How Donald Trump built a base that catapulted him to a historic Iowa Caucuses victory
Donald Trump won the 2024 Iowa Caucuses in a landslide, securing an unprecedented victory over rivals who spent the better part of a year unsuccessfully urging Iowans to move on from a former president beset by legal challenges and the baggage of a failed 2020 run.
Rather than unite around a challenger, Iowa Republicans largely embraced Trump, delivering him the strongest win by a presidential candidate in the Republican caucuses’ 48-year history.
The Associated Press called the race for Trump just 31 minutes after caucusing began at 7 p.m. and while many sites were still casting ballots, rankling campaign officials and many Republicans.
It took nearly three hours longer to determine Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won second place, as he and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley fought for the scraps Trump left them.
DeSantis finished with about 21% over Haley’s 19% — a slim 2-point margin that may not be enough to catapult him into contention in New Hampshire’s upcoming primary.
Despite her third-place finish, Haley told supporters Iowa had made the Republican presidential contest a "two-person race," alluding to her strong poll standings in New Hampshire, where DeSantis trails far behind her and Trump.
"Tonight I will be back in the great state of New Hampshire," Haley said, standing at the podium at the West Des Moines Marriott, a row of American flags draped behind her. "And the question before Americans is now very clear: Do you want more of the same, or do you want a new generation?"
The results prompted two candidates to drop out: Entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy received 8% of the vote to finish fourth and announced he was ending his campaign to support Trump.
"There's no path for me to be the next president, absent things we don't want to see happen in this country," Ramaswamy told supporters.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson dropped out Tuesday morning after receiving 0.2% of the vote in Iowa.
"My message of being a principled Republican with experience and telling the truth about the current front-runner did not sell in Iowa," he said. "I stand by the campaign I ran."
Trump overwhelms opponents with historic Iowa Caucus win
In his bid to win Iowa, DeSantis shifted most of his resources into the Hawkeye State, and a Real Clear Politics rolling average of polling in New Hampshire shows he trails Trump and Haley by double digits there.
The second-place split is a boost to Trump, who continues to benefit from a still-fractured field of challengers.
While DeSantis and Haley were within a few points of each other, Trump’s victory was decisive. He won 51% of the vote, exceeding the sky-high expectations for his campaign.
The 30-point win more than doubles Bob Dole’s 12-point victory over Pat Robertson in 1988, which had been the widest winning margin for a contested Republican caucus.
More: Historically, do Iowa Caucus winners earn their party's nomination, become president?
And he notched a victory in 98 of Iowa’s 99 counties on a night that saw frigid temperatures dipping well below zero. Haley won Johnson County, one of the most liberal places in Iowa, by just one vote, returns showed.
Trump, addressing supporters at his campaign's watch party in downtown Des Moines, predicted that Americans of all political stripes would soon unite — presumably behind his candidacy.
"We're going to come together. It's going to happen soon," he said.
Trump’s win has been something of a foregone conclusion in Iowa; he has led in the polling throughout the race, growing his support in the Register’s three Iowa Polls from August through December.
His Monday caucus victory starts to answer the question that has loomed over the Republican Party since his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden: Are Republicans ready to move on?
A majority of Iowa Republicans who turned out to caucus Monday said, “Not yet.”
Trump fans at the Iowa Events Center were surprised only by how quickly the race was called — not by the result.
"I'm not surprised — I'm excited and I'm full of a lot of hopefulness," said Mandy Ryan, 40, a homemaker from Grimes, Iowa.
Ryan, who wore a white Trump Caucus Captain hat and a Team Trump T-shirt, said she did not believe that Trump's legal problems would slow him down in his drive to regain the White House.
Results: See county-by-county results
More: Results by precinct
"I think he's going to get over it," Ryan said. "I think the people who are persecuting him are going to regret it."
Coldest caucus ever still brings out over 110,000 Iowans
The results came on a historically cold caucus night, with sub-zero temperatures across Iowa as caucusgoers gathered for the 7 p.m. start.
A blizzard and deep-freeze temperatures in the final days of campaigning scrambled candidates' schedules and stirred increased uncertainty about how many Iowans in total would turn out on caucus night and which ground game would get more of its supporters out.
More than 110,000 Iowans turned out, lower than in each of the three previous competitive GOP caucus cycles. The record, set in 2016, is 186,000.
In a statement, Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann commended Iowa Republicans for turning out despite the difficult conditions.
“Iowans braved record-low temperatures after a blizzard blanketed their state just days earlier to deliberate with members of their community about the future of our country and participate in true, grassroots democracy,” he said. “I could not be prouder to be an Iowan than I am tonight. Driven by frustration with the Biden administration's record of utter incompetence and by enthusiasm for the Republican Party's deep bench of talent in the 2024 race, Iowans came out to have their voices heard.”
Recap: The biggest moments, the drama of the early race call and scenes around Iowa
Despite controversies, Trump remains dominant in Iowa
Trump entered the race appearing weakened after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, his continued false insistence that he won the 2020 election and his endorsement of 2022 congressional candidates who lost races Republicans were expected to win.
Iowa Republicans appeared open — even eager — to hear from potential challengers.
But Trump was able to consolidate the support of Iowa Republicans and strengthen his lead over the course of the caucus campaign.
That came despite the 91 felony charges he faces across four criminal cases. Over and over, most Iowa Republicans appeared willing to absolve Trump of those charges.
In the latest Iowa Poll, 61% of likely Republican caucusgoers said if Trump is convicted of a crime, it “does not matter” in determining their general election support for him. Nineteen percent say a conviction would make them more likely to support Trump, and 18% say it would make them less likely. Two percent say they are not sure.
Iowa Republicans repeatedly shrugged off other controversies that beset Trump, including his widely criticized comments that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of America.”
A December Iowa Poll found that 42% of likely Republican caucusgoers were more likely to support Trump for his "poisoning the blood" comments; 28% said they were less likely to support him; and 29% said it didn't matter.
During the course of his campaign, Trump spurned some of the most prominent conservative leaders in Iowa, attacking Gov. Kim Reynolds for remaining neutral early in the race and then endorsing DeSantis, followed by Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats’ endorsement.
Trump dismissed the endorsements as inconsequential, even as he attacked Reynolds for disloyalty.
But Iowa Republicans also credited Trump with quietly assembling an organizing juggernaut that identified supporters and drew in first-time caucusgoers.
“The clear message coming out of Iowa is that grassroots organizing matters,” said Republican operative Nicole Schlinger. “The Trump campaign did not take his monumental support from Iowans for granted. Unlike 2016, they knew exactly who their supporters were and turned them out.”
USA Today reporter Daivd Jackson and Des Moines Register reporter Galen Bacharier contributed to this report.
Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at [email protected] or 515-284-8244. Follow her on Twitter at @brianneDMR.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: How Trump's unorthodox Iowa Caucus campaign vaulted him to historic win