The question of who will win the Iowa caucuses isn’t as simple as who comes in first place.
“Winning” Iowa doesn’t get you much except bragging rights and an insignificant number of delegates. The true importance of the contest is in how it can shape the perceptions of the political world — the media, donors, activists, politicians, and voters — of who can win.
So the candidates’ true goal is to exceed the expectations the political world has for their Iowa performance. Which means the results will need a bit of decoding.
For instance, if Donald Trump wins but his vote share or margin of victory is unexpectedly small, this will be covered as a shocking development that throws his seeming inevitability into question.
And a bad result in Iowa might not impact Nikki Haley’s campaign much, but such a result for Ron DeSantis would all but doom his hopes of defeating Trump. Here’s what each candidate needs.
Expectations for Trump are for a huge win
Most political indicators currently suggest Trump will win the GOP nomination easily, and that the first step toward this will be a big win in Iowa.
Polls of Iowa Republicans show Trump getting about 50 percent support, more than 30 points ahead of any other competitor.
That’s where his expectations are set. If Trump ends up doing about that well, or even better, it will confirm the political world’s belief that he’s the overwhelming favorite.
The flipside is that if Trump underperforms polls — getting around 40 percent or lower, or having another contender come surprisingly close to him — he will be deemed a “loser” of Iowa even though he won because the results showed his support looking less…
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