Trump wins big in Iowa as Haley and DeSantis fall short
2024-01-16 00:20:53
Every Friday, Guardian columnist and former Washington correspondent, Jonathan Freedland, invites experts to help analyse the latest in American politics. From politicians to journalists covering the White House and beyond, Jonathan and his guests give listeners behind the scenes access to how the American political machine works.
This is The Guardian.
In Norway, a woman's boyfriend forgets who she is. Overnight in Detroit, a man is arrested, but he was never at the crime scene. In Spain, disturbing pictures of young girls have appeared and no one knows who's behind them. Something strange is happening, a collision between people and artificial intelligence.
Discover more in the Guardian's series Black Box. Listen to the whole series right now, wherever you get your podcasts.
It took just 30 minutes for the Associated Press to project Donald Trump, the big winner in Iowa, late Monday night. Their time, with the other networks following suit almost immediately.
CNN projects, ABC News is now projecting, NBC News can now project, the Fox News decision, Desk can now project that former President Donald Trump will win the Iowa caucuses.
But Trump's victory was expected. As the night went on, all eyes were on the real contest, the race for second place.
CNN can now project that when all the votes are counted, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, will come in second.
The late polls in Iowa had Nikki Haley beating Ron DeSantis. But as we say often on this podcast, the crystal ball of polling can sometimes get a bit cloudy. So what happens now, with the majority of Iowans having put their faith in Donald Trump? Should we just assume he will be the Republican nominee? Or can Nikki Haley or even Ron DeSantis pull off a spoiler in the next contest in New Hampshire? I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is a special update episode of Politics Weekly American.
Yes, it has been particularly frigid, even by Iowa standards. This week. People were saying it was actually the coldest caucus on record because we were with the presidential well into the negative 20s and 30s. And I can say from personal experience that stepping outside has been painful.
Joni Grieve is a senior political reporter for The Guardian U.S. and from time to time hosts this podcast. For the past few days, though, she's been braving brutal conditions after a blizzard swept through Iowa and temperatures dropped to minus 25 degrees Celsius on Caucus Day.
Yeah, I was actually surprised, at least at the caucus site where I was at tonight, that it did appear to be a pretty packed room. It did seem like they got pretty good turnout for what was an absolutely freezing night, when so many of the roads still have some ice and snow on them. So from what I could tell anecdotally, it seemed like people were not too deterred. And it was funny, too. Just talking to Iowa voters when you would ask them, Oh, do you think that people might be discouraged from coming out to caucus because of the weather? And they just always kind of shook their head and said, absolutely not.
You know, like, we're Iowans and we can do this.
Yeah, no, they're tough and hardy folk there. Look, the big headline of the night is a big, big win for Donald Trump. You and I were just trading text messages earlier on and said, we both, I think, agreed, almost the ideal result for Donald Trump.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And because it goes beyond just the fact that he won and won massively, you know he. It looks like he's going to be winning by about 30 points. But also the way that the second and third and even fourth place panned out was actually pretty ideal for him. Because I think that the worst case scenario for the Trump campaign would be if. Nikki Haley secured a very strong second place and managed to chip into his lead a little bit. And then went into New Hampshire with, like, some new momentum coming off of Iowa. And that's not what we saw happen tonight. Instead, we saw that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley were battling it out for a very distant second place.
In the end, it was Ron DESantis who came in with a second place, about two to three points ahead of Haley. And then, in a even more distant fourth place was Vivek Ramaswamy, who we just heard announced that he is actually going to be suspending his campaign. So now, as we look ahead to New Hampshire, you have a newly re-fortified Trump because of this win was so massive. Nikki Haley, who was hoping that she can make something happen in New Hampshire, but Iowa has not really given her any kind of boost. And now Ron DESantis has to go into New Hampshire, which we expect to be a pretty weak state for him.
And so he won't be able to really capitalize on his second place finish. So overall, I think it is just a fantastic win for Trump.
Yeah, no. Massive win for Trump and some of those votes for Vivek. Ramaswamy will transfer to him. And he's managed to avoid what he always, in a way, has feared. And we can hear people at the Nikki Haley not quite victory party behind you there, but what he always feared was a one on one contest.
And it's still a three person race that helps Donald Trump. Let's just talk about that big Trump win, though. How do you account for why Iowa voters backed him in such big numbers? He cleared comfortably the 50 percent threshold, getting more than his two big rivals combined.
Why did they back him so much?
I think it's a combination of factors. And, you know, one thing that we obviously cannot overlook with Trump is just the immense amount of loyalty that he inspires among the Republican base. You know, even as we've seen these 91 felony counts against him, if anything, it feels like those criminal charges have actually made his supporters even more devoted to him. You know, they feel like he is being politically persecuted. There's no evidence that that is in fact the case.
But they believe that that's what's happening and they kind of want to rally around him to show their support of him. And so I think that that's a huge factor here, I was also a bit more. Overall, I would say. The Republican base is more conservative than what we see in New Hampshire, where, with New Hampshire, we will probably be seeing some independent voters casting ballots in the Republican primary as well. But in Iowa, it's, you know, it's a much more, I would say, farther to the right, and also a more evangelical voting base as well.
And, you know, evangelicals have historically voted for Donald Trump in large numbers. And so it really is, you know, a great combination of factors for him to bring out the some of his most loyal supporters.
Yeah, the electorate really favors in there, and evangelical Christians, as you just said, such a solid block for Donald Trump. Now they weren't. Back in 2016. We should remind people that Ted Cruz was the winner there. Trump lost in 2016, but now it is absolutely rock solid Trump country for him.
And he did extraordinarily well with that. I mean, the speech he gave. There was in the crowd, was Britain's own Nigel Farage, among others, there in that crowd.
A lot of people thought that they were quite struck by what seemed by Trump standards. A very gracious speech in which he complimented his competitors.
An amazing job they all did. They're all very smart, very smart people, very capable people.
To use their actual names, he didn't use his Ron Desantimonious nickname for Ron Desantis. What do you think that was all about?
Well, I think it says one thing about Donald Trump's, you know, political personality as a whole. That we, you know, kind of heard that speech and thought, Oh wow, you know, he wasn't outright insulting, you know, what a win.
But yes, you know, I think that, you know, we do occasionally see these moments from Trump, where he tries to present himself as more of a unifier. And he tries to act as though he can bring people together. Despite his long record of causing controversy and really dividing people, I think what we see time and time again is just that. Even if he occasionally tries to engage in this rhetoric, where he is trying to be more of a unifier and trying to bring people together. It never lasts very long. Because he inevitably does go back into his name calling and his, you know, his very divisive views on everything from immigration to racial justice. And so, even if, though we saw a potentially slightly more gracious side of him tonight, I would not expect that to last long. Just given everything else we know about Donald Trump.
Yeah, and as you said, even within that same speech, he played some of the darker tunes again by talking very harshly about migrants.
We're going to seal up the border.
Because right now we have an invasion, we have an invasion of millions and millions of people.
I thought, too, that what was going on? There was an attempt by him to seem like the big winner. Who is on his way to being the nominee. And trying to sort of pose as the man who unites the party and so on. He did say we're going to try and bring people together, but as you say, I don't think we'll be exactly holding our breath. Let's talk about the other two. Nikki Haley was shown to be in second place in the Eve of Caucus Poll, the big poll that everyone watches in the Des Moines Register newspaper.
Instead, she was third. Only a couple of thousand votes in it. I mean, we should say actually that in Iowa, even Donald Trump, he got something around, you know, 55,000 votes or so, which is, you know, less than a big crowd. Or on a decent night at the Emirates to watch Arsenal? I mean, it's not big numbers. But somehow she didn't manage to come higher up. Do you think that is partly because she just didn't have the kind of ground organization that the others have? And on a very cold night in Iowa, you need on-the-ground organization.
Or was something else going on?
Yeah, I think that there is something to the fact that, you know, she kind of in terms of the ground game, she kind of came in late. I think that probably was one contributing factor. Also, when we look at a little bit deeper at the Iowa polling numbers. It seems like her supporters weren't quite as enthusiastic as Donald Trump's, or maybe even Ron DESantis's were. And so I think all those things were contributing.
She's also just a different kind of politician than Trump or DeSantis are, and I think it's a kind of politician that, you know. She is kind of trying to make some, I wouldn't call her a centrist by any stretch of the imagination, but she was kind of trying to make some. Present herself as a more, as a less hard, right Republican. And I feel like that might not play as well in Iowa, but it might play quite well in New Hampshire, where she is polling better.
Yeah, I think there's fascinating numbers in what they call the entrance poll, it's not the same as an exit poll. They interview caucus goers as they go in and they ask them about their issues. And it turned out that she's very popular with people who actually believe Joe Biden won the election, she's popular with people who are college educated.
The trouble is among Republican voters. There's just not that. Many of those kinds of people that non-college educated Americans and people who believe Biden, you know, stole the election are in existing bigger numbers in that Republican electorate.
Yes, yeah, exactly. And it has been fascinating as I've been watching Nikki Haley on the campaign trail over the past several days. She really hammers the argument that she is the most electable of the Republican candidates. She, in particular, really points to this Wall Street Journal poll that was conducted last month, which showed that. In a head to head matchup between her and Joe Biden, she theoretically could beat him by as much as 17 points.
And she, you know, she repeatedly reminds people of that, just to say, like, Hey, like, I am the one who can get us back. The White House, like, that's why you should nominate me. Trump and Biden both lack a vision for our country's future because both are consumed by the past, by investigations, by vendettas, by grievances.
America deserves better. But the problem is is that, like, you know, it's like in a general. That may be true of a general election, but we're not in a general election. You know, we are in a Republican primary, and to be to compete in a Republican primary. She does really need to appeal to the base in order to even get to the general.
And, you know, right now it just seems. It seems like Trump has such a lock on the party's base that that's going to be really hard for her to make it out of that primary.
And the party just is so obviously Donald Trump's party. These days. We've seen that in Iowa. Let's say something about Ron DeSantis. People had been really counting him out, that that that poll had him in third.
He was seeming like a bit of a dead man walking. He's, you know, he's only second place, and he's miles behind Donald Trump. But do you think in some ways, we all collectively underestimated him and his campaign? You know, he did what's known as the full Grassley after Chuck Grassley, the senator from Iowa who makes a point of going to all 99 counties in Iowa. Do you think all of that helped Ron DeSantis?
Yeah, I think that the ground game that he did definitely did help him, you know, he dedicated immense resources to the state of Iowa. You know, he really wanted to make a great showing here in order to, you know, kind of propel him forward. And that being said, you know, he and his allies spent so much money in Iowa. And to come in a very, very distant second place, I feel like, was not the result they would have been looking for.
You know, especially if you think back to, you know more of, like, middle of last year, when he was polling significantly better. I'm sure the DESantis camp is going to try to spin this as a victory and say, you know, hey, like, you know, DeSantis came in second place. He is the right person to go up against Donald Trump one on one. But it's hard to make that argument when you are still losing to Donald Trump by 30 points. And so I think that they will try to portray it in that manner.
But when you spend so much money and have so many people on the ground. And he had so many endorsements from Iowa legislators, and still, at the end of the day, he got second place, 30 points behind Trump. And I just don't know how you look at that and think that this race can go anywhere other than Trump winning the nomination.
Yeah, I mean, when he came out to give his speech, he said he had to go to the media for calling the election too early. With that very early call, he said, Well, people were still voting.
But they were just so excited about the fact that they were predicting that. We wouldn't be able to get our ticket punched here out of Iowa, but I can tell you, because of your support, in spite of all of that that they threw at us, everyone against us, we've got our ticket punched out of Iowa.
And he said, Look, you've. I've punched my ticket out of Iowa, that's the tradition that there are usually two or three tickets out of Iowa. And he said, Yeah, he'd got at least that, I suppose, in a way, implicitly saying if he'd come third, maybe he would have been under great pressure to drop out.
Yeah, and exactly, you know, I think that in Desantis mind, you know, he really proved himself by coming in second, and that was why it was so fascinating. When Nikki Haley came out and delivered her speech, and after coming in third, she said that she thought that she had made it a two person race tonight. Iowa made this Republican primary a two person race.
Theoretically, I'm guessing between her and Trump. And that is just a pretty remarkable comment. For someone who came in a distant third place to make it to say that they have eliminated the second place finisher. And I think it just speaks to the fact of, just like how unusual this primary has been in every way. And they're trying to make a more of a race out of one where we aren't seeing much of one right now.
Yeah, I was really struck by that, too. Somebody joked that she had clearly written a speech as if she had come second, ready for that contingency. She came third and decided to give the same speech anyway and not adjust it even by one word. I mean, you know, and in a way, maybe that was a good tactic, just pretend you're in a one on one.
When she moves to Next to New Hampshire, where, you know, we'll be going on the podcast to take a good close look. How does she explain in a way to voters there that she's got momentum and they should be backing her when they have seen that? Not only has she come third, but that Donald Trump is such a runaway winner. Do you think people voters in New Hampshire who do, like, sort of, you know, bucking? Whatever has happened in Iowa, do you think? Nevertheless, they're going to be a little bit spooked by what happened in Iowa?
It's true that, you know, New Hampshire often goes in the past. It has gone a different way than Iowa has in the primary. But that being said, I think that New Hampshire wants to choose a candidate who feels like they are still very much in the race, you know? And so I think Haley is going to have to make the argument that she does still have a real shot. And I think it'll be very interesting to see how she does that because she will be coming off of this. Just massive Trump win.
And he continues to just dominate in so many other places on the map. So how is she going to make the argument that, yes, I recognize that, you know, I lost very badly in Iowa. we all lost very badly in Iowa to Trump, but I can still do this. I think we'll have to watch very closely to see how she makes that argument to New Hampshire voters.
Because, yeah, I think that they might be a little rattled seeing just how big Trump's margin of victory was.
Yeah, and donors too. I mean, I'm just wondering if they are thinking, sure, you might win in New Hampshire. But then after that you've got your home state of South Carolina, where actually evangelicals are big in numbers. It looks a lot more like the Iowa electorate and then all the other states that follow after that.
I just wonder if you feel she's got a case to make. That says, You know, I can do more than just a one hit wonder in New Hampshire and I've got staying power.
If she is able to perform well in New Hampshire, I think it really does come down to her home state of South Carolina. I think that that will be such a true test of not just her, but also potentially Ron DESantis, assuming that he is still in the race at that point. But that could potentially be difficult, given, you know, the. There is also a pretty strong evangelical voting bloc in South Carolina. They have seen they have shown some real loyalty to Trump so far.
So it'll be interesting to see how much she is able to chip into his vote. There. She is, of course, the former governor of the state, so that might help her, but you know how much does it help her? It's it's, you know, that is yet to be seen.
Joni, Let's close out with the big winner of the night, namely Donald Trump. He is not, as usually tradition demands, heading straight to New Hampshire. Instead, he's going to make a pit stop in New York to face yet another legal battle. This time, it's in the defamation battle over the newspaper journalist E. Jean Carroll, who a court found had been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump.
His comments about her have got him in big trouble, where he faces the claim of defamation for defaming her. And there's a discussion about how much exactly should be paid by him in damages to her. I mean, Trump did hardly any campaigning in Iowa, even though normally again, tradition demands that you be there. Now he's going to spend time in court in New York rather than being in New Hampshire. Does any of that hurt him?
Well, we'll see, but you know, I, as you said, I think it's really interesting that, you know. Iowa did not really punish Trump whatsoever for the fact that he did not really put in a lot of face time in the state. And I think that speaks to the fact that he is such a known quantity. You know, he is the former president. I think that a lot of people are treating him as almost some kind of pseudo incumbent in their minds, you know? And so, you know. He doesn't have to work quite as hard for it, anywhere near as hard for it as someone like Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley.
So, you know, we know that Trump is, you know, later in the week going to hold some rallies in New Hampshire. You know? Like, I'm sure that, you know, New Hampshire voters will, like, turn out in strong numbers to hear him speak. It seems like if the Iowa results are any indication, they probably won't really hold it against him that he is not flying right to New Hampshire. Because they already feel like they know him so well. And the people who are so loyal to Trump will remain loyal to him and will feel perfectly comfortable casting their primary ballot for him.
Yeah, I think that sounds like a smart prediction. Joni Grief Thanks so much for talking to us for this special episode of Politics Weekly American.
Thank you so much.
So next stop New Hampshire, do make sure to listen. On Fridays, I'll be reporting from the Granite State as the candidates try to capitalize on any of the positives they'll be taking from Iowa. Let's just hope it's not quite as cold as I venture out and about.
But for now, it's goodbye. The producer is Daniel Stevens and the executive producer, Maz Ebtehaj. I'm Jonathan Friedland. Thanks as always for listening.
This is The Guardian.
In Norway, a woman's boyfriend forgets who she is. Overnight in Detroit, a man is arrested, but he was never at the crime scene. In Spain, disturbing pictures of young girls have appeared and no one knows who's behind them. Something strange is happening.
A collision between people and artificial intelligence? Discover more in the Guardian's series Black Box. Listen to the whole series right now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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