Haley finishes 3rd, Ramaswamy drops out after finishing 4th.
The first election of the 2024 presidential primaries is in the books, and former President Donald Trump was the big winner. ABC News projects that Trump finished first in the Iowa caucuses, about 30 percentage points ahead of second-place finisher Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is projected to finish third, while businessman Vivek Ramaswamy is projected to finish fourth. As a result, Ramaswamy has dropped out of the presidential race.
Throughout the night, 538 reporters broke down the results in Iowa in real time with live updates, analysis and commentary. Read our full live blog below.
Preliminary entrance poll data suggests there won't be much of a gender gap in Trump support in Iowa. Those polls show him running equally well among men and women. But Trump might do better with men if Ramaswamy wasn't in the race, something his campaign may start to address. The preliminary entrance poll data shows 12 percent of men, but just 5 percent of women, saying they will support Ramaswamy.
I’m not sure, Julia. In ABC News’ preliminary entrance poll data, only 2 percent of caucusgoers said they identify as Democrats. That doesn’t seem like enough to really change the state of things, especially since we can’t be sure that all of those voters will caucus for the same candidate.
Looking at the preliminary entrance poll data from another angle, 87 percent of caucusgoers identified as conservative, compared with 13 percent who identified as liberal or moderate. So I think we can expect that this isn’t going to be the race where crossover voters make a big impact. Perhaps next week… ??
There’s some talk about whether Democrats in Iowa have changed their party registration to vote in tonight’s caucus, specifically for Nikki Haley. The impact of this kind of crossover voting — especially in states where it’s relatively easy to do so — is probably one of those mythical things that political junkies really like to talk about, but doesn’t make much difference. For it to matter, a lot of people would have to cross over, or it would have to be a very close race between two candidates — or both. But if there have ever been perfect conditions for it, it’s this year, with not much of a primary race on the Democratic side and a lot of strong feelings among Democrats about the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump.
Only 30 minutes into the evening, and we already have a projected winner. Yet in a slightly perverse fashion, we — and everyone else — are going to be sticking around for a while yet to see who finishes in second, which will have profound implications for the futures of the DeSantis and Haley campaigns (if not who actually wins the nomination). It’s kind of a weird spot to be in, though, considering that major news outlets won’t officially be projecting a second-place finisher. We election analysts will have to eyeball it.
