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

Ramaswamy wasn't polling that well in New Hampshire — around 5 percent — but his supporters are a Trumpy group, which means a substantial number of them will move to the former president. Based on limited sample sizes, around one-third to half of Ramaswamy's voters in national and New Hampshire polls named Trump as their leading second choice. With Trump polling at 43 percent in our New Hampshire average, this might move him up a couple notches, and make it just a little harder than it already was for Haley to catch him (she's at 30 percent). Now, Haley could gain support in the next wave of polls because most surveys in New Hampshire haven't accounted for Christie's departure yet, and we know Haley is the top second choice for Christie voters. But she's set to finish third in Iowa and perhaps not get quite the glut of positive headlines a second-place showing might've produced. Overall, beating Trump was already a difficult challenge, so Ramaswamy boosting him a little more stands to make it even harder.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

According to the most recent Iowa polls, Haley was surging in the state, taking second place over DeSantis as of January 11, and increasing her lead over him since then. However, it doesn't appear that this surge in the polls showed up in the actual caucuses, as ABC News has now projected Ron DeSantis to finish in second place. As we wrote in 2016 and 2020, Iowa can be a difficult state to poll because the nature of the caucuses lends itself to voters making strategic decisions that may not be captured in the polls. Unless the race is essentially between two candidates, Iowa polls have historically been all over the map in terms of their accuracy. The fact that the polls got so close this time is, historically, unusual.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

ABC News can now project that DeSantis will finish second in the Iowa caucuses. It was really by the skin of his teeth, though, with 21 percent to Haley's 19 percent. It was the absolute bare minimum performance DeSantis needed to keep his campaign alive.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

Trump gave a victory speech to supporters in Iowa at about 10:30 p.m., and spent an uncharacteristically long time talking about other people. He thanked his supporters, his family, and even his opponents. It took several minutes for him to pivot to his target for the night: Biden, and, in doing so, he picked up the mantle of presumptive nominee.

Here, he listed some of the themes of his campaign, immigration and increasing energy production. He borrowed a phrase from former vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and said, "Drill, baby, drill." (He even made a joke about electric vehicles.) In talking about immigration he repeated a number of falsehoods about a border that's out of control and immigrants coming in from "insane asylums," echoing some of the themes from his 2016 campaign launch.

In truth, Biden has ramped up deportations, deporting more families and children than Trump did in his last year in office. But border crossings have surged regardless, Republican voters care a lot about immigration, and voters trust Republicans more on the issue. In a reversal of 2020, Trump is poised to be a challenger instead of an incumbent president in this round, and he's already throwing punches.
—Monica Potts, 538

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Trump speaks after Iowa caucus projected win

Former President Donald Trump gave a speech after his projected win and congratulated his opponents.

ABCNews.com