DES MOINES, Iowa (CN) — Former President Donald Trump won the Iowa Republican caucuses Monday, according to early projection by The Associated Press and CNN based on caucus entrance polls, although former U.S. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were locked in a battle for second place based on early vote counting.
"The people of Iowa sent a clear message tonight: Donald Trump will be the next Republican nominee for president,” the Trump campaign said in a statement released just an hour after the caucuses began. “It's now time to make him the next president of the United States.”
Those early predictions were based on polls of voters as they entered caucus sites when only a tenth of Iowa’s 1,567 precincts had reported actual numbers, and it may be some time before final numbers are tallied by the Iowa Republican Party. By 9:30 p.m. Central, the Iowa Republican Party was reporting 92,000 votes from 44 of 99 counties, with Trump at 51% and DeSantis and Haley at 21.3% and 19.1%, respectively.
Monday’s GOP caucus outcome was never much in doubt, based on the final Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll, which Trump led with 48% followed by Haley at 20% and DeSantis at 16%. Trump had slipped 3 points from the previous Iowa poll published in December, while Haley moved up 4 points and DeSantis slipped 3 points.
Iowans accustomed to severe winter weather dutifully trekked to their precinct caucuses Monday night when temperatures ranged from zero degrees Fahrenheit to 9 degrees below zero with windchills as much as 35 degrees below zero. And while main roads and city streets were cleared after Friday’s snowstorm, some rural roads reportedly still had not be plowed, which might have hurt turnout in rural counties.
Now the race for the Republican presidential nomination moves on to the New Hampshire primary Jan. 23, followed by South Carolina on Feb. 3. The largest number of states and territories will hold presidential primaries and or caucuses on Super Tuesday, March 5, all headed toward the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 15-18.
Monday night’s Republican caucuses were not a primary where voters went to the polls throughout the day and the results were tabulated by the state. Caucuses instead are neighborhood gatherings in school gyms or church basements at an appointed hour — 7 p.m. Central in Iowa’s case — to conduct party business, such as electing delegates to state and national conventions. But first, candidates’ supporters were allowed to make a pitch for a candidate. Then, caucus participants “voted” by writing the name of their favored candidate on pieces of paper that were passed to the front of the room to be counted. Those results were then phoned into party headquarters along with all the other 1,656 precincts.
“This is a party function tonight,” Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann told journalists gathered in the media filing center in downtown Des Moines on Monday. It is completely funded by the Republican Party of Iowa and run entirely by the party.
While much of the nation has only recently begun to pay attention to the Iowa caucuses, Iowans have been deluged with GOP candidates’ TV and internet ads, and every one of the 99 Iowa counties has been visited at least once by a Republican presidential candidate in the past two years (DeSantis made it to all 99 counties). The top half-dozen candidates have made hundreds of campaign appearances in Iowa, according to the Des Moines Register’s online Candidate Tracker, at events ranging from coffee shop chats and town hall meetings to obligatory visits to the Iowa State Fair.
Trump, however, bypassed retail politics to hold his signature rallies that drew hundreds of his base.
In addition to front-runners Trump, Haley, and DeSantis, some Iowans are practically on a first-name basis with lesser-known candidates including tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and Texas businessman and pastor Ryan Binkley. Several other Republicans made early forays into Iowa but subsequently dropped out, including former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Senator Rick Scott, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who did not campaign in Iowa, dropped out Jan. 10.
While the focus was on the Republican precinct caucuses Monday night, Iowa Democrats also held caucuses where they conducted party business but did not register their pick for presidential candidate. That’s because the National Democratic Party demoted Iowa from its first-in-the-nation place on the calendar and will instead begin the process in New Hampshire Jan. 23. Iowa Democrats are mailing in presidential preference ballots to the state party, but the results won’t be released until Super Tuesday. Besides President Joe Biden, declared Democratic candidates include Marianne Williamson and U.S. Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota.
The Iowa candidate selection process may seem arcane and perhaps convoluted to outsiders. But before 1904, when Wisconsin held the first direct presidential primary, state political parties selected presidential nominees in some form of party caucus.
Before 1972, few outside the state paid much attention to the party caucuses Iowa holds every two years. In that presidential election year, however, Iowa moved its caucuses up to January, and The New York Times kicked off the horserace handicapping by publishing a story on the results, which got a lot of attention.
Among those was Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, who learned from that experience and exploited the caucuses to springboard his presidential campaign to the White House in 1976.
Iowa has fought hard to maintain its first-in-the-nation position, followed by the New Hampshire primary. This arrangement between Iowa and New Hampshire — in which Iowa is No. 1 only if it does not threaten New Hampshire’s position as the No. 1 primary state — assures the preservation of Iowa’s caucuses.
Critics of the caucuses point out that winning in Iowa isn’t always an accurate prediction of which candidate will go on to win the nomination. Since 1972, only three candidates who won the Iowa caucuses eventually became president: Carter, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Trump lost his first run at the Iowa caucuses in 2016, behind Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
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