Welcome to the Big Take DC podcast. This is a special dispatch from Des Moines, where former President Donald Trump just won the Iowa caucuses. It's a big moment in a big election year, the first contest in a race for the Republican ticket. We've had a surprising turn of events. Trump's win was called the four some caucaus sights had even started debating, and the race for number two, Florida Governor Ron De Santis, won that. I'm your host, Seleia Mosen.
I'm taping at ten fifty pm from Iowa with two senior politics reporters, Bloomberg's Nancy Cook and Josh Green. We're going to talk about Monday night's results, what it means for the Republican ticket, and what it could tell us about the twenty twenty four presidential race.
Ahead.
Nancy, Josh, thanks for coming by my pop up podcast studio here in the des Moin Marriott.
It's glorious.
I'm very impressed by the towels draped over things.
Fun.
All right, let's get started. Monday nights caucuses in Iowa started at seven pm with one of the purest expressions of democracy, the Pledge of allegiance. I was at a caucas site tonight with my producer, Julia Press. We sat in a high school auditorium and listened to Iowan's advocate for three different candidates.
I feel that Desiantas will be the one that can take the military's role. Very seriously, we have.
To consider the general election.
I believe that Haley has the best chance against Joe Biden. How about somebody that's got a track record that means what they say and say what they mean true.
And that's why I'm pulling for Trump.
The big news of the night is actually how fast The Associated Press, which officially calls the race, said that Trump had won. Caucus has started at seven and the race was called at seven thirty one pm. Is this usually how these nights go?
Well?
I think that we did expect the results to be called pretty early, just because Trump did have such a commanding lead in the polls, you know, dating back at least a month, if not more.
It's very unusual, certainly unprecedented for a race to get called before caucus goers had even liked her its speeches. But it just goes to show what a landslide victory it was for Trump because there was no mystery from the moment, you know, the doors opened about who is going to win?
Now Ron DeSantis's campaign. You know, he came in second in the Iowa coccus Is. They are calling foul on that early AP call and they feel like it's unfair. You know, people, as you said, like didn't even have time to actually pick who they were going to support, and the AP had already called it. So they are really criticizing that decision.
Let's get to that second piece of news then, on who got second place, Ron DeSantis. We did actually talk to some voters who shared a couple of reasons for supporting Rondasantis. His domestic policies are very strong.
I like his honesty and his forthcoming. I think he understands what we're facing, what the middle class is facing right now, and actually has some plan to do something about it.
Actually, I knew two years ago that I would want him to be president. It was after COVID and what he did during that.
How do you think DeSantis pulled off a second placer?
I wouldn't use the phrase pulling off. I mean he finished probably thirty points behind Trump, So I would characterize it as a disappointing second place finish for DeSantis, that's just good enough that he can probably stay in the race for a couple more states. I just don't see him. Given all the money and manpower that the Santas in a super Pac put into this race, it doesn't bode well for his chances going forward. I don't think.
I mean, vivek Rimostin came in fourth, he's already dropping out. He's announced that immediately. Where does that leave our other big cuted Nikka Hayley.
It leaves her in not a spot that she wanted heading into New Hampshire. She's expected to do much better in New Hampshire because the electorate there is much different. It's full of independents, more moderate Republicans, Democrats, and so she's expected to do pretty well in New Hampshire and probably come in second. And so they were hoping she would come in second in Iowa and then it would kind of turn into a real race between her and Donald Trump.
That's not what we had.
The other thing that became clear and talking to polsters and analysts in Iowa this week was that a lot of Haley's supporters are independents and Democrats. Who crossed over in order to vote against Trump, and that helped her a little bit in Iowa. It will certainly help her
in New Hampshire. But as we move forward to more conservative states where that sort of thing isn't allowed, it just doesn't suggest that Haley can put together a winning coalition of Republicans rather than independence and Democrats, which is ultimately what she's going to need she's going to pose any kind of a real threat to Trump.
There is a couple of unique things that happened this year. One is the weather. It's the coldest caucus in modern history. A lot of reporters and political operatives flying out from DC and other parts of the country barely made it. My team struggled to get to Des Moines.
We are here in Atlanta, derailed and disrupted by the harsh weather.
All of DC is spread out across the country trying to get to des Moin.
Is there any sense that the weather actually affected turnout?
So we don't know what the weather did or did not cause, but the early estimates of the turnout are one hundred thousand people, which if that turns out to be correct, it was very very low. The largest turnout that we saw was in twenty sixteen when Ted Cruz beat Donald Trump in that caucus, and that was a turnout of roughly one hundred and eighty thousand. And I don't know if that's the weather, but the weather here
has been absolutely terrible. And we had the legendary Iowa polster j N. Seltzer in to talk with some Bloomberg reporters and editors this week, and she said something that stuck with me, which is that you know, it will really hinge on whether or not people can get a parking space at their caucus location because the roads and
the parking lots are still filled with snow drifts. You imagine, like, you know, it's it's so cold here at sub zero temperatures, If you can't park at your caucus location, you know you're just going to skip it.
Was there any one candidate that benefited or was affected by the lower turnout?
I think if anything, it helped Trump because if you looked at breakdowns of polls and who was most enthusiastic about their candidate, Trump's supporters were far more enthusiastic to go out and vote for Trump than the Santus voters were to vote for DeSantis or Haley voters who were to vote for her, and he ultimately ended up clearing the bar that I think a lot of people were looking at, which was will he win a majority of votes?
Will he win you know, fifty percent plus one in Iowa, you know, and beat all the other candidates combined.
I also just want to say that the Trump campaign this year compared to twenty sixteen, is so different, and they are so organized this time and super professional, and they have it together. And I think that Democrats and people who who are not necessarily following Republican politics day to day are I'm not fully aware of that. Trump has a very competent team of long time experienced operatives around him, including his campaign manager Susie Wiles, and a
senior advisor, Chris Losovita. And they took really no chances.
In Iowa.
They identified precinct captains who went to each precinct location with these white hats and gold lettering. You know it said Trump Caucus Captain. It's like out of the Apprentice. They made a hat to caucus video.
Making America Great Again starts one place on Earth and one place only right here in Iowa.
And you know, Trump did not come to the state as often as Haley or DeSantis, but behind the scenes, they were organizing quite effectively, and I think that that really helped them. I mean they you know, a few days ago, we talked to them and they said, look, we'll give people rides if we need to. You know, we're happy to. We'll organize rides to pick people up if they can't get their themselves.
Trump broke the he got more than fifty percent in Iowais this is a big deal for him? Then?
Yeah, I think that that was the most of the analysis sort of hinged around that fifty percent barrier, you know, would he be able to win a majority? And that was what a lot of people were looking at going in, like will he be able to will he not be able to? In the fact that he did, I think only kind of amplifies my sense that he is every bit the strong candidate that we thought he was going in.
It looks like he won by you know, potentially more than twenty five points, the largest that anyone ever won the Iowa caucuses. The margin was twelve point five or twelve point eight percent, you know, roughly that was Bob Dole.
So this is historically the largest margin. And I also want to point out that, you know, he's always had a lock on the working class, but it seems like, you know, based on some early reporting, it also seems like he really did well with college educated Republicans in Iowa. So I think it just shows that his support is not just with old you know, people who have supported him since twenty sixteen.
So one key thing remember is that Iowa is a heavily Republican state. It's not really representative of the rest of the country demographically. Plus, in the last five decades, Republican caucuses here have correctly predicted the party nominee and a contested race just three times, and only one of those winners went on to take the presidency, was George W. Bush in two thousand. So what can we learn from the Iowa caucus results.
We'll get to that after the break. We're back.
I'm Saliah Mosen with a Big Take DC podcast taping past eleven pm here in Iowa. I'm with Bloomberg's Nancy Cook and Josh Green, and we are digging into the results of the Iowa caucuses. So Nan, Josh, let's talk about what we can learn from Iowa. Nancy, you spoke to jay An Seltzer, a prominent Iowa polster, earlier today. What did she say is being captured in the polls? And how accurate were her pre caucus polling results.
I think what her polling show that really stuck with me is that they're is a huge amount of enthusiasm in Iowa for Trump and it cut across like every age group and every demographic group, and I was so struck by that.
Let's talk about Ron DeSantis. He went all in on Iowa. He visited all in ninety nine counties. He moved a third of his campaign staff to the state pretty early. He got the endorsement of Kim Reynolds, the governor here, and major evangelical leaders. All of these things are the typical Bell weathers with success. What does it mean that he did all of this but he is still a distant second.
I'll just say it. It means he's a terrible candidate. I mean, talking to insiders around Iowa, you know, a lot of the politics here is kind of retail and local, and you meet people and people are just not impressed with Desantisus political skills. As you said, he had every advantage, And the only thing you can really say about his Iowa experience is the eked out a narrow second place finish that I think will allow him to continue on
in the race. But I think the finish that his team was hoping for was something much closer to Donald Trump, something that creates the idea that Dessantas had momentum, that his candidacy was being reborn and it was going to emerge once again as a serious challenger to Trump. And there's really nothing in the results that point to that.
Josh, you said something earlier about moderate's Democrats, independents all getting involved to support Nicki Haley. When I was out there at a precinct and when Julia, my producer, was out at different rallies for the three major candidates, we heard it from a number of voters who were drawn to Nicki Haley because she represented a moderate option.
I think we're looking for someone that's not going to create a divisive country.
I just think she's so down to earth and just common sense.
Really.
As a she didn't do so well Monday night in Iowa. What does her performance here say about Republican voters and their appetite for a moderate in this cycle.
Well, I think that Nikki Haley's support here, you know, as we've talked about, was with independents and Democrats, and also her support came from the suburbs, you know, the Des Moines suburbs, like places where more moderate Republican voters lived. But I just think the broad Republican base will not necessarily get behind her. And you have to remember too, that sort of having this three candidate race still benefits the Trump campaign because it leaves the field very fractured.
So you'll have DeSantis coming in second in Iowa, potentially Nikki Haley in New Hampshire. Like it prolongs the race, but it allows no one to actually rise up and really challenge him. And that's the same thing that happened in twenty sixteen, but on sort of a bigger scale because there were more candidates. And but the more the field is fractured and no one is able to kind of coalesce support, the better that it is for Trump.
So, Nancy, to your point, we did actually talk to some voters who were changing their registration to participate in the primary, bringing out their driver's license and indication that they are or maybe they were Democrats or independence and now they're registering as Republicans.
Hey Cock, it's for a Pete Buddha dej last time, I'm actually like a registered Democrat, Like this is very unusual for me to come over on the Republican side, But I just feel like this this election is so critical.
But at the CAUCA site that I was at, I ran into Des Moines Mayor Connie Bosen who said that she actually doubts that there is going to be enough people switching over to Republican to really make a significant difference.
Sometimes people say they might do that, but to really do it is another thing.
Josh, you said there's going to be more of these voters in other states. Do you think that it's going to be enough to boost Haley's campaign from third to second?
It may in the state of New Hampshire, where there's a long tradition of independence and Democrats crossing over when there isn't a competitive Democratic primary, like there's not this year. So I think that's Haley's best hope at emerging with a or even like a kind of a close challenge to Donald Trump. I mean, one of the things I was looking at tonight and some of the returns in these counties was where Nikki Haley did well and what
sorts of voter she was winning. And there were counties where, at least based on the polling of people going into caucuses, something like ninety percent of her supporters were college educated. That is not a reflection of what the broader demographics
of the Republican primary electorate looked like. And unless she can start drawing many more non college educated voters, I think she's going to be stuck as a factional candidate who has a lot of appeal to moderate, never Trump college educated voters, but I think a lot of those voters if Trump winds up being the nominee, you're going to turn around and vote for Joe Biden in the fall.
What about Donald Trump's legal troubles? What are we seeing from the Iowa results about how people think about that?
Did not seem to be a problem. On the polls of BECUS goers going in, two thirds of voters said that it wouldn't it wouldn't dent their support of Donald Trump if he were I think convicted of criminal charges.
Yeah.
I think that the challenge for the Trump campaign is that, you know, he's a bulletproof with the Republicans. Does that carry over to the general election, you know, do suburban women come back to him to independence? I mean, we have seen in swing state polls that Bloomberg has conducted with Morning Consul that he is ahead in all the swing states, so like, I don't think it's affecting him with swing state voters either so far.
Yeah, Josh, And that's roughly like what you said about voters not caring is in line with.
What we heard.
I really respect his dignity to just bite it.
If our former president, an American citizen who's a billionaire, is handcuffed by the political system and the justice system, how's a regular citizen like myself ever going to be able to stand up to the government.
Look at all the January sixth stuff that he's had to end or all he did was to stand up there and have a speech. So the least that we can do is stand behind him.
I think that's just a reflection of the iron grip that Trump has over Republican voters. They don't see his legal woes as being a reflection of his bad behavior. They see it as him being persecuted, like in many cases on their behalf and it only intensifies their support for him. And I think that helps to explain why Trump won a landslide victory in Iowa.
Let's talk a little bit about what we've all seen and heard here in Iowa and what it could mean for the general election and President Joe Biden. In November, we talked to a lot of Iowands. The economy came up over and over again.
It could be economy right now.
It's kind of down the rain.
Oh my god. The grocery store.
I hate going down even just.
Getting a snack or a drink at a driver.
It's crazy, how expensited.
I have three kids at home. The groceries I swear of double. I mean, you can't say you can't keep a budget.
I went to Hygie the other day. I got like two bags of groceries like one hundred bucks, which is kind of crazy.
And that last voice was a man named Scott Bates, who said that he planned to caucus for Ron DeSantis. And he told Julia Press, my producer, that he was worried about her finances.
I don't know how somebody your age could afford to buy a house.
What do you think of that?
Well, I think that we heard the same thing. You know, I heard the same thing when I was out and about, you know, not just in Iowa, but kind of everywhere. I think the pocketbook issues are really important to people. You know, I would include in the price of groceries, you know, the price of gas. The other thing that we heard a lot about this week, which kind of surprised me, was immigration. We just heard from a ton of people here what a problem that is.
You know.
We spoke with one ceo who you know, owns a bunch of farms and a bunch of agribusinesses, and he's had a hard time getting enough workers, and he's mad at Washington that there isn't sort of better immigration policy that lets people come here or legally. I just think that immigration is a huge sleeper issue and the Democrats haven't really come up with a good answer for it. So I think Trump will continue to put them on the defensive over that.
How is what happened in Iowa going to help Biden craft his message as he in earnest begins his campaign.
I mean, I think the big one is there was a CNN poll the other day that showed something like three out of four independent voters don't believe that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. Trump winning a landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses, which he has done, I think is going to start pulling some of those voters back to reality, and that's probably a positive for Biden.
I mean, the best thing for Biden's chances of a second term are Trump emerging as the Republican nominee and turning off independent voters, who, especially in a kind of a fifty to fifty narrowly divided country, can be the deciding votes.
The Biden White House has been banking for months on this playbook that they have of running against Donald Trump, and they think it will be successful because it was in twenty twenty and twenty twenty two. But I think the mood in this country is very sour over the economy and on immigration, and I'm not sure that they're prepared for the fights that they're going to have.
Thank you so much, thanks for listening to the Big Take DC podcast from Bloomberg News. I'm your host, Seleiah Mosen, coming to you from Des Moines, Iowa. This episode was produced by Julia Press and Naomi shaven a special thanks to Gregory Cordy. Blake Maples and Alex Sagira are our mix engineers. Our story editors are Michael Shepherd and Wendy Benjaminson. Sage Bauman is our executive producer and head of Podcasts.
Thanks for tuning in. I'll be back on Thursday for our regularly scheduled programming