In a remarkable political turn of events, Donald Trump’s support in Iowa has doubled since 2016, with the former president winning the nation’s first primary on 15 January, largely due to overwhelming backing from evangelical Christian voters who were promised institutional power and a supreme court that overturned Roe v Wade.
The Iowa caucuses confirmed polls that have consistently shown Trump carrying a comfortable lead ahead of the remaining Republican challengers. Before the caucuses, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis toured all of Iowa’s 99 counties, only to see Trump win in 98 of them. Most demographic groups, with the exception of college graduates and voters under 30, reported strong support for Trump this year.
Interestingly, even young Republican voters favored Trump slightly more strongly this year than in the 2016 Iowa caucuses. CNN entrance polls showed a modest 3% jump in caucus-goers under 30 who support Trump, while his share of supporters over the age of 30 nearly doubled across the board.
A key factor in Trump’s success in Iowa has been his consolidation of support among evangelical Christian voters. In 2016, just over 20% of Trump’s Iowa supporters self-reported as evangelicals or born-again Christians. By 2024, this figure had risen to 53%.
This surge in support among evangelical Christians can be attributed to what Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, calls “transactional politics”. Despite Trump’s personal characteristics, which might seem at odds with evangelical values, evangelical leaders supported him in exchange for institutional power and influence over social policy, particularly the legal right to abortion.
The bargain held: Trump won the support of evangelical voters and then delivered to them a Supreme Court that overturned Roe v Wade, erasing nearly 50 years of legal precedent that guaranteed the right to abortion. And despite political divisions among prominent pastors in Iowa, support for Trump among evangelical voters increased this year.
The Iowa primary may be a reasonable bellwether for evangelical support for him – and as far as it served as a litmus test for Republican party polling, the polling held up. But Iowa’s primary is atypical. Iowa is more racially homogeneous than the rest of the US – more than 85% of Iowans identify as white, and Black people make up only about 4% of the population, compared with the national average of 71% and 12%.
While Black men across the US have increasingly reported supporting Trump in polling, there were so few non-white Republican caucus-goers that entrance polling did not register them as a statistically significant bloc. The Republican caucuses are also party meetings, requiring party membership to participate and consisting of an exclusively in-person vote.
The time commitment, the fact that caucuses also involve Republican party business, and even the extreme cold in Iowa this week probably affected turnout, which was estimated at 110,000 voters, significantly lower than in 2016.
“The proportion of rank-and-file Republicans who are going to participate in the caucuses would be fewer than in a typical primary,” said Barbara Trish, a professor of political science at Grinnell College in Iowa.
“The smaller the core of participants, the more likely they are to be more ideologically extreme, or more, on average, experienced and active in the party.”
After his victory in the Iowa caucuses, Trump delivered a unifying message, saying,
“I really think this is time now for everybody, our country, to come together. We want to come together, whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat or liberal or conservative.”
The next stop to test the strength and growth of Trump’s base is New Hampshire, which is also demographically less diverse than most of the country and thus not representative of what the US election as a whole will look like.
Even so, Trump is predicted to win the state, further cement his monopoly of the party, and box out those who threaten it. This is a clear indication of the enduring appeal of Trump’s brand of politics among a significant section of the American electorate. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the recent political developments and their implications for the future of American politics.
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