’s say it’s Haley who does it. She can challenge Trump in New Hampshire to hang on to relevance. DeSantis, stuck in the teens, will be hard-pressed to make a case he should stay in the race. Haley will want him to, as his voters probably go to Trump in New Hampshire. We would keep a close eye on DeSantis’s decision-making. He will be very tempted to endorse Trump and get back into MAGA’s good graces for 2028.
• Scenario 2b) Or maybe it’s DeSantis that edges Haley and gets to 20. If this occurs, he certainly stays in the race, and he might even challenge Haley for second in New Hampshire, where she’ll struggle after her disappointing third place Iowa finish. Their intramural war will continue. They might even debate again as we continue pretending we don’t know where this is going. DeSantis will then finish ahead in Nevada but Haley in South Carolina and they’d both still be in it on Super Tuesday while Trump wins majorities all over the place. Trump loves this scenario.
• Scenario 3a) What Trump would not love is scenarios 3a and 3b. In 3a, Trump is held below 50%, and that’s probably because Nikki Haley surged deep into the 20s. If she cuts the deficit to about 20 points, I think she becomes the favorite in New Hampshire unless this showing forced DeSantis and Ramaswamy out of the race, protecting Trump. If she takes New Hampshire, she has a shot in South Carolina. If she wins South Carolina, we have a ballgame.
• Scenario 3b) Or maybe it’s DeSantis’s superior ground organization that made him surge into a strong second. This is the most interesting scenario, as it could rejuvenate the campaign that actually has the best chance of unseating Trump. DeSantis would pop in New Hampshire and I’d guess would pass Haley. If he does, Haley could leave the race at that point, especially with the prospect of getting shut out in Nevada. Importantly, Haley’s voters probably become DeSantis voters, which frankly feels a bit unfair because this consolidation would not occur in the other direction. If DeSantis absorbs Haley’s support and added Iowa and New Hampshire momentum on top of that, he could get into the 30s and 40s heading into Super Tuesday, giving us an interesting race.

Yes, we know who will win Iowa, but that doesn’t mean there’s no drama. The action starts at 7:00 pm Central Time, 8:00 PM Eastern, and we shouldn’t have to wait more than an hour before some results start trickling in. Pay attention!

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Thank you to the divinely named Donkey Hotel at Flickr for today’s featured image.