Why Trump Is Winning By Double Digits Heading Into Iowa

  Emily Jashinsky Visit on Twitter @emilyjashinsky

It looks like DeSantis will lose Iowa and New Hampshire. As of now, at least, it looks like Nikki Haley will too.

obody did it. Probably, at least.

It’s the morning of the Iowa caucus and, in the words of the Des Moines Register, “Donald Trump retains a commanding lead.” This comes according to the outlet’s latest poll, which shows Trump with a staggering 28-point advantage going into the “coldest caucus” in years.

This should chill the Beltway most of all. The Des Moines Register now puts Ron DeSantis in third place at 16 percent, down four points to Nikki Haley, a number just outside the margin of error. This is a shocking failure on the part of DeSantis, a successful populist who tapped an army of Beltway pundits to put nearly all the campaign’s eggs in the Iowa basket. But add DeSantis’ 16 points together with Haley’s 20, and Trump is still up by double digits. Consider also that many millions more ad dollars were spent touting DeSantis and Haley.

Republican voters just prefer Trump. In RealClearPolitics’ polling average, Trump is at 52.5 percent in Iowa and 61.4 percent nationally. He leads by double digits in New Hampshire. Sure, Haley and even DeSantis could over-perform the polls in Iowa, head into New Hampshire and South Carolina with momentum, over-perform there, and cruise into Super Tuesday on March 5 with an influx of cash and confidence.

The odds are low but not impossible. There’s a path if you squint. Yet it requires convincing an enormous swath of the Republican electorate — which has moved further and further into Trump’s corner over the last year — to suddenly pivot.

In 2016, Trump led Iowa by about five points in RCP’s final average. He lost by about three points to Ted Cruz. Trump was polling just under 30 percent. Nationally, he hovered around 35 percent. Well over half of the Republican primary electorate preferred a candidate other than Trump as the caucus kicked off.