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Ed
I laid out the polling, guarantees and my expectations in a previous post. I never liked the taste of crow, but I’ll eat it. Two of the three guarantees were closer than the polling was, but they were still wrong. A guarantee is a guarantee. I hope you didn’t wager any money on my predictions and guarantees.
Let’s look at the results verses the polls with the RCP average, results and delta for each candidate.
Trump – 52.5%, 51.0%, -1.5%
DeSantis – 15.7%, 21.2%, +5.5%
Haley – 18.8%, 19.1%, +0.3%
Others – 7.6%, 8.7%, +1.1%
On the whole, the polling average was not far off of the total. The major miss is predicting Haley in second place and DeSantis falling to third. They underestimated DeSantis and overestimated Trump. What immediately jumps out at me is that the error is very similar to previous Iowa Caucuses in 2008, 2012 and 2016. The race front runner is overestimated and the candidate with the better ground game makes a surge and over performs expectations. We see that again here. The difference in this case, compared to 2016 for instance, is that Trump had a 36.8% lead over DeSantis instead of a 5 point lead. DeSantis closed that to 29.8%, making up 7%, but no where near enough to win or even threaten.
I think there are a couple of factors we need to consider as well. The first one is how the expected results impact the actual results. If voters have been told for months that the race is over and they are deciding between two candidates, the likelihood they go for the expected winner is really high. This is why I made the case that DeSantis had to counter the polling narrative months ago. He never did and voters on the fence stuck with Trump. Do the polls measure people’s opinions or do they shape them? The answer is both. There is no real way to quantify this effect, but I suspect that it is massive. Given these numbers, I would not argue that it would have resulted in DeSantis winning, but I think the results could have been more in the 10 point range as to the 30 point range. The two things that helped Trump more than anything is the lawfare against him. That is when the polling really turned from a competitive race to a massive lead for Trump. The second factor is his head-to-head performance against Biden, mitigating what many see as one of Trump’s biggest problems, his inability to win the general election.
The second thing that occurred was the complete and utter irresponsible action by Fox News and others who called the race mere minutes after the voting started with less than 1% in and many locations not having started voting. There were widespread reports of voters hearing the news and leaving before voting. There were no doubt others who were waffling between the two, who just decided to go with the eventual winner. This conduct is despicable. It is every bit as wrong as Fox News calling Arizona way too early in 2020, while refusing to call states with a big Trump win until hours later. They were trying to put their thumb on the scales and it worked. This is more evidence that Fox News is a scourge on the right. They are more dangerous to us than lefty media because of the influence they hold on the right. Lefty media is much worse, but Republicans don’t watch them. Many watch Fox News and think they are being told the truth. In reality, they are being shaped and sold a narrative that has been approved. Haley is their darling and Trump is good for business. Their coverage reflects that.
The biggest miss of the night was the late push that Haley had overtaken DeSantis for second place. Haley’s support was always more with the media and talking heads than with actual voters. The establishment will have their candidate and Haley is it. In the face of all the negative press, $50 million in attacks and Democrats caucusing for Haley, DeSantis still outpaced her for second place. Second place is still the first loser.
With this gap in Iowa, I expect Trump to win New Hampshire and South Carolina and sweep Super Tuesday. Outside of a western convention state that DeSantis might nab or the territories that do weird things and might go to Haley, I expect Trump to sweep all the primaries. By Super Tuesday the race will be over. I expect DeSantis and Haley to both continue through Super Tuesday. With Trump’s age and the legal cases he is facing, there is a non zero chance that he withdraws or is legally forced out as the nominee. The candidate in second place would have a leg up. The party would want Haley, but the Trump base would vastly prefer DeSantis. They are playing to be the bridesmaid now.
Overall, I think we can conclude that the primary polls are not predictive of the results. They are however not completely made up from thin air. Any race within 10% should be considered winnable for the underdog until we see more evidence in primaries. We can also conclude that ground game matters in a place like Iowa. It can generate a boost in support above polling, even in the face of negative ads and reports of collapsing numbers. A ground game cannot overcome an overwhelming polling advantage or the media influence that goes with it.
The weather depressed turnout. The huge polling lead could also have played a large factor. The turnout was down massively from recent caucuses. There were around 110,000 votes total. The 2008 caucus had 119,000, the 2012 caucus had 121,000 and the 2016 caucus had 187,000. Even without a competitive Democrat primary, the results were the lowest since 2000 had 88,000 votes.
Democrats voted for Nikki Haley in large numbers. Joe Biden’s best county was Johnson County in Iowa. As of now, Haley is ahead of Trump by one vote in Johnson County. Of the 6 Iowa counties that Biden won, Nikki Haley finished second or first in 5 of the 6. Of the 6 counties, Trump finished below 50% in 5 of the 6 counties. He finished below 40% in 3 of the 6 counties. DeSantis finished 3rd in all of these counties except one. The logical explanation is that Democrats and Democrat leaning independents signed up to vote in the Republican Caucus and voted for Nikki Haley. Without these Democrats, she would have been a distant third and might have even finished below Ramaswamy in 4th place in the state
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3 thoughts on “Iowa Caucus: The Results are In, It’s Crow for Dinner”