Big win in Iowa: Has Trump campaign gotten better at ground game?

In the end, the Iowa caucuses were basically over before they began.

Not only did the results play out according to script, based on lead-up polling, but it was also true in a more literal sense.

Iowa, which held the first contest for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, was called for Donald Trump by the Associated Press less than an hour after the caucusing had started, and before some voters had even cast their ballots. The speed of the call, which drew complaints from other campaigns, reflected the sheer dominance of former President Trump’s performance here – and underscored the challenge his rivals face, with a narrowing window to try to shake up the race.  

It wasn’t just Monday night’s temperatures, which fell to negative double digits in some areas, that broke records. Mr. Trump won 51% of the vote, taking all 99 counties save one (Johnson County, which went to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley by one vote). The former president smashed the late Sen. Bob Dole’s record-winning Iowa margin of 12.8%, beating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by 30 points. 

Mr. DeSantis’s second-place finish ensures that he will stay in the race for now, continuing to split the non-Trump vote with Ms. Haley, who finished a close third, but who is polling in second place – and much closer to Mr. Trump – in New Hampshire.  In two West Des Moines hotel ballrooms some 3 miles apart on Monday night, both Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley blared “Eye of the Tiger” and declared that the caucus results had given them one of the “two tickets” out of Iowa. 

Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who held more campaign events here than all the other candidates combined, dropped out of the race after coming in fourth place. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson also dropped out after winning fewer than 200 votes.

Caucus night in Urbandale

The steep hurdles for Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley could be seen at Urbandale Middle School, in the type of wealthy suburb where the two Trump rivals should have run up the score Monday night. Voters on gym risers listened to pitches from supporters of Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis, and Mr. Ramaswamy, before casting paper ballots into mini trash cans with campaign stickers. No one even spoke on behalf of Mr. Trump.

But it turned out they didn’t need to: Caucusgoers cast 37 votes for the former president, and 30 each for Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley.

Some anti-Trump Republicans felt encouraged by those totals. “We proved that there are more non-Trump voters in our party,” a man wearing a DeSantis sticker told a Haley supporter, who nodded in agreement.

Others fretted that it was reminiscent of 2016, when a fractured Trump opposition enabled his ascent. “There’s got to be a narrowing of the field,” Alex Johnson, who passed out Haley stickers and spoke on her behalf, told the Monitor. “It needs to become a two-person race.” 

Republican strategist David Kochel predicts that 2024 will not be like 2016 – because the non-Trump campaigns may not remain viable for much longer. Mr. Trump’s hold on the party is so much stronger than it was eight years ago, he says. This year, “the split field won’t last into Super Tuesday.”

Fewer than 111,000 Iowans participated in this year’s caucuses – a dramatic drop from 2016, when a record-setting 187,000 turned out. The weather was clearly a factor, with candidates forced to cancel events in recent days due to more than a foot of snow and blinding winds. At the few campaign events that did take place, reporters sometimes outnumbered voters. 

But there was also a noticeable sense of malaise, even among those who participated.

“I’m just exhausted by politics taking over my life,” says Mr. Johnson. He had previously voted for Mr. Trump twice, but on Monday urged his fellow voters to back Ms. Haley as the best way for the party – and the country – to move on. 

Icy roads ahead for Trump rivals

In the final days of the campaign, the weather seemed like a physical iteration of the political dynamic, with pundits making “frozen field” analogies as the candidates made what felt like a slow march toward the inevitable. 

After passing through icicle-studded doors at Mr. DeSantis’s Never Back Down headquarters in West Des Moines on Saturday, Cyndee Davis, a retired psychologist and DeSantis caucus captain, predicted that her candidate would exceed expectations. On Tuesday morning, Ms. Davis insisted she was still hopeful – while expressing an incredulity at the idea that her party might once again nominate Mr. Trump. 

“I’m putting Trump out of the picture. I’m not even picturing him as the nominee. In my mind, the race is between DeSantis and Haley, because Trump isn’t going to make it through these 91 charges,” says Ms. Davis, referring to the criminal counts faced by the former president, whom she has voted for in the past.

But it’s hard not to see Monday’s results as disappointing for Mr. DeSantis, who staked much of his once-hyped candidacy on winning the Hawkeye State. The Florida governor’s super PAC reportedly knocked on over a million doors, and he completed the “full Grassley,” visiting all 99 counties. He earned two of the state’s most coveted endorsements, from Gov. Kim Reynolds and evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. 

The DeSantis campaign had hoped that Mr. Vander Plaats – who backed the past three GOP caucus winners – could help deliver the state’s evangelical electorate, which makes up over 60% of Republican caucusgoers, to the Catholic governor.

But Mr. Trump’s support among Evangelicals now, eight years after he lost them in Iowa to Ted Cruz, appears rock-solid. The former president, whose conservative Supreme Court appointees helped overturn the nationwide right to an abortion, dominated in the state’s evangelical-heavy northwest quadrant. 

Ms. Haley may still have a path – albeit an increasingly narrow one – for success in the upcoming electoral calendar. Next Tuesday is New Hampshire’s primary, where polling puts her only slightly behind the former president, thanks to an electorate that’s heavy on higher-educated and independent voters. That’s followed by South Carolina in late February, her home state – though the demographics there seem to favor Mr. Trump, and a loss at home might be hard to survive.

Perhaps the biggest sign of Mr. Trump’s strength was that he declined to repeat recent attacks on his rivals during his victory speech at a convention center in downtown Des Moines. Instead, he urged party unity.

“We want to come together,” the former president said.

Some triumphant Trump supporters were already looking ahead to what they hope will be a return to the White House. “I feel charged after what happened last night,” says Lisa Bourne, who was a caucus captain for Mr. Trump in Madison County. “Those numbers were historic.”

Gary Leffler, a Trump caucus captain from West Des Moines, says the Trump campaign was far better organized this year than in past cycles. One hint: Mr. Leffler says his precinct had more voter registrations last night than on any other caucus night he’s run in at least four cycles. Mr. Trump personally “is maybe as popular [as in 2016]. But they’ve got their campaign savvy going. They know now what the game is.”

But in a campaign that remains unprecedented in so many ways, strategists caution that twists could still be in store.

After his speech, Mr. Trump left for New York, where he would appear at his trial in Manhattan, before headlining a rally in New Hampshire later in the day.

“In a week, we will see if New Hampshire can create the surprise that eluded Iowa,” says Mr. Kochel.