Trump wins Iowa caucuses, DeSantis edges out Haley for second place: Full coverage

After turning in a fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, Vivek Ramaswamy announced Monday that he was suspending his presidential campaign.

"There is no path for me to be the next president," he told supporters.

Ramaswamy earned nearly eight percent of the vote on Monday.

During his victory speech on Monday night, Trump repeated his disproven claims that election fraud had cost him victory in the 2020 presidential election and vowed that, if elected in 2024, he would enact sweeping changes to how votes are cast and counted.

Trump promised to require polling stations to use “paper ballots” rather than computer systems, voter I.D. requirements to cast a vote, and an elimination of all early and mail-in ballots.

“These elections last 62 days and if you need more time, take as much time as you want and so many bad things happen,” Trump said. “We have to get rid of mail-in ballots because once you have mail-in ballots you have crooked elections.”

Audits of the 2020 have found that mail-in ballots and early voting did not result in fraud.

Speaking to his supporters Monday following his victory in the Iowa caucuses, former President Donald Trump delivered an uncharacteristically unifying message to his campaign rivals.

"I really think this is time now for everybody, our country, to come together, whether it's Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative, it would be so nice if we could come together and straighten out the world and straighten out all of the problems and the death and destruction that we're witnessing that's practically never been like this," Trump said.

Trump even went as far as to congratulate rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis on their respective showings Monday.

"I want to congratulate Ron and Nikki for having a good time together," he continued. "We're all having a good time together and I think they both actually did very well. I do, I think they did very well. We don't even know the outcome of what second place is."

After television networks and the Associated Press declared Donald Trump the winner of Monday’s Iowa caucuses roughly 30 minutes after they had gotten underway, Ron DeSantis’s campaign accused them of “election interference.”

"It is absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote," DeSantis’s communications director Andrew Romeo said. "The media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example yet."

Read more at USA Today.

Here’s what we know right now: Donald Trump has won the Iowa caucuses, and he’s done so handily.

Here’s what we don’t know: His final margin of victory, and who comes in second place. Both are questions that will be poured over by political observers in the coming days, in large part because "Trump raised expectations in the state so much that he needed a resounding victory to meet them."

Putting Trump’s victory in perspective

A landslide is sometimes defined by political strategists as a victory of between 7 to 10 points. Former Nixon speechwriter William Safire, who wrote the “On Language” column for The New York Times as well as the classic “Safire’s Political Dictionary,” defined it as “A resounding victory, one in which the opposition is ‘buried.’”

Given how quickly the normally cautious Associated Press called the race, Trump is all but certain to cross Safire’s threshold. This might even be the biggest victory in the history of the Iowa caucuses, at least in a competitive year, a record currently held by the late Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, who beat his closest challenger, the evangelical pastor Pat Robertson, by about 13 points in 1988.

Still, as Yahoo News National Correspondent Jon Ward notes, Trump probably needs to win around 45% of the vote in Iowa to meet expectations. If his total is less than that, his rivals will see an opportunity to upend the race in next week’s primary in New Hampshire, which will be held on Jan. 23. This is particularly true if Nikki Haley, who has been polling well in New Hampshire although still well behind Trump, manages a second place finish in Iowa.

How does the Associated Press declare a winner?

Unlike many news outlets, the AP simply declares that a candidate has won an election. It does not hedge, like many networks do, with words like “projected winner.” It simply says a candidate has defeated their rivals.

This has allowed the AP to avoid the mistakes other news organizations have made, such as in the 2000 presidential race, which some news networks called incorrectly or prematurely.

This is how the AP puts it:

“This hallmark of AP's Election Day news report is produced by a dedicated team of election analysts, researchers and race callers who make up our Decision Team. AP does not make projections or name apparent or likely winners.

If our race callers cannot definitively say a candidate has won, we do not engage in speculation. AP did not call the closely contested race in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore — we stood behind our assessment that the margin in Florida made it too close to say who won.”

A majority of Republicans who participated in Monday’s Iowa caucuses said that they would vote for former President Donald Trump in 2024 even if he is convicted of a crime.

The findings come from an entrance poll conducted by Edison Research.

Trump, who faces 91 felony charges in four different criminal cases, handily won the first Republican contest of the 2024 election.

Read more from Reuters.

Donald Trump has won the Iowa caucuses, but the fight continues for second place.

Nikki Haley is hoping a stronger-than-expected result will give her a needed boost ahead of next week’s primary in New Hampshire, where she has been polling within striking distance of Trump.

Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, is hoping to revive his campaign and show that he is the only candidate who can defeat Trump. He is polling poorly in New Hampshire, however.

Here’s what Yahoo News West Coast Correspondent Andrew Romano says in his must-read story on Trump’s victory:

“For DeSantis, even a narrow loss to Haley would come as a devastating blow. In New Hampshire — which holds its primary next Tuesday, Jan. 23 — the Floridian (who averages 6% in the polls there) trails far behind both Haley (30%) and Trump (43%).

Demands for DeSantis to drop out and allow anti-Trump Republicans to consolidate around Haley would become deafening if were to finish third in Iowa.

In contrast, squeaking out a second-place finish would give DeSantis a reason to continue campaigning in New Hampshire and possibly beyond, splitting the party’s anti-Trump vote.”

Former President Donald Trump cruised to victory in the Iowa caucuses Monday night. The result is unsurprising given his massive polling lead in the state, and while his margin of victory appears to be quite significant, full results will not be available for some time as the Iowa GOP counts votes from caucuses across the state.

For a full explanation of Trump’s victory from Yahoo News West Coast Correspondent Andrew Romano, click here.

Will this be enough for Trump to win the nomination?

Yahoo News’ Jon Ward explains how to read the final results:

If Trump’s margin of victory is substantially smaller than 50%, it will raise some questions about his support.

If Trump’s final number is below 45%, it may be interpreted almost as a loss. But again, much of this is subjective and determined by pundits and party leaders.

If Nikki Haley comes in second, Ron DeSantis will have difficulty continuing his campaign.

If DeSantis comes in second, he’ll proceed to the New Hampshire primary next week. That scenario might be the best outcome for Trump.

Because if DeSantis drops out and Haley is the only other serious rival, she is poised to finish close to Trump in New Hampshire, or even beat him.

The best outcome for Trump is a finish close to or above 50%, and a DeSantis second place finish.

The worst outcome for Trump is a finish below 45% or even 40%, and a second place finish for Haley.

Hours after former President Donald Trump is expected to cruise to victory in the Iowa Republican caucuses, jury selection will begin in New York in the second defamation trial brought against him by columnist E. Jean Carroll.

In May, a jury found Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s in a department store changing room and defamed her by denying that the encounter ever happened. They ordered Trump to pay her $5 million in damages.

Trump promptly repeated his denials and Carroll filed a second suit against him. That case could cost the former president millions more.

There are two outcomes of the Iowa caucuses. First, there’s the vote total: a hard set of numbers showing how many people voted for each candidate. You can follow those results here.

But because the Iowa result does not decide the nominee, the second outcome is the way the numbers are interpreted. This is a highly subjective variable that shapes the impact of the Iowa caucuses as much as the vote totals do.

Expectations and momentum are the biggest factors in how the results are interpreted.

Assuming the polls are correct and Donald Trump wins, the two biggest things to watch are by how much he wins and who comes in second.

If his margin of victory is substantially smaller than 50%, it will raise some questions about his support.

If Trump’s final number is below 45%, it may be interpreted almost as a loss. But again, much of this is subjective and determined by pundits and party leaders.

If Nikki Haley comes in second, that will make it hard for Ron DeSantis to continue his campaign.

If DeSantis comes in second, he’ll continue to the New Hampshire primary next week. And that might be the best outcome for Trump.

Because if DeSantis drops out and Haley is the only other serious rival, she is poised to finish close to Trump in New Hampshire, or even beat him.

The best outcome for Trump is a finish close to or above 50%, and a DeSantis second place finish.

The worst outcome for Trump is a finish below 45% or even 40%, and a second place finish for Haley.

Some Americans have wondered why Iowa’s Republican caucuses had been scheduled this election cycle to fall on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday commemorating the life of the civil rights leader.

Last year, Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann was asked about that decision.

“As Republicans, we can, I, we see this as honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King in terms of having a caucus here,” Kaufmann said in July.

Read more via the Los Angeles Times.

In the latest sign that many Republicans opposed to Donald Trump's renomination will quickly come around if and when he defeats his remaining rivals, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds — who has drawn Trump's ire for endorsing Ron DeSantis — told Fox News Monday that she would back Trump in November's general election rather than remain neutral or vote for President Biden.

"I've made it clear that I will [support Trump]," Reynolds told host Neil Cavuto. "I'm a Republican, and all of the candidates running are going to be better than what we have."

"Even after all the stuff he’s said about you?" Cavuto asked.

"Yep," Reynolds replied. "Because we've got to win."

Among the "stuff" that Trump has said about Reynolds: that she is “the worst governor in the country," and that endorsing DeSantis would be “the end of her political career in that MAGA would never support her again."

Previously, Reynolds said that she was supporting DeSantis because "I believe [Trump] can’t win" in 2024.

“In 2016 and 2020 I supported President Trump. I endorsed him. I helped him in the state of Iowa. It’s a different day. It’s a different time," Reynolds added. "It’s OK for Iowans to say ‘thank you for what you did’ and move on."

Nobody likes staying up all night to find out election results — including political reporters like us.

So when will we know who won tonight's GOP caucuses in Iowa?

The good news: probably much sooner than we knew who won Iowa's 2020 Democratic contest. That year, the whole system broke down and delayed the final tally for days.

"We have done everything humanly possible to ensure that this caucus comes off without a hitch," Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann said Monday.

According to the Des Moines Register, that means "volunteer precinct chairs at the state's 1,657 precincts will enter their results via an online system that requires them to enter the numbers twice to ensure they are correct. Then, state party staff will manually approve each precinct's results, posting them to the Iowa GOP's website, [which] will update as results come in from around the state on caucus night."

If the past is any guide — and it should be, because Republicans simply cast their votes once rather than clustering multiple times in different corners of the room like Democrats — the earliest returns from small caucus sites should start appearing online around 8:30 p.m. EST (just half an hour after the caucuses get underway).

The last batches should trickle in before 1:00 a.m. EST; in 2016, they appeared at 12:50 a.m. EST.

Of course, Donald Trump's large polling lead suggests that the Associated Press and other outlets are likely to call the contest in his favor much earlier. The second- and third-place calls could take until after midnight, depending on how closely Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are competing for runner-up.

As Woody Allen once said, "80% of success is showing up." That's never more true than on Election Day — or in this case, on Caucus Night. If your supporters don't turn out, you can't win.

Which is why Nikki Haley should be worried about one particular data point from the final pre-caucus survey conducted by famed Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer for the Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom.

According Selzer's poll, just 51% of Haley's supporters say they will "definitely attend" tonight's caucuses. For DeSantis — the candidate she's battling for second place — that number is more than 10 points higher (62%).

In terms of overall support, Selzer's poll also showed Haley (20%) surpassing DeSantis (16%) for the first time. But caucuses aren't like normal elections. Iowans have to gather in person and listen to candidate representatives deliver sometimes lengthy speeches before casting their votes; they can't just pull a lever or drop a ballot in a box and go home.

So on a night when the local wind chill could push temps as low as minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit, any commitment gap could make an outsized difference — and DeSantis is likely to benefit.

Let's say you're Chris Christie. And you've run an entire campaign for president on the premise that Donald Trump should never be president again. Let's say you mean it when you say that.

(Because why else would you say it? Not much upside for you if he wins.)

And let's say you want to drop out at a moment when it will have maximum impact to help the Republican candidate who has the best shot of beating Donald Trump in New Hampshire next week: Nikki Haley.

Well, you'd drop out last Wednesday. And that’s what Christie did.

Here’s why that timing might be an attempt to help Haley, and why not endorsing Haley might also be intended by Christie to help her.

Haley has been steadily gaining momentum in New Hampshire since mid-September, when polling showed her in the single digits there. She's now at around 30% in the polling average. Trump's lead over Haley in New Hampshire has gone from 32 points in mid-November to 14 points now.

And how many points did Chris Christie put on the table for the taking? About a dozen.

So Christie dropping out puts a tie with Trump in New Hampshire within Haley's grasp. If Haley were to beat Trump in New Hampshire or even come close, it would mean that we have a serious competition for the nomination on our hands.

Since polling has indicated that most of Christie’s support in New Hampshire will go to Haley whether he endorses her or not, explicit support would do little for that number of voters.

Haley needs voters who are leaning toward DeSantis to vote for her, as well as some who are leaning toward Trump.

So if you’re Christie, would you endorse Haley if you wanted Trump-sympathetic Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire to vote for her?

Probably not. Because Christie ran an anti-Trump campaign, his endorsement of Haley would be apt to hinder her ability to attract more voters beyond the ones who supported Christie.

The National Weather Service has confirmed that Monday's Iowa caucuses are, in fact, the coldest on record.

Ron DeSantis has enough cash to sustain his presidential bid through Super Tuesday in March, one of his finance chairs said Monday.

“If we have the success I think we can have in Iowa and exceed expectations, I think fundraising will really be robust,” Roy Bailey said at a Bloomberg News roundtable in Des Moines. “We have plenty of fuel in the tank to get the job done to get into Super Tuesday.”

Super Tuesday is March 5, when 15 states will hold GOP primaries.

“Most people invest in a pathway to win,” Bailey added. “And so I have to be honest with you, it would be tough if we don’t have a really good night.”

This year's GOP caucuses in Iowa might not be the most suspenseful ever. (Former President Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win.)

But somehow, they've still become the most expensive.

Reporting from CNN and Politico shows that the campaigns and their allied super-PACs have pummeled the Hawkeye State with more than $123 million in advertising since the start of 2023.

Last presidential election cycle, the corresponding figure was in the $80 million range.

Why the surge of cash in a contest where Trump holds such a commanding lead?

In large part it's because Nikki Haley — who has been lately climbing in the polls — hopes to land a knockout punch on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by beating him for second place.

Both the Haley and DeSantis networks have spent more than $30 million overall. But Haley's has spent significantly more — $7.8 million to DeSantis's $6.1 million — over the last two weeks, according to CNN.