The long road to the Republican presidential nomination begins tonight in Iowa, where voters will gather at their neighborhood precinct caucuses to cast the first votes of the 2024 election campaign.
Iowa may not have many voters or delegates, but the first-in-the-nation caucuses always attract a media frenzy. With the help of the national spotlight, Iowa voters have been surprisingly influential over the decades: A caucus win has sometimes been enough to propel candidates — think Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter — from a deep deficit or even obscurity to the nomination.
But tonight, Iowa voters seem likely to choose Donald J. Trump — someone they didn’t pick eight years ago, but who now appears poised for the largest victory in a contested Iowa Republican caucus.
Absent a polling meltdown, Mr. Trump’s victory would be one of the more impressive illustration of his dominance over the Republican Party. In 2016, Iowa voters rejected Mr. Trump in favor of Ted Cruz. And unlike most of the country, the Republican establishment in Iowa has not gone along with Mr. Trump. Yet he’s poised for an overwhelming victory anyway.
If the polls are even in the ballpark, the only interesting race might be the one for second place, between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.
Whether Ms. Haley or Mr. DeSantis loses by less in Iowa might not seem very compelling. Mr. Trump has led by over 30 percentage points in the polls over the last month — often with more than 50 percent of the vote — while Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis have languished in the teens. But every bit of momentum might turn out to matter for Ms. Haley in New Hampshire, where she has a real if narrow path to victory. The most recent polls in Iowa show Ms. Haley edging ahead of Mr. DeSantis — even a distant second-place finish will be treated as a victory for her campaign.
A third-place finish for Mr. DeSantis, on the other hand, would be perhaps the most striking proof yet of his political weakness. On paper, he was tailor-made for this state. Historically, the Iowa caucuses have backed the conservative candidates of the religious right, including Mr. Cruz — but Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum too. For good measure, Mr. DeSantis earned the endorsement of Kim Reynolds, the governor, and many state elected officials. He won the endorsement of Bob Vander Plaats, a leader of the state’s influential evangelical vote. None of it lifted his candidacy.
For Mr. DeSantis, the stakes of a third-place finish are clear and dire. If he can’t even outpace Ms. Haley in conservative Iowa, where can he? And even if he took second in Iowa, a similar question would loom with respect to the front-runner: Where can he beat Mr. Trump if not here? The road from here does not get easier. The polls in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina all show him in single digits. A decisive loss in Iowa, whether in second or third, would almost certainly bring calls for him to withdraw from the race.
Ms. Haley’s performance, on the other hand, will be judged by a very different standard. Unlike Mr. DeSantis, she is not natural fit for the conservative caucus electorate. If she can nonetheless leapfrog Mr. DeSantis, the night will probably be judged as a win for her, even if she trails Mr. Trump by a wide margin.
Any show of strength for Ms. Haley could be significant ahead of New Hampshire. She had already pulled to within striking distance of Mr. Trump there before Chris Christie withdrew from the race. Historically, primary polling is extremely volatile, and the candidates who surge late often keep surging. Ms. Haley might still need just about everything to go right, and a burst of favorable media coverage after Iowa would only help. If so — and no Iowan will want to hear this — the biggest consequence of Iowa might just be in New Hampshire.
Of course, even a Haley win in New Hampshire would still leave Mr. Trump as an overwhelming favorite to win the nomination. Her appeal is almost exclusively concentrated among highly educated and moderate Republicans and independents, who make up an outsize share of the New Hampshire electorate but will do very little for her elsewhere.
But with Mr. Trump’s criminal trials still ahead, perhaps there is still a scenario, however remote, where second place in Iowa tonight turns out to matter more than we imagine today.
A few extra things I’ll be watching for tonight, beyond who takes second:
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Does Trump underperform the polls? He did eight years ago, and it shouldn’t be considered a surprise if it happens again. The caucus electorate is extremely small and hard to poll. A “disappointing” finish for Mr. Trump wouldn’t augur much for the rest of the campaign or even suggest he will underperform elsewhere, but it would be a sign that Mr. Trump’s greatest support remains concentrated among less engaged Republicans.
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How big is the class divide? It’s been a long time since our Times/Siena poll of Iowa. Back in August, our data suggested that Mr. Trump was getting clobbered in highly educated areas. If that’s still true, it could be enough for Ms. Haley to squeak out a few wins in the state’s most highly educated counties, like Johnson and Story Counties, home to the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, or Dallas County, in the fast-growing suburbs west of Des Moines. It might not mean anything for her chances in Iowa, but winning a few highly educated suburban counties would be a reminder that she can hope to be more competitive in other states, whether it be in New Hampshire next week or in Virginia on Super Tuesday.
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What happens in Dutch country? Iowa’s Dutch conservatives, concentrated in the northwest corner of the state, are the foundation of the religious right’s traditional strength in the state. They powered the victories of Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, and even backed Gary Bauer, former president of the Family Research Council, over George W. Bush in 2000. I drove out to northwest Iowa eight years ago (unfortunately, I hit a deer along the way) to see whether the Dutch conservatives were coming around to Mr. Trump. They were not. In the end, this was his weakest part of the state: Sioux County gave Mr. Trump just 10 percent of the vote. He will undoubtedly do far better this time, but his standing here will be a good test of his strength among former skeptics on the religious right.
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What’s the turnout? Eight years ago, around 187,000 people voted in the Iowa caucuses. Turnout won’t be so high tonight. Historically, based on average turnout as a share of G.O.P. registered voters, turnout might yield something more like 120,000 caucus goers. It’s easy to imagine turnout slipping even lower, given the especially bitter cold and a relatively noncompetitive race.
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One last thing I’ll be watching: our election night forecast, also known as the Needle. It will be back tonight — including a needle for the race for second place.