Trump's Iowa Victory Proves How Weak He Is

For a messianic figure supposedly in control of the party to barely crack 50%, this is not good

Finally, we are into the actual 2024 Election voting phase. The Iowa caucuses have been hanging over the country like the sword of Damocles. Pundits and political junkies everywhere have been salivating for some real voting results to review, analyze, and apply to their explanations of the implications for the rest of primary season and the general election.

The near-final results as of Tuesday morning: Trump 51%, DeSantis 21%, Haley 19%.

The Haley and DeSantis movements, if you can call them that, represent almost half of the party in Iowa. If one of them had backed out of the race and been a full-throated endorser of the other, you’d have a real potential primary contest. That didn’t happen, and likely won’t until it’s too late, but the fact is there is substantial support for someone not named Trump to be the Republican nominee.

My takeaway of the Republican Iowa caucus is very simple: Donald Trump is weak. He’s much weaker than it seems….verifiably undeniably weak. His peak was sometime during his presidency, and it’s been a harsh and swift deterioration from there to now, and it will continue this year as the election season progresses.

The most obvious reason he’s weak is that there is an Iowa Caucus in the first place. As the de facto incumbent, who has supposedly taken full control of the Republican Party, why is there even the opportunity for challengers? The fact that anyone is vying for the nomination against him shows there is some significant political will to move on from Trump.

And now that the results are in, they support this notion that, far from controlling the party, Trump is having to work for his goals just like the other candidates. In any other time and place, these results would confirm his dominance. If this happened in 2016, it would have shocked the world and cemented him in his place as, head monarch of the GOP.

But in this time and place, he is a former President and the incumbent Republican Presidential nominee. Not to mention the most cult-like U.S. political figure since Huey Long, which poll after poll suggests has the most enthusiastic followers. This is someone that shouldn’t even be challenged, much less struggling to get the majority. Basically, half of the caucus voters voted against Trump. Does this seem like someone that has full control over the party?

But wait, there’s more.

This is only the results of the people that actual went and voted. The turnout was actually pretty unexpectedly low and disappointing. About 110,000 voted, the lowest total since 2000, when 87,000 voted. The Iowa GOP chair said he thought there would be “robust turnout”, whatever that means, despite the frigid temperatures. His job is to hype the party and the Iowa caucuses in general up as much as possible, of course, but even the ambiguous label “robust” suggests something notably large. This was not that.

The low turnout can be analyzed several different ways. One factor could have been the temperatures, but there is some data that suggests that weather did not alter voter behavior significantly. Iowans are used to cold weather this time of year, and their caucuses are legendary political rituals that they take great pride in. So what if they have to drive somewhere, and then stand inside heated rooms for a few hours? If the roads are not covered with ice, it’s a very doable task.

Another issue could have been the perception of inevitability of Trump being the nominee. Why go and vote for him, when it’s obvious he’s going to win? This seems reasonable enough, but wouldn’t the levels of enthusiasm for Trump, as evidenced by recent polling, suggest that his voters would crawl over mounds of rusty nails to vote for him? What else are the enthusiasm results measuring except willingness to get out and vote?

We’ll have to see other upcoming states’ results to know for sure, but this suggests that the loyalty for Trump in 2024 looks different than it has in previous years. His enthusiastic base might be excited for him, wear lots of crazy paraphernalia, and are willing to stand in line for 3 hours in a rainstorm to witness his infamous rallies, but maybe they’re not the grassroots voting ground attack we all assume they are.

Also, if we look further into the polls, there is a significant number of these non-Trump voters that apparently will either vote for Biden, sit-out the 2024 election, or continue the non-Trump vote via 3rd party or other option, if their candidate is not the nominee. 43% of Haley supporters say they would vote for Biden against Trump. A total of 11% of all Republican respondents said they would do the same.

In an election where many states were won by razor thin margins in the 2016 and 2020 elections, every vote counts. Things swung in Biden’s favor in 2020, and these non-Trump polling results suggest then pendulum is continuing to swing the same way. Think about 10% of a political party saying they’d vote for the other party’s candidate. I highly doubt this question has even been on a poll previously at all, much less showing a 10% swing before. Even if this number was just 5%, this is highly significant and could result in a surprisingly “robust” victory for Democrats in 2024.

Trump is already going to ironically be the victim of his own messaging, as he is likely to suppress his own voters with his “rigged election” rhetoric. If the Republican vote is not just suppressed but swung the other way by these Republican non-Trump voters’ actions, we’re looking at the very realistic possibility of a blowout in November.

One thing the media is mentioning, which good reason, is that Trump won the Iowa caucus by a record amount. It’s the widest margin in Republican caucus history. This suggests dominance and strength. But as I suggested above and wrote about previously (see “What if Nikki Haley Competes in the Early Primaries?”) Trump is not your average candidate that we are just now getting to know. He has been President. He is the Republican incumbent. He’s a fully known quantity with a cult-like following that intimidates everyone in his path that is not initially a card-carrying member of the cult.

The statistics of previous election cycles must be looked at through this lens. The only possible comparison at the moment is the Democratic primaries. Obviously, Democratic primaries either won’t exist, or Biden will win by so much as to render the activity utterly laughable. This is because Biden is the President, the Democrat incumbent, and is in actual control of his party.

Trump’s candidacy is perfectly analogous to the first two of those points (previous President, Republican incumbent), and despite how much we hear of him being in control of his party, in actuality he’s barely managed a majority of a small percentage of Republican voters that were actually motivated to make it to the polls in Iowa. Ignore the “Trump is dominant” hype. This is not a good look, and is not the marker of a strong candidate.