Trump gets stronger in Iowa
Byron York
TRUMP GETS STRONGER IN IOWA. The Iowa caucuses, the first votes of the 2024 Republican presidential race, are five weeks from today. There’s a new poll out this morning from the Des Moines Register finding that former President Donald Trump has a “commanding” lead in Iowa that has expanded in the last two months, even as his legal troubles mounted, even as challenger Nikki Haley received glowing media coverage, and even as closest competitor Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) recovered his equilibrium. Through it all, Trump’s lead has grown.
Remember all the talk from Trump’s adversaries that as the GOP field shrank and weaker candidates got out of the race, Trump’s competition would strengthen? That hasn’t happened. “The field may have shrunk, but it may have made Donald Trump even stronger than he was,” pollster Ann Selzer told the outlet. “I would call his lead commanding at this point. There’s not much benefit of fewer candidates for either Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley.”
The poll found Trump with the support of 51% of likely Republican caucusgoers — that’s up from 43% in the last Des Moines Register poll in October. DeSantis is in second place, with 19%, up a little from 16% in October. And Haley is in third with 16%, unchanged from October. The short version: Trump’s lead was 27 points in October. It’s 32 points now.
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The pollsters also found that Trump’s supporters say they are more committed to voting for him than the other candidates’ supporters are committed to voting for them. Seventy percent of the voters who said they support Trump also said that their minds are made up, with 30% saying they could still be persuaded to back another candidate. For DeSantis, it was the other way around. Just 30% said their minds are made up, while 70% said they could still be persuaded to support another candidate. Haley was slightly better — 34% of her supporters said their minds are made up, while 65% could still be persuaded.
But what about all those indictments, the 91 felony charges facing Trump? From the outlet: “According to the poll, 73% say they believe Trump can win against Biden, regardless of his legal challenges. That’s up from 65% in October.”
At this point, there are always critics who question the polling. They’re all rigged, the critics say, or they’re all wrong, or they’re all beside the point. Indeed, it is always important to point out that a poll is just a snapshot of the race at this moment and does not predict where the race will be in the future, say five weeks from now.
As far as this particular poll is concerned, it has always been considered the gold standard of polling in Iowa. But in 2016, the poll was wrong. The final survey showed Trump leading Ted Cruz, 28% to 23%, when just a few days later, Cruz beat Trump by a similar margin, 28% to 24%. So, the poll messed up.
On the other hand, the Des Moines Register was wrong by a few points. It understated Cruz’s support by a little under 5 points and overstated Trump’s support by a little less than 4 points. That kind of error wouldn’t mean much in a race like today’s, with Trump leading by 32 points.
Where does that leave the other candidates, other than a long way behind? Truth be told, a couple of days ago, this edition of the newsletter was going to have a different headline: A DESANTIS COMEBACK IN IOWA? I had been hearing word to the effect that DeSantis had not only righted the ship but was on the move upward in Iowa. Indeed, if you look at the RealClearPolitics average of polls, DeSantis hit a low point in Iowa of 14.3 points on Sept. 20. Since then, he has been slowly rising, to 19.7 points now.
Haley, on the other hand, was at 9.3% on Sept. 20, the day of DeSantis’s low point. Now, she is at 15.7. So, in that period, she has risen a little more than DeSantis, but nothing resembling some of the positive reporting she has received.
In addition, DeSantis has traditional strengths in Iowa. In a conversation on Sunday, a campaign spokesman laid them out: a strong ground game, over 30,000 Iowans committed in writing to caucusing for DeSantis, big-name endorsements, including Gov. Kim Reynolds and evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, the support of 42 state legislators who are closer to the voters than almost anyone, 120 Iowa captains, one for each county plus double that in bigger counties, volunteers lined up for a majority of Iowa’s precincts. It’s a lot of organization, a lot of ground game, and that has traditionally paid off on caucus night.
In recent weeks, Trump has been paying more attention to Iowa than earlier in the race. DeSantis’s people said the reason was obvious: Trump is afraid of DeSantis. The new poll suggests two things — first, that Trump’s efforts have paid off in higher support, and second, that if he is afraid of DeSantis, he has turned that fear into greater strength.
One last thing. Trump is intent on winning Iowa. The big reason for his determination, of course, is that if he wins big in Iowa, he makes a huge step toward putting away the nomination. It would also be a measure of his political strength in the face of multiple criminal charges. But there’s another reason as well. Trump did not win the 2016 Iowa caucuses — Ted Cruz did — and Trump is sometimes given to fixating on that defeat. He brings it up fairly often with allies in Iowa. He doesn’t want to lose Iowa again. Right now, he’s in a very strong position to win.
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