Three Questions About Iowa

So far, the 2024 presidential campaign looks to be the least competitive in decades. The incumbent president is likely to win the Democratic nomination easily, while a former president seems to be running away with the Republican nomination.

Of course, this conclusion is based only on opinion polls, rather than actual voting. By tonight, however, voting will have begun, at least on the Republican side, thanks to the Iowa caucuses. Today’s newsletter offers a preview, in the form of three questions.

1. What’s the biggest story tonight?

Don’t get distracted by secondary issues. The big question is whether Donald Trump wins the landslide victory that polls have forecast. If he does, it will be the clearest sign yet that he is on pace to join Richard Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt and only a handful of earlier politicians who won the nomination of a major party at least three-times.

Recent polls have shown Trump receiving around 50 percent of the Republican vote in Iowa, with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis both at 20 percent or below. The only other significant candidate remaining is Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been polling below 10 percent.

Even if Trump fares a little worse than polls indicate, a landslide win would suggest he is the overwhelming favorite for the nomination.

2. Who will finish second?

“If the polls are even in the ballpark, the only interesting race might be the one for second place,” Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, wrote in his latest newsletter.

The best outcome for Trump’s detractors (short of a shocking upset) would be for either Haley or DeSantis to finish well ahead of the other one. That outcome could allow the second-place finisher to emerge as the clear alternative to Trump, with a chance to consolidate the anti-Trump vote starting in New Hampshire, which holds its primary a week from tomorrow.

In the short term, Haley may be the bigger threat to Trump because she has a better chance to win New Hampshire. It is home to many highly educated and moderate Republicans, who are Haley’s base. She also has some support among independents, who can vote in New Hampshire’s primaries. As Nate writes:

She had already pulled to within striking distance of Mr. Trump there before Chris Christie withdrew from the race. Historically, primary polling is extremely volatile, and the candidates who surge late often keep surging. Ms. Haley might still need just about everything to go right, and a burst of favorable media coverage after Iowa would only help.

Beyond New Hampshire, these affluent, moderate Republicans make up a smaller portion of the voters. Even if Haley were to surge in Iowa and then win an upset in New Hampshire, she would remain the underdog.

DeSantis, by contrast, now looks weaker than Haley. But if he could somehow revive his campaign with a strong second-place finish tonight, he might be better positioned than Haley in the long term. He can compete for the more conservative, working-class voters that are Trump’s base, and they will likely decide the outcome in many primaries that follow New Hampshire.

As Nate notes, Trump’s criminal trials inject more uncertainty into this nomination campaign than most campaigns. If Trump is convicted and Republican voters or delegates sour on him this spring or summer, a strong second-place finisher would be the obvious potential replacement. That runner-up could be either Haley or DeSantis.

(Here’s our recent guide to Trump’s trials, with a focus on their timing.)

3. Why aren’t Democrats voting tonight?

For decades, Iowa Republicans and Democrats voted in caucuses on the same night. But Democratic officials recently decided to move back their contest and instead start with South Carolina, Nevada and Michigan. This latter group of states is more diverse, and better reflects the rest of the country, than Iowa and New Hampshire.

New Hampshire Democrats have decided to fight the change and will hold a primary next week even though the national party has said the result will not count toward the nomination. As my colleague Reid Epstein has explained, “Iowa Democrats, ashamed by a 2020 fiasco that included a dayslong wait for results that were nonetheless riddled with errors, have meekly accepted their fate as primary season also-rans.”

The candidates for the Democratic nomination, in addition to President Biden, are Dean Phillips (a member of Congress from Minnesota) and Marianne Williamson (an author who also ran in 2020).

More on the campaigns

• DeSantis urged his supporters to show up at caucuses despite the forecast.

• At his only rally of the weekend, in Indianola, Trump intensified his criticism of Haley, saying she was backed by people who “crave to destroy the MAGA movement.”

• Haley told a crowd in Ames that America needed “a new generational leader that leaves the negativity and the baggage behind.”

• Some college-educated conservatives are joining blue-collar voters to support Trump.

More on Iowa

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