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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America,

a presidential election year. And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one, because we want to and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

I am delighted to be joined by a friend of the podcast, Luke Thompson, who is a political consultant.

And we're going to be talking, of course, about Donald Trump's emphatic win in Iowa last night.

He got over 50% of the vote. He smashed Bob Dole's

1998 record for the biggest margin of victory by a Republican candidate. And as everybody is now

saying, it looks as though the Republican race is all over bar the shouting. Luke,

do you think it's all over bar the shouting? I do, Freddie. You know, the dull 96 performance

was a sort of unprecedented win in the history of the modern caucus and primary system,

which is not as old as many people assume. It's only about 40 years old, but 50 years old.

But yeah, it's impossible to look forward at the nominating contests ahead and see how,

even if momentum were not a factor,

either Nikki Haley or Ronda Samosanus could gain the sufficient support necessary to beat Donald Trump. And given that we know that in presidential nominating contest, momentum is everything,

because the states begin to both, they come quickly in number following one on

another and so you're dealing based on perception through earned media and press coverage of

the race rather than through organization and ground game but also they move away from a

proportional representation system towards winner to increasingly win winner take all means of delegate allocation until they do become full-on

winner-take-all states.

And so those two factors combine, have a kind of hurting effect that that prioritizes early

wins in the process in order to build momentum.

...