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

DeSantis just finished his caucus-night speech, and it sounded a lot like a victory speech. He told a raucous crowd that, despite everyone underestimating their campaign, they punched their ticket out of Iowa. Of course, DeSantis did not win the state, and his 30-point deficit to Trump raises serious questions about the future viability of his campaign. There was a lot of positive spin up on that stage.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

I admit that I did not expect to hear a Gettysburg Address quote tonight, but DeSantis said it twice, and mentioned Lincoln and Gettysburg — and Reagan and the Cold War — outright.

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor

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