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

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

Our colleagues at ABC News are reporting that Ramaswamy will drop out of the race momentarily. Bloomberg News's Jennifer Jacobs further reports that he is going to endorse Trump in his concession speech.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

In response to Jacob's point about whether we're seeing the decline of retail politics, I'm of two minds. The major story of retail politics in Iowa is still Jimmy Carter in 1976, so that's quite a while ago now, and a huge transformation in how much mass media can allow candidates to reach voters. Politics has also become a great deal more nationalized, which threatens some of what makes the Iowa caucuses distinct — less emphasis on ethanol, more emphasis on culture war. So in that sense, I can see that the more traditional retail-style politics has been a weird fit for our environment for a while now.

But it seems worthwhile to point out that a former president who was also a major media figure for several decades is a bad test case for this. Of course, it's an uphill climb for politicians without national reputations (or with fairly new ones) to compete with that, even by visiting lots of counties in Iowa. I think we should be cautious about drawing too many conclusions about retail politics with a figure like Trump in the race.

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor

As Jacob pointed out, Trump is currently winning every single county in Iowa. There are a few counties where he’s notably weaker, though. Johnson County, the home of Iowa City and the University of Iowa, is his worst county: He’s leading Haley only 36 percent to 35 percent there. He’s also leading Haley just 34 percent to 30 percent in Story County, home of Ames and Iowa State University. Sensing a pattern? Trump is doing the worst in Iowa’s most college-educated and bluest counties. These were also the counties that Sen. Marco Rubio did best in in the 2016 caucuses, back when he represented the last great hope of the GOP establishment to stop Trump.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538