PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATIONS
What history shows us about Donald Trump’s win in Iowa
Trump’s underwhelming Hawkeye state victory
On Monday, January 15, 2024 Iowa Republicans braved frigid temperatures to caucus for their preferred presidential candidate.
Just 31 minutes into the caucuses, the Associated Press called the race for Donald Trump. While the caucuses generally require several hours to conclude, Trump’s lead was insurmountable. After all votes were tallied, Donald Trump won a majority of support with 51-percent of the vote.
In response to this majority victory, Trump received headlines that lauded his landslide victory and several news organizations reported on the likelihood of Trump ‘running the table’ throughout the 2024 primary season. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Trump claimed that a win in South Carolina would allow his campaign to do just that — win every single primary and caucus on the 2024 Republican calendar.
As a candidate, Trump is getting the kind of coverage every candidate would love. However, what most coverage of Trump’s win lacks is appropriate historical context.
Trump is the most recent Republican president running for nomination a third time because he lost his general election bid in 2020. In the 2020 Republican primary, Trump sailed to re-nomination without any significant challengers. However, in 2024, Trump is in the same position, but this time has several fellow Republicans willing to challenge him for the nomination. For all intents and purposes, Trump is an incumbent president seeking re-nomination from his fellow partisans. This is something that rarely happens.
Since the McGovern-Fraser reforms were enacted in response to the 1968 Democratic nomination of Hubert Humphrey (who was nominated despite not competing in any primary or caucus), there are only two examples of an incumbent president being challenged in the Iowa Caucuses in addition to Trump in 2024. Ronald Reagan challenged incumbent Republican Gerald Ford in 1976 and Ted Kennedy challenged incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980. George H.W. Bush received a challenge from Pat Buchanan in 1992, but the primary focus was New Hampshire rather than Iowa, which actually did not hold its caucuses because Bush was unchallenged there. In 1992, Bush went on to win all 51 contests held throughout the United States.
Looking at 1976 and 1980, it was clear that there were ideological differences in the parties, causing incumbent presidents to receive a challenge. In 1976, Ronald Reagan believed Gerald Ford to be too liberal for the Republican Party. Reagan ran on a more conservative platform and argued that Republican voters should have a conservative to vote for. In 1980, Ted Kennedy also had ideological differences with the incumbent president, believing Carter to be unsupportive of the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party — with nationalized healthcare being a major concern of Kennedy’s.
Both of these cases resulted in a lot of negative press coverage for the incumbent. In fact, many argued that any challenge to an incumbent president demonstrates weakness, highlights intra-party conflict, and wastes valuable time, energy, and money for the incumbent. This should result in a poorer performance in a general election because of the time and money expended in the primary. A well-rested incumbent should be more able to focus on the general election rather than fending off primary challengers. This is the crux of the ‘divisive primary’ thesis in political science — an idea that has admittedly found mixed results.
Aside from the coverage of the 2024 Republican Iowa Caucus results, it’s hard to find a report that discusses an incumbent president winning just 51-percent in the Iowa caucuses to be an overwhelming win.
Ford battled Reagan for the entirety of the nomination calendar and narrowly won re-nomination in 1976, though the race was still too close to call when the Republican National Convention opened. Additionally, Carter battled Kennedy for the entirety of the 1980 Democratic nomination calendar, though in June 1980 won enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee. Notably, Ford and Carter both lost their respective general elections after these challenges. This resulted in many voters, pundits, and other media personalities blaming these challengers for the general election results.
It is unlikely that the 2024 Republican nomination season will last the entire length of the primary calendar. Based on polling data, it seems likely that Trump will wrap up his bid for renomination quickly. However, his victory should be properly contextualized. An incumbent president receiving 51-percent of the vote shows the potential for intra-party tensions. After all, 49-percent of voters chose a different candidate. If President Biden were to defeat a challenger in the first Democratic Primary (this year in South Carolina rather than Iowa) with 51-percent of the vote, headlines would likely not report on Biden’s landslide victory.
The 2024 nominations are unique in that both Parties have incumbent presidents running. However, it is only the Republican Party that has seen serious candidates emerge to challenge their incumbent’s bid for re-nomination. A couple of Democratic opponents have stepped forward to take on Biden, yet neither candidate has mounted a serious challenge to his re-nomination bid.
While polling certainly portends a general election rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, it is not an entirely foregone conclusion. Trump, for instance, faces a number of legal challenges and there are still calls for Biden to drop out of the race. All election results should be properly contextualized so that voters have a better understanding of those results. An incumbent president winning 51-percent of a state’s vote is a victory, but one that should also spark concerns within the party since 49-percent of that state’s most-committed partisans voted for someone else.
