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

Heading into tonight’s caucuses, voters are still weighing some unusual concerns about the contest’s front-runner. As Trump and Biden gear up for an election rematch, the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection remain top of mind for many voters. Trump still faces charges for his actions surrounding Jan. 6 in federal court, along with various charges in three other criminal cases, and his trial for election interference charges will begin on March 4, the day before Super Tuesday. In this context, voters may be asking: Will Trump be convicted and imprisoned, and how could that affect the election? Win or lose, will Trump honor this November’s results?

Overall, most voters nationally, 64 percent, do think the charges against Trump are a problem when it comes to his fitness for the presidency, including 40 percent of Republicans, according to a YouGov/Yahoo News poll from September. That same poll found that 53 percent of Americans, but only 19 percent of Republicans, think Trump and his family are corrupt, and similar numbers think he has committed a serious crime at any time in his life.

However, we know that Trump's strongest supporters are not dissuaded by the criminal charges against him, even if they think he's guilty, but even more believe he's innocent. That includes many likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa. A look at how Iowa Republicans are thinking about Trump’s legal challenges gives us some insight into his strength in the state — where he has more than a 30-percentage-point lead over his rivals. Only 12 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers in an October Civiqs/Iowa State University poll said Trump had "committed serious federal crimes," while 60 percent said "Trump did not do anything wrong." And ultimately, 65 percent of likely Republican caucusgoersin an October Selzer & Co./Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll said they thought Trump could defeat Biden regardless of his legal challenges.

Perceptions of Biden’s own weaknesses, legal and otherwise, may play a role in this: Looking forward to a hypothetical general election, a SurveyUSA poll from October found Trump and Biden in a dead heat, with Biden moving into the lead in a hypothetical scenario where Trump was convicted, and Trump similarly edging ahead in a hypothetical where the current president’s son, Hunter Biden, is convicted and sentenced. (This is true despite there being no evidence that Biden was involved in his son’s alleged activities.) Forty-seven percent of Americans also called Biden and his family corrupt in that YouGov/Yahoo News Poll. And while Biden is only four years older than Trump, significantly more Americans are worried about Biden’s health and mental acuity (64 percent) than Trump’s (44 percent)

Ahead of caucus night, I sat down with supporters of Trump, DeSantis and Haley to hear why they landed on their chosen candidate. Tom Donnelly, who supports Trump, said he would gladly support Haley or DeSantis. Nicole Cleveland and Liz Lee, who support DeSantis and Haley, respectively, however, said they would have to do a lot of soul-searching to support Trump and that it would be unlikely.

The caucusgoers differed on issues running the gamut from abortion, to compromising with Democrats, to the legitimacy of the 2020 election. But there was one thing they all agreed on: Iowa is deserving of its first-in-the-nation status and Americans should take their preferences seriously.

Haley has been steadily gaining in polls of the GOP primary for months, and she is now peaking at exactly the right time. Recently, my colleagues Leah Askarinam, Cooper Burton, Holly Fuong and Mary Radcliffe dug into the polls to see which voters were fueling Haley's rise. The answer? College-educated Republicans and men.

Nationally, more than 20 percent of college-educated Republicans are supporting Haley, according to a basic polling average, compared with only about 5 percent of Republicans without a college degree. Her support is also slightly higher among men than it is among women, putting the lie to the idea that Haley is using her identity as a woman to marshal female voters to her side. She also has relatively low support — around 7 percent — among evangelicals nationally.

Those numbers aren’t super promising for Haley in Iowa. Only 30 percent of Iowans age 25 or older have a bachelor’s degree, which is slightly lower than the national average. And according to entrance polls, 64 percent of the GOP electorate in the 2016 Iowa caucuses was evangelical. So if Haley acquits herself well tonight, it will actually be pretty impressive.

Since the 1980 presidential race, Democrats have done markedly better than Republicans with women voters. This is known as the gender gap. But primaries can produce gender gaps too, with men and women of the same party voting differently. For example, in the 2020 Democratic primary, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders did consistently better with men than women in polls.

Should we expect a gender gap in Iowa today? Possibly. It varies, but some polling evidence from December suggests that Iowa women are more likely than men to favor Trump. An Iowa State University poll of likely GOP voters has 58 percent of women and 51 percent of men selecting Trump as their first choice. Similarly, a Fox News poll has 56 percent of women and 49 percent of men selecting Trump as their first choice. But a CBS News poll shows a smaller gap, that's flipped — 59 percent of men and 57 percent of women say Trump is their top choice. Trump's lead among women is somewhat surprising in the larger context. In the 2016 general election, we saw a large gender gap because Trump did well with white men, but lost women (relative to Romney's performance in 2012). And much has been written about his struggle to win over suburban women, and young women, too. However, primary voters are unique, and Trump's brand of conservatism isn't putting off these women. In the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Trump won 25 percent of men and 24 percent of women (according to entrance polls).

Another interesting finding is that the polling does not suggest gender affinity — that is, individuals being more likely to support political candidates of their same gender — is at play in Haley's numbers. The concept of gender affinity is rooted in the idea that shared gender identity can lead to perceived commonality in experiences, perspectives and priorities. Haley's pitch hasn't necessarily been aimed at the women in her party, although she does emphasize gender as she campaigns. But overall, Haley tended to do slightly better with men than she does with women in those same Iowa polls, a pattern also present in national polls.

DeSantis, on the other hand, has made a more concerted effort to court women voters, but the polls from Iowa don't suggest those efforts have worked. In none of the aforementioned polls is DeSantis winning women, and in only the CBS poll does he poll better with women compared to men (25 percent of women and 20 percent of men pick DeSantis as their first choice).