Why a Trump win in Iowa may not mean victory later
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2024
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
Despite Donald Trump leading in the polls, victory in the GOP presidential primaries isn’t certain. Ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Trump hopes to extinguish his opponents. But history has shown that not every winner in Iowa goes on to become the nominee.
Read more:
Donald Trump has consistently led his opponents in polling for the Republican nomination, often by a wide margin. But victory isn’t certain. In Iowa, the first state in the Republican primaries, Trump wants to fully knock out his competitors, but that may be easier said than done.
Support for former U.N ambassador Nikki Haley appears to be growing, and even if Haley loses in Iowa, a strong performance could give her campaign enough momentum to win in New Hampshire later this month.
Meryl Kornfield, Michael Scherer and Hannah Knowles join us from the campaign trail to explain everything ahead of the caucuses in Iowa on Monday.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On Monday night, Iowa Republicans will meet in community centers in high school |
| 0:05.8 | gyms across the state. They'll be the first voters in the country to choose |
| 0:09.7 | who they want to be president. And in the final days before the Caucasus, |
| 0:14.1 | we wanted to know what Iowans are saying |
| 0:16.1 | and how campaigns are strategizing. |
| 0:18.6 | So we call three reporters. |
| 0:21.8 | Michael Shararer. |
| 0:23.0 | I'm a national political reporter for the post and I've been covering these Iowa things since |
| 0:28.1 | I guess 2008, 2007 was my first cycle. |
| 0:31.2 | Hannah Knowles. |
| 0:32.2 | I'm a campaign reporter for the post and I've mostly been following Governor DeSantis. |
| 0:37.7 | This is my first presidential election I've covered so everything's new and exciting. And Merrill Cornfield. |
| 0:43.8 | I'm also a campaign reporter at the Washington Post |
| 0:46.5 | and I am not really covering anyone specifically, |
| 0:49.2 | just kind of roaming around Iowa looking for things to write about. |
| 0:54.0 | They've all been covering the 2024 presidential race in Iowa |
| 0:58.5 | where Trump has a wide lead in the polls. |
| 1:01.0 | At the beginning of the cycle, it didn't look like it was going to be that way. |
| 1:04.5 | But as this campaign has unfolded, Trump has pulled into a pretty commanding lead and the place |
| 1:10.1 | where his rivals really wanted to first draw blood to show that this guy was mortal, |
| 1:15.3 | to show that he wasn't a king getting re-coordinated. |
| 1:19.2 | Now it looks like it may end up showing that a king is more or less getting coordinated with more than 50% of the vote. |
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