Trump’s Domination and the Battle for No. 2 in Iowa

My name is Abdi Latif Dahir. I'm the East Africa Correspondent at the New York Times. Speaking to someone in their own local language opens up a level of honesty and transparency that would not be present when I speak to somebody in English. When I come into someone's home and greet them in Somali or Swahili, you know, like Habari or Habari Zainu, it brings you into the room. I understand the culture you're coming from, and I'm speaking to you in the language that you understand.

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Hello, Michael.

Nice to see you. Mr. Caucus himself.

Is that what I'm being called?

That's what I saw. That's what I saw on the internet.

So, four years ago, when we went to a Democratic caucus, we went to a high school gym, and we watched as the supporters for each candidates grouped themselves in different parts of the gymnasium. And the candidates that didn't have enough people in their group, those people were released to go support someone else. And so there was a lot of jostling and persuasion and arm twisting.

Physical wooing in that room.

There was yelling and speeches from across the room. We're not going to see any of that kind of stuff tonight. The Republican caucus is much simpler. They will come to these spaces, the one that we're going to go to is in a high school gym, and they will hear speeches from representatives of the different candidates. And then they'll mark on a piece of paper that they were handed when they came in which candidate they support, and those pieces of paper will go in a box.

So, just in summary, the Republican caucus, it's less dramatic, it's less physical than the Democratic one. It's a little bit more resembling a traditional vote, but still very unique with an Iowa twist, because it's not just you going into a private booth and voting.

That's right.

Okay.

Talk to us before we head out about where the drama, where the suspense really is tonight and where it is not.

Well, where it is not is who's going to finish first. Everybody in Iowa, all the polls have landed on the position that Donald Trump is going to win the Iowa caucuses tonight. And what everyone is looking for is who finishes second. Is it Nikki Haley who has made a late charge in Iowa? Or will it be Ron DeSantis who for months has staked his entire campaign on doing well in Iowa?

And Reed, we gave you the assignment to pick a caucus location for us to go to tonight. And I'm guessing that you picked a place that is central to the who comes into second place question.

All right. We're going to go to a caucus at Van Meter High School in Van Meter, Iowa. It's a suburb about a half hour west of downtown Des Moines, and it's a place that's on the edge of rural Iowa, where Donald Trump has run very strong, but also is in commuting distance of Des Moines and should have a lot of professional class voters, who are the type of people that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have been targeting.

So Van Meter is the kind of suburb where voters are interested, we think, in a Trump alternative, therefore, a good place to assess this question of Haley versus DeSantis.

If they're not interested in a Trump alternative in a place like this, then those two are in real big trouble.

Okay. So we should head off to Van Meter.

Are you going to drive?

I'm going to drive. Yeah. You don't even... Do you have a rental car?

I do, but I want you to drive. You're more practiced in the snow.

Yeah. I'm very happy to drive. I'm very excited to have you be our guide.

Let's go.

I'm looking at my phone.

It says minus two.

It says that it's minus two degrees out and that it feels like minus 21.. I mean, a lot has been made of how cold it is and that it is all merited.

I think the cold has not been underhyped.

I think the thing they don't talk about enough is the mechanics of the cold. And the way I experience it is that basically the mucus in your nose freezes.

I wanted to say that in the Times this week, that it's so cold that the boogers in your nose freeze. And I was told that standards were not approved. So maybe we can get that on the daily.

It's true. Here we go.

Turn the heated seats up.

Do you have the directions?

Directions are in. Do you want me to turn some music on? Do you remember? four years ago we listened to One Day More from Les Mis and we had a big sing-along? But that was really about the accumulation of many, many months of covering the Iowa caucuses.

One day more.

I think this year a mountain goat song is probably a little more appropriate.

Why is it the right song for the moment?

You'll hear it when you hear the lyrics.

That's right.

I am going to make it through this year. if it kills me. Sound clap? Not a larynx. I get it.

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me. Well done.

We can play her next.

Good song. Really good song. Okay, we're pulling in.

We're pulling into the school.

Park right here.

Park right here.

Okay. Let's go. We're walking in.

We just described this gymnasium that we have now entered.

It looks like a million other high school gymnasiums. On one end is the basketball scoreboard. On the other end is the track and field records for the high school.

In terms of the caucus, this place has been a little bit remade for voting tonight.

There's a handful of tables set up. There's a table where the votes will be counted. They have some grocery bags to receive the votes. Where the ballots are going to go? in.

You can go ahead and sign right there for me, sir.

when they're so low in the polls.

Who are you going to caucus with? Probably Trump. Because Trump's going to win anyway. I agree with President Trump, yeah. That's who I'm here for, too.

I just don't feel like he can win.

Anybody but Trump. Sorry. I haven't made up my mind yet. All right, well, we're going to start caucusing, apparently. Thank you.

Looks like maybe Ron DeSantis.

Hello, my name is Jackie Abram, and I am caucusing for Ron DeSantis. Whether I like it or not, chaos follows Donald Trump. He will spend the next nine months in and out of court, and he will spend millions on legal fees. Ron can and will get the job done. I want a president who can bring people together, not tear them apart.

Thank you.

My name is Joel Akers.

I am here in Baynard, and I am here to caucus for him.

Reid, can you just explain what just happened?

So, while the speaker was urging caucus goers here to back Nikki Haley, the AP called the race for Donald Trump the earliest it's ever called an Iowa caucus race,

meaning the race is over in this room before it's even begun.

Trump winning was really not a surprise. It's just extremely early, and the AP's got enough information to call.

Amazing. But many farmers have not agreed.

You didn't see them. go like that?

I thought I did. No cucumbers or cantaloupes. Tell us what you're doing. We are sorting the ballots, and then we will count them.

Scientifically dumped out the paper bag, and now we're sorting them by name. Once we get them sorted by name and make sure the ballots are correct, you know, not two names on them, then we'll count them up, then we'll double count them, and then we'll have the totals.

This is a DeSantis pile. That's a Trump pile. That's a Haley pile. And that's the not yet counted pile. Right in the middle, yeah.

Counting.

Got it.

Thank you. DeSantis?

DeSantis? That was close.

Thank you.

So Trump won here, but not by that much.

Trump won here. It looks like he got a little over a third of the vote.

Which may mean something.

We'll get a better sense of really how this fits into the rest of the Iowa results in a couple hours when we have numbers from across the state.

Right.

All right. So...

Ready to go home?

I think we're ready to go back and see what happened across the state.

Let's go back to the hotel.

We'll be right back.

Hey, Shane.

Hello. Come on in. We have acquired a conference room for you. This is fantastic. Our own private...

Another windowless room to spend my time.

Another windowless room. But this one to talk about results.

Yeah.

You ready?

I'm ready.

Okay. We should just establish where we are in the night. It is 11.15 p.m. local time. 12.15 a.m.

First of all, I'm very pleased that it is only 11.15 local time.

Very civilized.

This is earlier than we expected a few hours ago. And I think the reason we are here so early, relatively, is just because the results are pretty clear, which is that, Donald Trump, he has 51% of the vote. right now. Ron DeSantis is in a very distant second at 21%. And Nikki Haley is in third place at 19%.

I want to, for a second, talk about the call that was made in this race for Trump. It wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise was when the call was made. The call was made startlingly early. All of us in this room from The Daily were at a caucus where the call came before a single ballot had been cast.

Because this is a caucus and not a traditional election, I think the Associated Press made the decision to call it before all the ballots were cast. Now, normally in an election, they wait until the polls are closed. Now, very much, the polls were not closed here in Iowa. And after that happened, one of the first messages I got was from Ron DeSantis' communications team, who said,

What specifically was so upsetting to them about this?

I think they were upset that this is the state where he's banked his entire candidacy, that they have rallied people to the polls, they've got them out in sub-freezing conditions to show up at these caucus sites. And again, this is not a regular election. You've got to stay. You've got to listen to speeches in some cases. And then you have to go and cast your ballot.

And do the campaigns have a point here?

I mean, I think that they do have a point, that it's a concern. You know, I was certainly among those who were surprised. I was getting ready for a later in the evening call, and the networks and AP in very quick succession called the race. Right, right.

Well, we're not here to debate the media ethics of it, but I think we can both admit that it was strange. It might not have affected any of the outcome, any of the voting. There's no evidence, in fact, that it did, but it was unusual. So, regardless of when this call was made, Trump, as you said, won authoritatively, won decisively, won very, very early here.

Pick your adverb.

Pick your adverb. And we have talked a lot about how, because of his dominance in this race, this was really, in Iowa, a battle for second place. But I think it's worth lingering on the nature of Trump's dominance and on the reality, Shane, that there was nothing inevitable about him winning so soundly here. Right? I mean, or really winning at all.

I mean, I really do think it's a pretty remarkable resurrection, and I really think it's important to go back and think about where were we three years ago, when January 6th happened, and when he was impeached, and not just by Democrats, but by the most people to ever cross party lines, to impeach somebody. And he was ultimately acquitted by the Senate, by Senate Republicans, and that allowed him to run again. And really, since then, he's been building power for this moment, acting like a party boss, even getting the Republican National Committee to change some of the rules.

To make it easier for him to win these states, right? We've talked about this.

To make it easier for him to win the coming states, to ultimately become the nominee. And even the fact that it's so cold right now was expected in a lot of ways to work against him. When we were talking to the campaigns in recent days, they thought, really cold, less people will turn out. And for months, the Trump people and others have said, the bigger the turnout, the better it is for Donald Trump. Right now, we're looking at something like 110,000 people are going to vote.

A low turnout.

A very low turnout. They were talking about 220, 215, 200,000.. So you're talking about the electorate was what they thought was going to be unfavorable to him, and he's still winning, running away.

Right, because a low turnout, Iowa caucus still turned out to be a landslide victory for Trump.

It really raises. the question is, is there any kind of turnout right now? that isn't a landslide for Donald Trump?

Talk to us just for a little bit about not just the geography of his victory. You already mentioned that he won basically almost every county in the state. But about the demographics of it and what that reveals about him and his opponents in this race.

So the demographic data is a little bit less clear than just the vote totals. But what they show is a similar story, which is that Donald Trump was winning. He was winning among men. He was winning among women. He was winning among older people.

Not a big surprise, because we know that non-college-educated voters have long been a part of Trump's base.

Yes, but he was winning a pretty big share of college-educated Republicans, too. There's really not places where he's losing. Now, even his weakest parts demographically of the Republican Party, he's basically tied with his opponents where he's weakest. And so the challenge has been for Nikki Haley, yes, you have performed more strongly in highly-educated suburban areas. In those areas, you're fighting Donald Trump to a draw.

Well, Shane, to that point, let's turn to DeSantis and to this competition for second place. Because it's kind of hard to know what to make of a second place. DeSantis finish that is so distant from Trump's finish. And that also is like second place by a hair, right? Two percentage points.

I mean, I think the problem for him is that it really doesn't resolve the question of second place. You have to remember that this is a state that he predicted he could win in. Win outright. Win outright. Beat Trump.

Which is not voting until a month from now, which is a long ways away.

And then he's going to go up to New Hampshire. So he's not giving up on New Hampshire, but he's giving a pretty clear symbol that he's not planning on going anywhere. Right.

And is stuck in a kind of muddled battle for second place with Nikki Haley, who came in a close third. And, in a lot of ways, her experience, right, Shane, has been the exact opposite of DeSantis when we think about trajectory. He enters the race with huge expectations all the way back to a year ago. We've talked to you about this a lot. Somebody, who would be, lots of people, thought, the real viable challenger to Trump, which hasn't really happened.

You know, I think it's a disappointment because of where she was recently, which is the last poll, the poll that people watched most closely. It's called the Iowa poll, and it showed her in second place. And so she didn't achieve that metric. And, more importantly, by falling behind Ron DeSantis, she lost the argument that she wanted to make, that he should get out of the race. She's trying to frame this up as it's her versus Trump.

And so is there any way in which she's correct knowing what's about to happen in the next couple of states?

You know, I think the biggest winner here, you know, where we started, it's Trump, right? You continue to have this fight for second place. His goal is a divided Republican Party, because if there's one weak spot for him in the results from Iowa, it's that while he won overwhelmingly compared to where his rivals were, he had about half the vote. Which means about half the voters could conceivably have voted for somebody else if they all consolidated behind one person. Look, for every Republican who wants to beat Donald Trump, the math is really clear in this race, which is you just need one opponent.

Right. In that sense, it feels like this was a double victory in Iowa for Donald Trump. The first victory being 51% of the vote, a landslide. The second victory being that he left his two main rivals with scraps.

Yeah, and they're fighting over the scraps with each other, which is exactly what his team has been looking for throughout this race.

Well, Shane, thank you very much.

Thank you, Michael.

We'll be right back.