Iowa caucuses 2024: Trump projected to win, DeSantis 2nd
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.
Latest headlines:
An even fuller Grassley
It’s looking increasingly like Trump win not only dominate statewide, but will also win every single one of Iowa’s 99 counties. That might not be a traditional “Full Grassley,” of which DeSantis did one and Ramaswamy did two(!), but it’s a testament to Trump's strength as a candidate, and perhaps the decreasing importance of traditional retail politics.
—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections
Trump county-level vote roughly in line with combined vote of Trump and Ted Cruz in 2016
In 2016, Trump finished a close second in Iowa with 24 percent of the vote, trailing Cruz's 28 percent. But since then, Trump has won over much of the very conservative and more religious voter base that backed Cruz while holding onto the more populist parts of the party. Understandably then, we see a fair bit of alignment with tonight's vote and how Trump and Cruz performed combined at the county level in 2016. Based on 27 counties where we have at last 85 percent of the expected vote, there's a fairly strong correlation of 0.72 between Trump's vote tonight and the Trump+Cruz 2016 caucus showing.
Correlation isn't causation, but we can see in the preliminary entrance poll data how Trump has captured much of the Cruz wing of the GOP. Among voters who identified as "very conservative," who made up half of the electorate, Trump won 60 percent. In 2016, Cruz won 44 percent of the vote among very conservative voters in a more crowded race, while Trump only won 21 percent.
—Geoffrey Skelley, 538
The real winner of Iowa? The polls
With 53 percent of the estimated vote reporting, Trump is currently at 53 percent, DeSantis at 22 percent, Haley at 20 percent and Ramaswamy at 8 percent. Those results could still shift, but so far, they are very close to the final polls. Our final polling average of Iowa was Trump 53 percent, Haley 19 percent, DeSantis 17 percent and Ramaswamy 6 percent.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
Voters and the economy
Entrance polls in Iowa shows the economy was a top concern for voters. All Americans have felt glum about the economy since Biden took office, despite the economy doing well by many measures. Part of this is an accident of when Biden took office, during the tail end of the COVID-19 economic slump. Biden's going to campaign on Bidenomics finally turning into results for the middle class and recent efforts to revive student loan forgiveness, but most voters say they trust Republicans on the economy.
—Monica Potts, 538
Iowa, reader’s digest version
There were a lot of moving parts tonight, so here's a quick summary all in one place:
- Trump is projected to finish first; he currently has 51 percent of the vote.
- DeSantis is projected to finish second; he currently has 21 percent.
- Haley is projected to finish third; she currently has 19 percent.
- Ramaswamy is projected to finish fourth; he is dropping out of the race.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538