Reflecting on Iowa, and on to New Hampshire

I’m on five hours sleep and kicking myself for yesterday’s fourth prediction, so let’s make this quick. It’s time to close the book on Iowa and start the seven-day countdown to New Hampshire.

Let’s take a look at my Iowa predictions.

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

I did you one better than that, too. I gave you a name of someone who would do better than Hutchinson: Ryan Binkley. And guess what?

Ryan Binkley!!

Am I over-celebrating this victory because I got Prediction #4 wrong? You better believe it.

Hutchinson has yet to drop out despite pulling just 0.2% of the Iowa vote. The most we got is that he’s “reevaluating.” Oh, NOW he’s reevaluating? He might be in this until the convention.

Prediction #2: Vivek Ramaswamy finishes in fourth place.

My lock of the night came through! (I hope you called your bookie.) He picked up three delegates, which in itself is impressive. He went from a no-name, non-politician to outlasting a former Vice President, a sitting Senator, and he finished with more than a hundred times more votes than Hutchinson, the former Governor of Arkansas. Three delegates is a win.

With only three tickets out of Iowa, not counting the Arkansan stowaway back in steerage, Ramaswamy has suspended his campaign. Then, in the most predictable development since last night’s sunset, he endorsed Donald Trump. Unless the MAGA movement falls apart, he should be considered among the favorites for the 2028 nomination. Unlike Ron DeSantis, who has deigned to criticize Trump in certain areas, Ramaswamy has had his lips locked on Trump’s ring. That loyalty, his tremendous intellect, and his combative nature will make him a fierce contender.

Prediction #3: Trump clears 50%.

Right again! Although the Des Moines Register‘s final poll had him at just 48%, Trump got his majority, if barely, at 51%.

Importantly, we learned that an average of the polls were about right when it came to Trump. (He went into the caucuses polling at 52.5%.) I noted the relevance yesterday, saying that if he finishes in the low 50s, “[I]t 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.”

This easy win was not without its controversy. DeSantis, in his ongoing quest to mirror Donald Trump, criticized the media for taking sides after it made an early call for the former President. The call came from the networks around 7:30 local time, only a half hour after the caucuses started and before many precincts had a chance to vote. As a result, many voters were getting texts and news alerts about Trump’s win before they made their final decisions, raising the possibility that it could have discouraged support for his challengers. Trump backers have taken to Twitter to make fun of the losers’ excuses, a hilarious reversal of positions for MAGA.

I agree in principle that networks shouldn’t call races while voters are still voting. That’s the standard during general elections and traditional primaries, and so it should be for caucuses too. That said, it’s hard to believe that this early call actually did affect the outcome. Again, the polls matched the outcome pretty closely. Trump was 1.5 points below his predicted total, and we’ll soon see that DeSantis was actually a handful of points above and Haley almost spot on. Even Ramaswamy was within a point of his polling average. (How about it for the much-maligned pollsters!)

Polls suggesting something similar to the result we ended up getting should be enough to convince us that the results are trustworthy and the early call not important. It’s similar to 2020, where most pollsters had Biden winning nearly all the states he won, and then that’s what happened. Polling was good enough to help me correctly predict 49 states. (Thanks a lot, Georgia. Did we never find those 11,780 votes?) If results are close to the polls, can’t we say accusations of shenanigans are overblown and instead the last refuge of whiny losers? Does the conspiracy not only include hundreds of local precincts but the dozens of polling outfits as well?

Anyway, Trump legitimately won a majority of the vote and is now about a 90% likely nominee, with a win in New Hampshire sealing the deal, barring a catastrophic outside development. A 30-point win in the books, he’ll consolidate more and more support from people who see his nomination as inevitable.

Prediction #4: Haley edges DeSantis for second place.

Three out of four ain’t bad?

I said I was kicking myself earlier, and it’s because a big chunk of yesterday’s post was dedicated to saying that I didn’t think Haley’s lead was as certain as the polls suggested. She has opened up a 2.6-point polling lead in the average, which was still widening. The hallowed Des Moines Register poll had her up a full four.

But in arguing that Trump would beat the DRM‘s poll (which indeed had him at just 48% before he pulled in 51) because the same poll noted much more enthusiasm for him, I also noted that Haley had the least enthusiasm, which could depress her turnout on a bone-chilling night. I also dedicated a couple paragraphs to the importance of DeSantis’s superior Iowa organization. These factors convinced me to give Haley a narrower win over DeSantis than the polling suggested, but I thought Chris Christie’s absence would be enough for her to scrape by. I was wrong, and you get a full refund.

It was a decent night for DeSantis. He was the only one to thoroughly beat polling, and in the process he saved his campaign.

Interestingly, it appears late deciders voted against Trump, but since so much of his support was locked in since 2020, that didn’t matter all that much. Entrance polls suggest 80% of voters had their minds made up before the last few days. DeSantis can thank the other 20%, of which he won a plurality, for getting him into second. Finishing ahead of Haley gives DeSantis some semblance of a narrative heading into New Hampshire, where he looks astoundingly weak:

I expect DeSantis to pop up in forthcoming New Hampshire polls. He’ll take some of Ramaswamy, some of Christie, and some undecideds. Still, finishing just two points over Haley isn’t enough to quite catch her after Haley’s head start.

At the same time, however, Haley finishing in third isn’t exactly a great result if she wants to catch Trump. Her chances of doing so fell last night. Even with the disappointment, she may be aiming at a 3-2-1 scenario (3rd in Iowa, 2nd in New Hampshire, and 1st in her home state of South Carolina), which would make her competitive on Super Tuesday, but that’s a long-shot. Without winning New Hampshire, I don’t think she’ll be able to win anywhere else, her Trump-loving home state included.

Statistic of the night

Despite Trump’s triumph, I did see one troubling sign for his prospects. A CNN entrance poll question asked whether Trump was “fit for presidency” if he were “convicted of a crime.”

Many on the left want to focus on the 65% of those who said Yes, a convicted criminal is still fit to be president. However, considering the state of MAGA, which has been convinced the impeachment process and judicial system are illegitimate compared to Trump’s opinion of his own actions, a number this high isn’t surprising.

What’s more interesting to me is actually the 31% who said No. The evidence against Trump is pretty compelling in the classified documents case, and that’s just one of four criminal trials he faces in the next year, three-quarters of which aren’t hush-money cases involving a porn star. Trump’s team has done its best to slow down the legal system in the hopes that Trump wins before verdicts come in, availing himself of presidential privilege and pardoning, but a trial might at least present this strong evidence before then.

If Trump can’t consolidate the Republican vote, he’ll have a hard time winning a general election, even with such a weak opponent. The fact that 3 in 10 Republican caucus-goers in a red state are willing to rule him out is a warning side for his electability.

On to New Hampshire.