Iowa caucuses 2024: Trump projected to win, DeSantis 2nd

If you're looking for a wild card that could shake up the Iowa caucuses, check the weather. Iowa has experienced a succession of brutal winter storms including heavy snow, high winds and seriously cold temperatures over the past week. The low for tonight in Des Moines is forecast to be -8 degrees (without wind chill).

I spent last week on the ground in the state, and if you're tempted to reply, "It's Iowa, they're used to this," allow me to disabuse you of that idea. The state was largely shut down over the weekend. Canceled flights, no campaign stops, many roads were undrivable and people were advised to stay indoors. The National Weather Service noted that weather of this type is experienced just once or twice per decade. All of this is to say, after hunkering down for days and now facing arctic temperatures, don't be surprised if some Iowans who'd planned to caucus stay home tonight.

There's some debate over how low turnout could affect who shows up to the caucuses. On one hand, Trump supporters register as more enthusiastic than those of other candidates. On the other hand, Trump's supporters tend to be more marginal voters who don't vote as regularly as some other parts of the electorate. He does disproportionately well among people who say they plan to caucus for the first time, a group that may also be the first to say, "actually, I'm not braving the cold to spend hours in a high school gymnasium." On top of that, Trump's supporters also tend to be more rural, which may mean having to confront less-navigable roads.

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Iowa voters brave freezing temperatures for decisive caucus

ABC News’ MaryAlice Parks is on the ground as voters in Iowa prepare for the first votes of the 2024 election season.

ABCNews.com

So keep all that in mind as the results come in and pour out a hot cuppa for the Iowans venturing out in the cold tonight.

Earlier this month, Haley caught some flack for seeming to disparage the ability of Iowans to pick presidents, joking on the campaign trail that while "Iowa starts it, [New Hampshire] corrects it."

While Haley's remark might cost her politically — DeSantis brought it up multiple times in last week's debate and featured it in his closing Iowa ad — she isn't exactly wrong about Iowa's track record, especially in recent years. It's been over two decades since the winner of a contested Iowa caucus has gone on to win the GOP nomination and the presidency. That was George W. Bush, who won 41 percent of the caucus vote in 2000. Since then, no Iowa caucus winner has won the GOP nomination, let alone the White House. Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012 and Ted Cruz in 2016 were all the runners-up in their respective primary races despite making an early splash in Iowa. Overall, in the eight contested Iowa Republican caucuses since 1976, the winners have only gone on to claim the nomination three times.

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Candidates who have won the Iowa caucuses but not presidency

Only three presidents since 1976 won their Iowa caucuses.

ABCNews.com

The state is actually far better at picking Democratic nominees: 2020 was the first time since 1992 that the winner of the caucus (either Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders) didn't go on to win the nomination. Of course, that track record wasn't enough to convince the party to keep Iowa as the first-in-the-nation contest this year.

Good evening, folks! I'm Jacob Rubashkin, and I'm the deputy editor of Inside Elections, a nonpartisan newsletter in D.C. that does news and analysis of House, Senate and gubernatorial elections across the country. At Inside Elections, we keep track of every single competitive federal race in the country and use that detailed coverage to project how each party will perform in November. I'm also a contributor at 538 and have been doing these liveblogs for a few years.

Tonight, I'll be watching a few things: First, whether Trump crosses 50 percent, which is about where he's currently polling in Iowa (52.7 percent to be exact); second, who wins second place (because if DeSantis comes in third, he should be on dropout watch); and third, whether Ramaswamy pulls a Pete Buttigieg and surprises us all. I'm not saying he'll win or even come close, but will his ferocious pace of campaigning push him above his 6.4 percent polling average?

Every four years, the political world descends on Des Moines for the first nominating contest of the presidential race. And every four years, everyone outside Iowa asks — why? What's so special about Iowa?

Well, nothing really. Its prime placement on the calendar kind of happened by accident. In 1972, the Democratic Party reformed its nominating process to give voters more of a say in the selection of delegates. Iowa, though, had a long and convoluted process for choosing delegates: First they had to hold precinct caucuses, then county conventions, then district conventions, and finally a state convention. The caucuses had to take place in January in order to make the timeline work, which was before any other state held its nominating contest.

At the time, no one thought it mattered which state voted first. But candidates like George McGovern and Jimmy Carter quickly realized the advantages of making a strong first impression, and they rode strong performances in Iowa to the Democratic nomination in 1972 and 1976, respectively. Since then, Iowa has fought to hold onto the power it stumbled onto.

In 2020, technical difficulties, delays in reporting results and errors in the final tallies of the Democratic caucuses turbocharged existing complaints that Iowa did not deserve to go first, especially in light of how demographically unrepresentative it is of the rest of the country. But only Democrats acted on that, reordering their primary calendar so that South Carolina is now the first state to allocate delegates. Republicans kept the same order as always, so here we are.