After Iowa, What Now for Trump?

The New Observer
February 3, 2016

Donald Trump’s narrow defeat in the Iowa Republican Party primaries shows that the opinion polls which predicted him coming first or second were correct—and that if this poll accuracy is maintained, the flamboyant populist stands a very good chance of clinching his party’s nomination.

The opinion polls in Iowa for the Republican primaries always showed Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio in the first three places, with Cruz and Trump alternating between first and second places.

Also, contrary to the fake surprise and praise now being heaped on Rubio by the controlled media, his third place was also predicted with great accuracy, even down to the percentage point.

Party primaries in Iowa are run on the “caucus” system, where, instead of going to a polling booth, voters attend local private events run by the political parties to make their selections.

The caucuses are strictly controlled by the party organizations, and are thus heavily weighted in favor of the party machines, made up as they are by only the most involved, dedicated, and long-time party officials.

As a result, they tend not to reflect the very large number of disaffected white voters who have emerged from long periods of political inactivity or even total non-activity—precisely the voters who Trump has very largely appealed to.

The Iowa primaries are also not run on a “winner takes all” basis as in most other states, which means that even though Trump did not win outright, he still took seven of Iowa’s delegates to the Republican National Convention, as opposed to Cruz’s eight.

At the same time, Cruz had an automatic advantage because of the very strong Christian evangelical lobby in the Iowa Republican party. The influence of that lobby in Iowa is so extreme that in the 1998 primary, TV evangelist Pat Robertson outpolled George H.W. Bush, who went on to become president.

The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll, released during the last week of the campaign, revealed that among Iowa evangelicals, Cruz had 33 percent support and Trump only 19 percent.

As the opinion polls predicted, Trump failed to attract a significant element of this all-important evangelical vote, relying instead on his newly-activated supporter base to come out and vote for him. This in effect led to a “third” party—a “Trump party” turning out to vote for the first time, while the majority of the “old” or traditional Republican Party activists remained with the two candidates they perceived as the most Christian—Cruz and Rubio.

The number of “new” Republican voters can be clearly seen when the turnout in the Iowa primaries is compared to those of previous years:

January 2008 Iowa Republican Primary turnout: 119,200 (20.69%)

January 2012 Iowa Republican Primary turnout: 121,503 (19.76%)

January 2016 Iowa Republican Primary turnout: 186,874 (32%)

This is the real reason for Trump’s second place, and not, as the controlled media claims, his “failure to build a data operation,” or other such waffling by the so-called “pundits.”

For example, claims that Cruz won by spending over $3 million on “digital data voter research and targeting,” is undone by the fact that Jeb Bush spent $800,000 on such research, and only polled 5.238 votes.

Trump, on the other hand, spent a miserly $235,000 on such research—less than what he spent on campaign hats—and polled 45,427 votes.

Attention now turns to the next primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, which are run on a conventional “polling booth station” system, and where the importance of established party organizations fade.

This will strip away both Cruz’s and Rubio’s Iowa advantage. Furthermore, according to the opinion polls, Trump has a commanding lead in New Hampshire and South Carolina which will likely translate into primary election victories.

The final Iowa results were:

Ted Cruz:  51,666 – 27.665%

Donald Trump: 45427 – 24.31%

Marco Rubio: 43165 – 23.10%

Ben Carson: 17395 – 9.31%

Rand Paul: 8481 – 4.54%

Jeb Bush: 5238 – 2.80%

Carly Fiorina: 3485 – 1.86%

John Kasich: 3474 – 1.86%

Mike Huckabee: 3345 – 1.79%

Chris Christie: 3284 – 1.76%

Rick Santorum: 1783 – 0.95%

Other: 119 – 0.06%

Jim Gilmore: 12 – 0.01%