Iowa caucus results reveal the weakness of Donald Trump
All along I’ve said that Donald Trump is highly vulnerable when it comes to the 2024 Republican nomination – and I still believe that’s the case more than ever. In spite of having a near incumbent level advantage, he’s never been able to poll much above 50% within the Republican primary race. All along roughly half of Republican primary voters have wanted someone, anyone, other than Trump. At one point last year Ron DeSantis was tied with Trump in primary polling. If DeSantis hadn’t turned out to be such a weakling weirdo, he’d be the Republican frontrunner right now, not Trump.
Of course Trump won the Iowa caucus today, but that’s mainly because his Republican primary opponents are all punchlines. Yet even with the rest of the Republican field pretty much trying to lose, Trump still only got roughly 50% of the Republican primary vote in Iowa. That’s right, even with the entire media having spent the past months insisting that Trump is going to be the Republican nominee no matter what, half of Iowa Republican primary voters still went out and voted for someone else. It’s a stunning level of weakness for someone who’s supposedly a presumptive nominee.
I’m not the only one who sees it this way. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker made the same point today: half the Republicans who voted in the Iowa caucus today voted for someone other than Donald Trump. There are no other Republicans with any popular momentum of any kind right now. Yet half the Republican base voted against Trump today just to send a message about how much they don’t want him to be the nominee.
This is all before Trump goes on criminal trial this spring and ends up being a convicted felon on his way to prison by the time of the Republican National Convention this summer. If Trump is this non-viable with Republican voters already, how bad will it get for him as the legal process plays out?
What we saw out of Iowa today was a jarringly weak showing for a guy who’s supposed to be a lock for his party’s nomination. And it’ll only get worse for him going forward. Maybe the Republican Party will indeed be stupid enough to make him the nominee. But if so, it would be laughable to suggest that he’d be viable. For all the endless media hype about how Trump has an “ironclad grip” on the Republican voting base, half of them just voted for someone else.
