The Welcome back to our special coverage of the Iowa Republican caucuses.

The big news of the night, of course, is the news you've probably already heard.

Very early on after the caucuses opened,

NBC News projected that the winner tonight of the Iowa caucuses will be former

president Donald Trump. Now that was very much expected by polling heading

into tonight. The question for Trump's campaign essentially is

whether or not he will end up at 50% or above, which would be a historic

proportion of the vote.

Whether he will, as it appears he will, have a margin over his closest competitor that breaks or potentially

even doubles, maybe triples the record of every previous winning margin by any

Republican presidential caucus winner in Iowa.

Those are the sort of very happy questions that the Trump campaign is mulling tonight.

The more tense questions are further down.

Among the remaining candidates, specifically

Mickey Haley and Ron DeSantis,

as to which of them will get second place,

what the margin will be between the two of them and how badly each of them

will be shall act by Donald Trump.

In terms of the structure of their campaigns, the funding of the campaigns, the expectations

for their campaigns, and the kinds of voters they've been

appealing to with the kinds of messages they've been advancing.

Mickey Haley's looking to a much easier go of it in New Hampshire, which is the next contest next week, than Ron

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