Pic Of The Moment: Putting That Trump Iowa Landslide In Perspective

[EarlG]

24. Trump beat DeSantis (who came second) by

just under 30 percentage points. The previous record for margin of victory was 13 points by Bob Dole over Pat Robertson in 1988. So, a massive margin of victory.

But as mentioned, there is additional context: Trump's 30 point record victory also came from record low turnout.

Expectations for turnout at the Iowa caucuses had been high heading into the year, following record-shattering attendance in the last competitive GOP contest.

But just over 110,000 voters participated in the 2024 caucuses, falling well below the high expectations for turnout in 2024.

(snip)

In 2016, Republicans set a new record for turnout at the caucuses, with almost 187,000 GOP voters. Though the total made up only about a third of all registered Republicans, turnout at the 2016 caucuses greatly outnumbered the 2012 contest, which had about 122,000 voters. And in 2008, the turnout was similar, with 120,000 voters, making the 2024 Iowa caucuses turnout the lowest in more than a decade.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iowa-caucus-turnout-2024

In 2016 Trump came second in Iowa with 45,429 votes. (Ted Cruz won with 51,666.) 8 years later Trump has the entire GOP on lockdown, he's a former president, and he's running to try and beat the man who defeated him. He got a significant *proportion* of the votes.

But while he only managed to get about 11,000 votes more than he did the first time around, overall the number of votes cast *dropped* by roughly 77,000 votes, or about 41%. That's a BIG drop, even with the bad weather. Remember -- in 2016 the US had just had 8 years of Obama and Hillary Clinton was on the ticket. Republicans were massively motivated to turn out. This time around, they appear to be less motivated than they were in 2012 or 2008.

Edited to add: You know what, there's another important factor here. Trump is essentially operating as the incumbent in the GOP primaries. He was their most recent president, from 2016-2020, and he's running again, after just one term, for a rematch. Usually when incumbents run in primaries they only get token opposition, if any. So maybe it's more instructive to compare Trump's win and margin of victory to other Republican incumbents:

Ronald Reagan, 1984
Vote share: 100% | Margin of victory: 100 percentage points (he ran unopposed, there was no primary)

George H. W. Bush, 1992 (essentially the incumbent)
Vote share: 100% | Margin of victory: 100 percentage points (he ran unopposed, there was no primary)

George W. Bush, 2004
Vote share: 100% | Margin of victory: 100 percentage points (he ran unopposed, there was no primary)

Trump, 2024
Vote share: 51% | Margin of victory: 30 percentage points

I think the technical term for that is a "loss of mojo."