Explore 2024: Iowa Caucus Cheatsheet
Was this race over before it began?
The 2024 presidential contest gets underway Monday night. Before we reach November 5, each party will hold nominating contests across the country to see who will carry the banners of the Republican and Democratic parties on top of the ballot. We are destined for the Joe Biden/Donald Trump rematch from 2020, which no one seems to be excited about.
As tradition, the heartland state of Iowa will be kicking off the contest on the GOP side with its caucuses. These voters will be the first to put their steak in the ground and show if Donald Trump will continue to lead the party or if the voters are ready to elevate someone new to take on President Biden.
The Caucus is a unique political process where neighbors will speak on behalf of their chosen candidate about why they should get their vote. The Iowa Farm Bureau lists some rules for how the Caucus is operated.
The Republican presidential preference poll is relatively straight forward. Once you are in your precinct and your precinct meeting has been called to order, usually the chair of your Caucus will invite anyone to speak briefly in support of their favored candidate. Once all speeches have concluded, each eligible voter in the Caucus will be given a piece of paper to either write or mark their choice. After everyone has filled out their secret ballot, the votes are counted in the precinct and announced to the room. All the precincts of a county are collected by party leadership and then reported to the Republican Party of Iowa to tabulate the state results. The Republican Party of Iowa has more detailed information about their process on their website. The party will also be conducting regular business items at the meeting, slated to be held January 15, 2024.
Source: Iowa Farm Bureau
Past Results
Historically, voters in the Hawkeye state have favored more socially conservative candidates who stress traditional and family values while emphasizing the need to support the agriculture and manufacturing industries. However, some previous winners of the Caucus have not been able to get the nomination (Huckabee, Santorum, and Cruz) which have led to some candidates (Haley) to downplay the impact of Iowa’s vote.
2000: George Bush 41 Steve Forbes 31
2008: Mike Huckabee 34 Mitt Romney 25 Fred Thompson 13
2012: Rick Santorum 25 Romney 24 Ron Paul 21
2016: Ted Cruz 27 Donald Trump 24 Marco Rubio 23
2024 Preview
Donald Trump enters the caucuses as the heavy favorite to win as he tries to capture the nomination. Despite not winning the caucuses in 2016, Trump easily secured the state’s six electoral votes in 16 and 2020 by using votes from the industrial areas in Eastern and Southeastern Iowa, which had given Barack Obama substantial margins in 2008 and 12 but flipped to Trump in 2016 and 20 with the more conservative farmland in the west. He seems strong in these regions again.
Other contenders will be trying to use the Caucus to kick-start their momentum. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was endorsed by the state’s popular incumbent governor, Kim Reynolds, and has endorsements from other top state leaders. However, he has lost momentum since entering the contest and needs a strong performance, or he will face pressure to drop out. Others are betting on former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley as the one to merge the anti-Trump vote to make the contest a two-person race heading into New Hampshire in the next week and a half.
Iowa is a prime example of changing demographics where the older, whiter constituencies have drifted away from the Democrats at the local, state, and national levels and are attracted to the populist messaging of former President Trump and other Republican votes, and the state will be favored to give its electoral votes to the GOP for the third straight election cycle.
What to Watch For
As we enter this year’s contest, there will be some themes to watch in the Hawkeye state.
-Do voters in the heavily evangelical western and north-central part of the state with Trump, and if so, how substantial margin
-Does Trump carry a significant margin with the blue-collar Mississippi River counties on the eastern side of the state, especially Dubuque, Quad Cities, and Burlington
-What is the percentage of the anti-trump vote in the population centers in the state, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Davenport
-What is the turnout like at the many college campuses throughout the state (Johnson, Story, and Polk Counties)
-In looking at exit polls, what percentage of women voted for Haley, and what percentage of that vote went to Trump?
This race is Trump’s to lose, and it’s not a matter of if he can win, can he hit 50%, and was this ever really a contest to begin with?
