As Iowa gets ready to trudge through the snow and ice in order to report to their caucus rooms, giving the country the first indication of who Republicans want to take on Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris, Michelle Obama, Gavin Newsom, or whomever else the DNC superdelegates end up selecting at the convention, conventional wisdom tells us that it’s not really going to be much of a contest at all.
Our friends at Real Clear Politics have been compiling all the polling, doing the rolling averages, and as of last Saturday, nationally, Donald Trump leads his next closest competitor, Nikki Haley, by 49.4%. It’s not that Trump is at 49.4%, but the spread between first and second is that much. It’s an unprecedented lead in the modern era with a multi-candidate field.
As for the more granular polls dealing with Iowa itself, two major polls were also unveiled on Saturday. Emerson came out with one that shows Trump beating Haley by 34, and Ron DeSantis by 40. NBC News/Des Moines Register came out with one the same day that shows similar results – Trump over Haley by 28, and over DeSantis by 32.
Polls have often been wrong, and sometimes spectacularly so. In the closing week of October, 2020, ABC and the Washington joined up for a poll in Wisconsin that showed Joe Biden opening up a 17-point lead over Donald Trump with a week to go. The final result? Biden by 0.63%. We go through this exercise every couple years. We say polls are crap, polls come out, more polls come out, we still think they’re crap, more come out, and we eventually operate under the assumption that the polls are pretty close. Then the election happens and the polls are off and we revert back to the polls are crap meme. That said, if polling shows Trump is leading by 30 in Iowa and they’re wrong by 25, he’s still up over margin of error, and the nomination is basically in the bag. At least that’s what conventional wisdom tells you.
Patrick Ruffini, a seasoned polling analyst, has seen enough.
only question is if Trump clears 60
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) January 14, 2024
Now what if polling isn’t picking up what’s actually happening on the frozen ground of Iowa? Our friend, Salena Zito, doesn’t just report as a pundit on what the polls show. She drives to Iowa and actually talks to people. A lot of them. One, Neil Shaffer, was a Trump supporter in both 2016 and 2020. He’s now a supporter of Ron DeSantis, and gives an explanation to Salena why.
Since the presidential campaign has gone into full swing, two Republican presidential candidates, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, have visited Howard County trying to earn its vote. Shaffer said it has been DeSantis who has had the most impact on both him and many other Republican caucus voters in this county.
“I have a unique experience because I’m a county chair, so you get contacted by campaigns,” he said, adding, “As far as campaign ground game, DeSantis has by far a well-oiled machine going on here. Their people contact me constantly. He’s got all kinds of levels of people, they’re in charge of this and that. When he came through, it was just flawless.”
Shaffer said he received a personal call from Casey DeSantis this week and it was remarkably not a call to pressure him for a vote. “She called me a couple days ago just to say, ‘Thanks for being chair, and I know there’s a lot of pressure on putting these caucuses on,’ which I thought was a very nice gesture,” he explained.
Salena’s point is not just that DeSantis has a lot more support that is the product of doing the hard work of a traditional ground game, including knocking on over 3 million doors and developing over 2,000 precinct captains for Monday night’s caucus, but that the second-best ground game in the state was developed by Vivek Ramaswamy. Ed literally wrote the book on why the ground game matters. The question for Iowa in 2024 is does the ground game still matter? There’s one poll out this morning that doesn’t comport with the rest of the polling currently out there. It obviously could be an outlier, but it also might be using methodology that more accurately is picking up the mood of caucus-going voters of the Hawkeye State.
Robert J. Salvador is the CEO of DigiBuild, a player in AI software, and is a tech advisor to the DeSantis campaign, but notes that this AI & Tech poll out of Iowa is not affiliated or commissioned by the DeSantis campaign or any of its supporting PACs. Here’s where they see the race on the day of the caucus.
POLL ALERT AI & Tech poll Iowa Republican Primary
1/14/2024- PoliTech AIDonald Trump: 38%
Ron DeSantis: 35%
Nikki Haley: 14%
Vivek Ramaswamy: 13%Sentiment Trend:
Trump: falling
DeSantis: rising
Haley: falling
Ramaswamy: risingN=500 (70% Republican 30% Independent)
(more…
— Robert J Salvador (@RobertJSalvador) January 15, 2024
The margin of error is high at 6%, but that is explained by the haste of conducting this poll to try and capture how fluid Iowa caucus-goers currently are, and reflects a relatively low sample size. As for methodology, the poll relies heavily on phone calls, text messages and social media direct messages.
According to Zito from her first-hand reportage on the ground all over the state of Iowa, there are two campaigns that have world-class ground games – DeSantis and Ramaswamy. If this poll is remotely close, Ramaswamy and DeSantis rising, that may be largely due to the fact that they’ve both gone all-in and knocked on doors, met with people, shook hands, showed up in diners, did the retail politics you traditionally need to do in order to win voters over, especially the voters that will brave sub-zero wind chill temperatures on caucus night. And in Ramaswamy’s case, if he is taking that share of the vote, those are votes that would otherwise be Donald Trump votes. Perhaps the former President has seen some internals that show something similar, that Ramaswamy is no longer playing the role of the useful idiot for him and actually may be hurting him down the stretch. Maybe that’s why Trump dropped the hammer on Ramaswamy last weekend.
@AureliusStoic1
New message from Trump on Truth pic.twitter.com/RsgqXBTh8P— ThinkObjects (@13StripesNStars) January 15, 2024
As for the AI & Tech poll showing Trump’s trend fading, even the Des Moines Register indicates that Trump has fallen 3 points from December to January. Now we get to the other variable in tonight’s caucus that can’t be polled – the weather.
Thanks to Joe Biden’s global warming/climate change, the polar vortex has swept across North America and hit Iowa as its own personal bullseye. In Des Moines when the doors open, it’ll be -6 with a 14mph wind blowing. That takes the feels like temperature down to -26. The only time I felt cold like that was snowmobiling on Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota when the air temp was 14 below. I created my own windchill by winding the snowmobile up to around 80mph. You have to wonder if the average Trump supporter is so gung ho for the former president that they look outside, look at the clock, and tell themselves, “He’s got this in the bag. I think I’m staying home tonight.” Nikki Haley’s supporters are not that organized, either. Neither campaign has done much to ensure that their people actually brave the weather and make their case in the caucus rooms.
My hunch tells me something’s up in Iowa that’s not being reflected in polling. Enough to upset the apple cart and the Republican nomination for president? The odds certainly are not pointing in that direction. If you are one to bet going with the odds, Trump’s still a lock.
But if we wake up tomorrow morning and the upset happens, or the margin between first and second place is mid-single digits instead of something that resembles the wrong side of a Cleveland Browns playoff game, we may have a horse race that goes at least until Super Tuesday. I wouldn’t count on it, but the scenario for the upset is very plausible.
