Trump Trumps his Opponents in Iowa: Two Ways to Look at the Former President's Victory

If you’ve been following the 2024 GOP presidential primary, you probably weren’t surprised to see former President Trump notch a decisive victory in last week's Iowa caucus. Virtually every poll leading up to the big day showed him with a 20–30 point lead over his Republican rivals, and he ended up getting 51% of the vote. His closest competitor, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, got about 21% of the vote—a whole 30 points behind Trump.

The immediate takeaway from the general public seemed to be that Trump dominated Iowa, unlike anyone else who had ever dominated it before. This is mostly true. Trump’s margin of victory was the largest in Iowa caucus history for a non-incumbent, which is pretty astonishing. Except—he kind of is an incumbent. Donald Trump is America’s most recent Republican president, and he held that office just three years ago. He’s still the face of the party and essentially operates as an incumbent.

When you look at the Iowa results through that lens, you might interpret them differently. Let’s say, for example, that President Biden ran in an Iowa primary last week and only got half of the vote. That would be very alarming for his campaign, as it would indicate a major split in the party. Sure, capturing the majority of the votes would be great, but the results would show that a considerable part of the Democratic Party is ready to move away from the incumbent. Every headline would detail a major underperformance for the president, not an overperformance. In fact, his campaign would likely be plunged into crisis mode.

When you treat Trump like an incumbent, the results feel less impressive. The fact that 49% of the Republican population in a very conservative state chose someone else to be the party's nominee should be a cause for concern for the former president’s campaign, as it shows there’s a surprisingly large appetite for non-Trump candidates. If you combined Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley into just one candidate and consolidated the non-Trump vote, we’d be in a much closer race right now.

Do I think Trump will lose the nomination? No. He’s got it locked up, but he’d probably feel a bit better if he had won Iowa by a more significant margin. If Trump gets roughed up on the path to hitting 2,429 delegates, he might not emerge looking like the political powerhouse most people think he is. His grip on the party is obviously strong, but if more states show an interest in other candidates, his campaign might need to sound the alarm for the general election.