The Unusual Night of 2024: Cruz, Bush, Dole, and the U.S. GOP’s First in the Nation

Even though Cruz was able to win the Iowa crown, he had to share the media spotlight with Trump, who surprised many with his show of strength among evangelicals and his complaints about the vote count being rigged against him. Both were meant to become regular features of his campaigns.

There was little remaining surprise at that point in the marginal showing by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the frontrunner the previous summer who never found his footing in the debates or in his toe-to-toe showdowns with Trump.

In 2012 there might have been far more surprise out of Iowa if Santorum’s winning tally had been known and announced at the time. There were competing surprises in the narrow margins that separated the top candidates in each party. Hillary Clinton did not wipe out Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was almost caught from behind by Trump.

In 1988, the surprise was Vice President Bush finishing an embarrassing third, losing to Kansas Sen. Bob Dole and televangelist Pat Robertson — a sign of the rising strength of evangelicals in the state GOP. Dole, like Mondale in 1984, benefited from Iowa’s affinity for candidates from neighboring states. The Iowa Democrats chose Rep. Gephardt from Missouri over Sen. Paul Simon in 1988 and many were surprised.

The night of the Iowa caucus, the forecast calls for sub-zero temperatures. But some in the state have been feeling another chill: the sense that their much ballyhooed “first in the nation” exercises might not matter all that much this year.

Iowa became the starting point for the national presidential race in the 70s. In the four years that it had caucuses, the world of media and politics was ablaze. But in this unusual cycle, an unusual word has appeared in some of the media coverage — the word “relevance,” often in a sentence ending with a question mark.

To some degree, 2024 was always going to be a comedown for Iowa’s caucuses. That was determined when the Democrats severed the connection the caucuses had to actual delegate selection for the party’s national convention. The caucuses mattered because of that connection, going back to the 1970s. Without it, the caucuses are just another straw poll.

The Democrats created a new system of primaries and caucuses in order to pick delegates to their national convention to choose their presidential candidate.

Relatively few Americans had heard of South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, who had a role in big role in creating the new system, until he tried it out for himself in Iowa in 1972. He finished second there, behind “Undecided,” but he got some attention and went on to win other delegate-selecting events in other states. That led to his nomination at the ground-breaking, tradition-busting party convention that summer (and to a 49-state landslide loss in November).

Four years later, a little-known former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter reprised the McGovern strategy in Iowa, winning the nomination and the election and serving one term in the White House.

Republicans soon got into the act, and with real consequences. In 1980, much of the country was still acquainting itself with a diplomat and former CIA director named George H.W. Bush. He defeated Ronald Reagan in the Iowa caucuses. After winning the nomination, Reagan hired Bush’s campaign manager to sell him on running with him. Bush would serve eight years as vice president and four more as president; and his son would serve another eight in the Oval Office.

The Surprises in Iowa and DeSantis’s Inability to Overcome the Deceleration of 2016 Candidate Donald J. Carter

It seems a bit unrealistic to bet against surprises in Iowa this time around. Half of the caucus vote is locked up according to all the polling. He has kept his hold on the state’s politically active white evangelicals – a dominant factor in recent GOP cycles. These numbers have seen little change over the past year. If Trump got less than half of the vote, the Iowa caucus will have been changed into the Home of Surprises.

More likely, the story that competes for air time with the frigid weather will be the new second-place status of Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who has been the focus of the coverage in recent weeks. She got 20% in an Iowa poll, and three other polls showed she was leading among the GOP also-rans.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was the closest thing Trump had to a real competitor, was overtaken by Haley. But DeSantis’ numbers have gone down as well. According to the latest average of Iowa polling, he only has one GOP caucus vote in six.

A crash-and-burn for DeSantis Monday night could be a good story to tell. But at this point it would hardly qualify as a surprise. Last week’s disappointing debate performances were part of a decline in performance for the candidate since his campaign announcement on Musk’s social media platform.

While not a surprise, such an outcome would add DeSantis to the roster of aspirants whose sky-high expectations fell to earth in Iowa, including Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (2004), Ohio Sen. John Glenn (1984) and Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (1980).

Carter was wallowing in the low 30s in the Gallup Poll at the time, and Kennedy had challenged him for the Democratic nomination. He briefly led after Carter after the Iranian revolutionaries took more than 50 Americans hostage. The country rallied around its president, who soared well over 50% in the Gallup and won the Iowa caucuses again.

The big Iowa shock came on the Democratic side. Former Vice President Walter Mondale from neighboring Minnesota dominated the caucuses with 49% but his presumed chief rival, former astronaut and Ohio Sen. John Glenn, all but disappeared with just 4%. Second place went to Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, who studied the state as McGovern’s campaign manager.

But 1988 was something of an embarrassment for Iowa: Dole, Gephardt and Simon invested heavily in the state and saw dividends on caucus night. The three failed to perform in New Hampshire, struggled in Super Tuesday and were out of the race by the end of March.

Some on the DNC may have been thankful for the opportunity to switch to a vote-by-mail system in Iowa. There had long been criticism that the outsized role Iowa’s caucuses played nationally was inappropriate given the scant presence of people of color, a large and growing portion of the national Democratic electorate.

It is not a big deal for President Biden that he finished fourth in the Iowa caucuses in 2008 and again in 2020. Biden has backed starting the process in South Carolina, as it will this year. It was South Carolina’s primary on the last Saturday of February 2020 that saved Biden’s candidacy that year and began his climb to the White House.

Interest waned in 1992, when the first President Bush ran unopposed. In that same cycle, Iowa’s own popular Sen. Tom Harkin was a candidate for the Democrats and that year’s other contenders (including Bill Clinton) ceded the field to him.

Surprises were featured again in 2004, when Gephardt returned and shared early billing with Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. A newcomer to national politics, Dean had been making innovative and influential use of the internet to raise money and build support. But after months of battling each other, both had to bow on caucus night to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who would eventually be the nominee.

Four years later both parties seemed to achieve “peak Iowa” with stunning breakthroughs with lesser known hopefuls. The Democrats snubbed New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive frontrunner, for newcomer Barack Obama (with Biden back in the pack). The clarity and strength that Obama’s win gave him catapulted him to historic status and made him endure a lengthy primary battle with the former first lady.

The Democrats won’t vote for a president this year because of caucusing. They’ll be sending mail-in ballots in the next few weeks, which will be used by the party to tally up the state’s results by March 5. The Democratic National Convention nominating calendar has been changed in the wake of calls for a more representative state to go first. The race won’t be as competitive since there aren’t any major challenges to President Biden’s reelection bid.

Forty delegates to the party’s national convention will be determined by the caucuses. Iowa will receive 2% of the total party delegates, and those delegates will be allocated proportionally.

They start at 7 pm CT and last about an hour. The caucusgoers had a candidate to write down. In the past, a show of hands could be used to do this. Votes are then tallied in front of caucus attendees and campaign representatives to be submitted to the state party.

The Turnout of a Hawkeye State GOP Presidential Campaign in 2024: How Many Registrants Do You Know? The Case of the 2016 Election

Only registered Republicans can vote, but few of them do. The GOP turnout in 2016 was 186,000. That’s only about 25% of total registered Republicans in the state.

Republicans in the Hawkeye State convene Monday on a potentially record-breaking chilly night — that will likely affect turnout — to commence the presidential contest for 2024.