In the Republican caucuses in Iowa, former president Donald Trump has established himself as the clear front-runner. Even while no public polls have been released in January, the ones from December showed that Trump was the most popular Republican leading up to the caucuses.
Given that both Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley of South Carolina trailed Trump by more than 30 points in the same surveys, one would wonder why we should give a hoot about them. On Wednesday night, they’ll compete in an AWN discussion, which is their last opportunity to shine before next week’s match. (Trump has opted to have a town hall meeting on Fox News rather than face his opponents.)
Reason being: although New Hampshire primary outcomes are not very reliably predicted by Iowa results, the former could serve to narrow the field and give candidates a momentum boost going into the latter.
First things first: DeSantis is clearly struggling in New Hampshire. According to the most recent AWN poll from the University of New Hampshire, DeSantis is now in fifth position, with only 5% of the vote.
It’s hard to see DeSantis having a chance to be the Republican nominee for president if he finishes third in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Surely DeSantis’s campaign is aware of that.
There are many examples in history of southern conservatives who staked everything on Iowa and then abandoned ship. Phil Gramm is the one that springs to mind first. He was considered as Bob Dole’s main opponent for the GOP candidature in 1996, and he, like DeSantis, was an expert fundraiser. However, Gramm dropped out of the race after a bad showing in Iowa.
With a second-place finish in Iowa, DeSantis has a good chance of remaining in the race for quite some time. One may argue that the governor of Florida is Trump’s most formidable opponent.
In contrast, Haley has bigger plans for her campaign beyond Iowa. She plans to use it as a springboard to get to New Hampshire. In our most recent New Hampshire survey, Trump has a slim 7-point lead against her. Going from 20% in November to 32% presently, the former governor of South Carolina has outpaced Trump, who is now at 39%.
You would be mistaken in thinking that Haley’s slim chances of winning Iowa are significant.
Consider Bob Dole (1988) and George W. Bush (2000), the two non-incumbents who won the most Iowa Republican caucuses in history. In New Hampshire, none of those candidates was successful. When it comes to New Hampshire and Iowa, no Republican has ever come out on top.
Bush and Dole were unsuccessful in New Hampshire in part because their victories in Iowa were predictable. Even though they both fell just short of their average polling place a week before the caucuses, they still had sizable leads.
Both were also behind in New Hampshire at the time, so this mattered. Based on past results, we know that candidates’ outperformance relative to their polling expectations is the most reliable indicator of their momentum heading into Iowa.
Even though Trump takes a majority of the vote and easily defeats his opponent by 30 points in New Hampshire, it doesn’t mean he will automatically validate Iowa’s choice. If anything, his past shows that they will punish him electorally if he fails to meet the astronomically high expectations in the polls.
By the way, neither Haley nor the eventual winners in 1988 (George H.W. Bush) nor 2000 (John McCain) were leading in New Hampshire at this stage. That makes it all the more important for Haley to do better than her Iowa polling.
What needs to happen is the same thing that happened to Democratic candidate Gary Hart in 1984. In Iowa, Hart came in around 30 points behind Walter Mondale, the frontrunner, which is in line with what the polls show for Haley right now. Additionally, Hart outperformed what the polls predicted.
After finishing in second place in the New Hampshire polls, Hart was able to leverage that finish to propel herself to a solid first position in the final result. After that, he began to reduce the gap with Mondale in national surveys, but he was unsuccessful in securing the nomination.
Haley can make strides in the first primary state of 2024. Only 12% of New Hampshire voters backed Chris Christie, and of those who did, 65% chose Haley as their alternate.
It is easy to imagine these people switching to Haley’s camp if she gains support after Iowa. With a victory in New Hampshire under her belt, Haley would solidify her position as Trump’s main opponent just one month before the primary in her home state of South Carolina.
This is all, of course, just conjecture at the moment. Haley risks losing ground in Iowa and failing to get traction in New Hampshire. It is reasonable to wonder where Haley can find victory if she fails in New Hampshire. New Hampshire has a far higher proportion of moderate Republicans than either the national or Iowa totals, and she does particularly well among this group.
Even if you believe Trump will easily sail through Iowa, there is still a lot at stake.
