Polls show Donald Trump as the clear favorite to win the GOP Iowa caucuses on Monday, January 15. But the true stakes of the contest are about more than just who comes in first. The political world will be watching Iowa’s results closely in an attempt to get a sense of where the GOP race is going.
The caucus results will give one early indication of whether Trump really will romp to the nomination or face a closer fight than expected. They’ll basically determine whether Ron DeSantis can stay in the race. Yet for Nikki Haley, they may not mean all that much — expectations are low for her in Iowa, since she has a better opportunity to break through in the next contest, the New Hampshire primary on January 23.
It may seem somewhat strange that Iowa’s results would need decoding like this. But that’s key to how Iowa’s influence works. It isn’t about the paltry number of delegates at stake. Rather, Iowa matters because of how it affects the perceptions of the political world.
Media, party insiders, activists, the candidates themselves, and even voters in other states think the caucus results reveal a great deal about which candidates can win elsewhere. The contest for Iowa isn’t really a contest for delegates; it’s a contest to look good.
This year, all this lofty import only applies to the Republican caucuses — Democrats stripped Iowa of its first-on-the-calendar status, substituting South Carolina instead, for various reasons: a 2020 vote-counting debacle, concern that Iowa is too white for a party increasingly emphasizing diversity, and Joe Biden’s political interests.
But in what’s generally been a stagnant, undramatic Republican race, Iowa presents the first real opportunity for voters to weigh in, defy polls, and shake up the contest. Of course, they could — and probably will — simply affirm Trump’s overwhelming lead. But if polls were perfectly reliable, we wouldn’t need the voters at all, would we?
What are the Iowa…
Read the full article here