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

Haley in her victory speech just now claimed she would beat Biden by 17 points in the general election, repeating one of her favorite lines of the campaign to emphasize her potential electability advantage over the other candidates. Haley is referencing her margin in one Wall Street Journal poll from last year — an outlier poll, to be sure. 538 calculated a preliminary general-election polling average today and found Haley up just 2.7 points versus Biden. That's a bigger margin than the one for her competitors — Trump is currently ahead of Biden by 1.8 points in our average, and DeSantis trails him by 1.2 — but a far cry from 17. This is a good reminder to ignore individual polls, especially when they disagree from others, and focus on the average.

—G. Elliott Morris, 538

The problem with that pitch from Haley is that voters don’t really buy it. According to a December YouGov/CBS News survey, 64 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers said they think Trump would definitely beat Biden, and another 30 percent said they think he might beat Biden. This is much better than the results for any other candidate; voters give the second-best chances to DeSantis, who 40 percent say would definitely beat Biden and 46 percent say might beat Biden.
— Mary Radcliffe, 538

As Meredith said, Haley's speech tied Trump to Biden, saying they had more in common than you might think and that most Americans don't want a Trump-Biden rematch. She said the country deserves a new conservative direction that would end divisions in D.C., and that both party front-runners were too old and mired in the past. She also said a Trump-Biden rematch would be a close election that Biden could win again. "With Kamala Harris waiting in the wings. Lord help us if that happens," she said. She said she would win against Biden in a landslide, bringing with her a solid conservative majority in the House and Senate. While it's true that most Americans seem unexcited about a repeat of the 2016 race, that doesn't mean they want a Haley nomination. Still, her speech struck the tone of someone who's ready to forge ahead.
—Monica Potts, 538

Both Haley, who is projected to win third place, and DeSantis, projected to win second, have given very optimistic-sounding speeches. These outcomes have been highly spun in terms of expectations and disadvantages relative to the Trump campaign. As I noted at the beginning of the night, it's not all that typical for major candidates to drop out after Iowa — most stay in to fight in New Hampshire, at least. And that seems to be the case tonight for both Haley and DeSantis, who sought to show the election outcome in the best possible light. But, like a number of long-shot candidates before him, Ramaswamy will end his campaign tonight.

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor