Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com.
Okay, we'll respect dry January. In this house. Nice. Nice.
Hello and welcome to this late night post-debate reaction edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk, and I am currently recording in the lobby of the Student Center at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, which is where the debate just took place. So I apologize for any background noise. There are journalists and cameramen shuffling back and forth right next to me. I'm
considerate part of being on the scene here in Des Moines, Iowa, just days before the caucuses. You can sense the excitement coming through the microphone, I'm sure.
Tonight was the final Republican primary debate before the Iowa caucuses, which are on Monday. It was just Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley at long last. There were no distractions from Vivek Ramaswamy or Chris Christie, who, by the way, dropped out of the Republican primary today. He suspended his campaign campaign.
So we can talk about that. We can also talk about the town hall that Donald Trump attended across town, also in Des Moines, Iowa, on Fox at the exact same time as the debate that was taking place here at Drake University. In fact, we have our own Trump town hall correspondent here with us. I asked Nathaniel Rakich to make sure to watch that town hall so he could tell us what happened. Nathaniel, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Galen.
Also here with us is politics reporter Leah Escaranam. Welcome to the podcast, Leah. Hello. And director of data analytics, Elliot Morris. Welcome to the pod, Elliot.
Hey, Galen. Thanks for hyping me up. I hope you're staying warm. You know, I was outside early this morning doing some TV hits for ABC News. It was really cold. But then I thought, as cold as it is right now, it's going to be 30 degrees colder on Monday when Iowans head to high school gymnasiums and community centers to caucus. It's expected to be, I think the last time I checked, it was negative 13 degrees today.
And down to negative 20 with Winchell. So it really will be a battle of who has the most committed supporters who are willing to brave the cold. But let's talk about what happened tonight. So I think two things are sort of coming together from a narrative perspective, which is Chris Christie, who has about 10 or 11 percent support in New Hampshire, dropping out of the race where Nikki Haley has about 30 percent support and Trump has 14.
40% support. This isn't a one-to-one situation, but if you imagine that all of Chris Christie's support goes to Nikki Haley, all of a sudden it becomes a competitive race in the first in the nation primary state. And then you have, at long last, this head-to-head debate between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.
Does this change the overall dynamics of the race that we have talked about up until this point? Let's start with you, Elliot, because you've really been crunching the numbers on this lately. I don't think the debate changes the overall dynamics.
So you open this debate with DeSantis attacking Haley from anything from raising the gas tax, which we know is which has sort of been debunked by now to her stance on, you know, Israel. And then you get Haley attacking DeSantis, calling him a liar, sort of beating us viewers over the head to go to DeSantisLies.com.
You do finally get a mention of the person who's 35 to 50 percentage points ahead of them in the polls in like the last 10 minutes of the debate, which maybe we can talk about actually did seem to be some progress in how the candidates are talking about Trump or at least some progression. But it's probably too little too late. I mean, we're sitting here four days before Iowans are going to vote. It's a hard sell.
I guess we're coupling the things, though, right? So it's like Nikki Haley finally can sort of focus her attention all on her one other rival besides Trump, I guess. And she no longer has Chris Christie taking potential support from her in New Hampshire. I think we've said before that there was about a 95% chance that Trump wins this thing. Does anything that's happened over the past several days change that?
No, I don't think it changes our overall view of the nomination probabilities. It's relatively easy to imagine now. I think Haley tying or even beating if we're, you know, going to stretch things a little bit. Trump in New Hampshire, she's down 12 points. Chris Christie has about 12 percentage point support. Maybe all or 78 or something percent of that goes to Haley and she closes that gap. Great. But like...
you know, where do you go after New Hampshire? It has 22 delegates. Iowa has 40. There's 60, if you win all of them, which she's not going to. And you need 1,215. So there's a long way to go. So we do have data on Christie supporters in New Hampshire and who their preferred second choice is. I took an average of the three most recent polls that asked this question in an article I wrote today about Christie dropping out. And I found that 52% of Christie supporters said that Haley was their second choice, which was by far
far higher than any other candidate. Like most of the other candidates were in like single digits. I'm all frankly, like the second most popular answer was just like, I don't know. We're like, I wouldn't vote. I think it's a good reminder that like a lot of people are doing the math where it's like every single one of Christie supporters are going to go to Nikki Haley. And like, obviously that's not how voters work. It's not quite so black and white. So like it definitely is good for for Haley that Christie dropped out. Right. He is a 12 percent support. If you assume that 52 percent of that 12 percent goes to Haley, that's about
six percentage points that she's just going to gain kind of overnight. That still leaves her roughly six points shy of Trump. But that does put her in a position where like a strong performance in Iowa or even just like a normal polling error would potentially put her over the top in New Hampshire. So it's obviously good for her. But I also don't want to overstate the impact of Christie jumping out. Leah, are you in agreement here? I am. And I think the question is,
Okay, let's say this does allow her to, like, best case scenario, this means Haley has a chance of winning in New Hampshire. When I say this, I mean, Christy dropping out, nothing to happen, nothing to beat. I don't think it really changes much. Wait, you mean DeSantisLies.com doesn't put Haley over the top in New Hampshire? I'm kidding, Haley. Let's wait until the data comes out. All right, we'll see. But like, okay, so let's say she wins New Hampshire.
Then what? What's the panel? Isn't there a meme that's like, that would go like, Nikki Haley wins New Hampshire, like ellipses, ellipses, ellipses. Nikki Haley is president of the United States. I'm forgetting what the meme is at the moment. Step one, step two, step three. Yeah, step one. Exactly. The other meme would be Nikki Haley sinks clutch three-point shot to cut deficit to 42. Yeah, right. Yeah, for the basketball fans out there.
I think tonight highlighted how challenging it's going to be to follow and cover this primary, at least in the early months, just because, like, what are we covering? The chances of either of them becoming the presidential nominee are so low that it's like then you end up covering the Trump event. And the Trump event was not very informative, from what I understand. Yeah.
I have data on all of this. You guys get excited. Okay, so first of all, Elliot, I got to fact check you. Trump was mentioned 32 times in this debate, which is a lot more than in previous debates. I think the last debate that I counted, it was like 15 times. And so you did hear Nikki Haley say again and again and again, Trump should be on this stage defending his record. I think he did this wrong on China. I think he did that wrong on immigration. And so,
I think as you hinted at, there was more talking about Trump and he needs to defend his record than in the past. And 32 mentions of Trump is twice the number of times that Nikki Haley mentioned DeSantisLies.com, which became almost like a joke by the end. I'm not sure if Nikki Haley was in on the joke, but like I was in the spin room and everyone just started laughing every time she mentioned it because she mentioned it so often. And it really...
I have been looking at Google Trends data during the debates to try to get a sense of how Americans are reacting in real time based on what they're searching on Google. And that really corrupted the data this time because people kept searching for Rhonda Santos as a result of her mentioning that website. So it was hard to get a sense of maybe what moments...
people who were watching cared about other than just following Nikki Haley's advice. I will say, though, if you look at the totality of the Google Trends data, it sort of embodied what this entire campaign has been like, which is like, okay, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis would mention, like, illegal immigration, right?
Or they would mention, Nikki Haley would mention, you know, I'm a military spouse. Or Ron DeSantis would say, I was in the military. And people would seemingly search their names looking for more information about their biography or their views on issues that Republican voters care about. But then I included Trump in the Google search data.
So there's these little peaks. But other than that, the entire time, Donald Trump is, by a significant clip, the most searched person. And so, yes, we do have these moments where we're like, oh, there's a debate. There is a campaign, whatever. The thing that we come back to, the dynamic that we come back to is exactly what we've mentioned here. Trump leading by at least 30 points in Iowa and 50 points nationally. And nothing has changed that.
The very first question was a Trump-ish question. It was, you know, why would you be the best alternative to Trump? I'm paraphrasing, but that's the essence of it. They managed to, like, kind of answer without answering.
And actually, I wrote down one quote because I thought it just like best encapsulated the way that they're balancing this. And actually, this might have been the second question, a follow up question about Trump. But Haley said, quote, his way is not my way. I don't have vengeance. I don't have vendettas. I don't take things personally. For me, it's about no drama, no whining, which is like.
A very careful way of insulting him without actually saying he has bandanas and he's vengeful. Anyway, and then it was pretty much not too much about Trump until about 1030. And that's, I think, when we got into some more substantive questions about election denial on January 6th.
1030 is also when, according to the Google Trends data, people stopped searching everything. I don't think anyone was watching anymore. It didn't matter what they said. There were no peeks of the Google Trends data after 1030. Nathaniel, before we continue on talking about the debate,
What was the town hall like? I didn't watch any of it. So in some ways, I don't know exactly what questions to even ask you. And I didn't even see what was trending on Twitter. But what's your summation of it all? Galen, I sent you a whole summary from which to write questions.
Way to call me out. Galen gave me homework, listener. And I completed the assignment. But the teacher did not grade it. I'm going to pull up the summary right now. In fact, I even said, very detailed, thank you. Wow, you didn't even read it. But now I'm going to go and read it.
So he said political violence is not okay. And he bragged about there being very little violence under him. That's bullet point one. Bullet point two, he said he's not going to be a dictator. Bullet point three, someone asked him if he would seek retribution against political opponents. And he said a lot of people would say that's not so bad. But quote, I'm not going to have time for retribution. Our ultimate retribution is success. Doesn't Taylor Swift have a quote like that? Which is like...
My something is my is like karma. Like, is it success is karma or something like that? I can't believe we we're all failing at this. Yeah, I'm sorry to the Swifties out there. I'm sure I'm getting this wrong. But karma is my boyfriend. I think it's what you're looking for.
Karma is my boyfriend. Exactly, Leah. Karma. Donald Trump got up at the town hall on Fox News and he said, you know what, American voters? Karma is my boyfriend. And of course, the second I said that, like my cat crawls onto my lap like she knows she knows.
The time will come, Leah, where we will sit down without these bros and talk about Taylor Swift in the context of politics. But I don't know why I'm getting burned about this. Yeah. Elliot and I are Swifties. I have like four Taylor Swift records behind me. This is so out of pocket, Gaylord. Like on vinyl? Yeah. Am I being heterophobic right now? I think I'm being super heterophobic. Okay. All right.
All right, Nathaniel. So he said some things about dictatorship and retribution that I covered, thanks to your notes. You take it from here. Yeah, it was not super eventful in terms of these things go. Trump was kind of on his best behavior. You know, he didn't have any of the, you know, more extreme comments that he has been making headlines for recently. In fact, some of them, like you mentioned, like about being a dictator, he kind of walked back.
Um, um, the moderators also kind of treated him with kid gloves. There was only one question about his legal issues and it was kind of framed in an electability way, which was basically like, you know, your rivals say that, you know, this, if you're the nominee, this election could basically be decided by 12 jurors in a juror box instead of at the ballot box. What's your response to that? Um, they did have a question about the recent report that came out about, um,
foreign governments giving his businesses money. And he just kind of brushed past that question and they didn't really press him on it. But other than that, it was kind of him answering softball questions from voters on issues like the economy breaking news. He's going to have the greatest economy the world has ever seen. Issues like immigration. He said that he was going to have the
largest deportations this country has ever seen. Um, kind of typical Trump stuff. I think one of the more interesting answers was on abortion, especially in the context of the primary. There was a woman who was, uh, very pro-life who got up and kind of asked him to affirm his pro-life credentials. And, um, this was actually one of Trump's longest answers. And I kind of got the sense that he was maybe being a little defensive about it. He kept on coming back to the point that like, we wouldn't even be having this discussion if it weren't for me appointing the justices that, uh,
overturned Roe v. Wade. But ultimately, he's had some interesting stuff, which was basically that I believe like a quote to the effect of like you have to win elections at the end of the day. He made the point that many women don't even know that they're pregnant at weeks five or six in terms of
opposing a six week abortion ban. So he definitely kind of came out on the more moderate side of that issue. And I know there was also a question at the DeSantis Haley debate about whether Trump was sufficiently pro-life. So that was mildly interesting. But in general, I wouldn't say that Trump made any headlines here. And, you know, he gave a safe front runnerish performance.
I was also reminded why he's the front runner. He understands the Republican base, I think perhaps more than the other candidates, but he definitely put this on display in his Fox town hall. So it just is a couple examples.
In response, right, to this question he gets about abortion, he says that there should be exceptions for the life of the mother and rape, which is supported by most Republicans, certainly a majority of them and definitely black.
More say it should be legal to do that than totally illegal, according to some Pew polling I looked up earlier. And then he distinguished himself from Nikki Haley and Rod DeSantis on entitlements, which is a
campaign position that Trump took all the way back in 2016. These are some of his positions that are somewhat counterintuitive, that sort of give him some, let's say, moderate credibility on key issues that are important to people, even though the rest of his performance could hardly be described as such as moderate. He's giving the Republican base, I think, what they want, this
a red meat answer about abortion that Roe v. Wade is over because of him, but also doing this little dance about trying to take the sort of more compassionate policy and doing something similar on entitlement, saying the other options on the table are not what you voters want. That's why he's at 50 and 60% in the polls, is because he understands that these are the important issues, and that's his distinguishing factor relative to the other candidates.
You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com.
You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com.
We mentioned that this was a pretty, at times, policy-heavy debate. And the moderators said at the beginning of the debate that they were going to talk about the issues that were most important to Republican voters. And so they sort of started with the economy, then they went to immigration, and then they went to national security and foreign policy. And that's sort of true to the polls. Like, if you look at the polls, that's what Republican voters care most about. And so whereas in some of the past debates—
there was a lot of time devoted to, like, I think it may be in the NBC debate, or I forget which one it was. There was like a lot of conversation about climate change and areas where there was a lot of disagreement amongst the candidates on stage, because at the time there were more liberal and more conservative candidates. But on the economy, immigration, and national security, I guess there's disagreements on Ukraine a bit. But like, did we learn much about
I hesitate to even say what the rest of the primary is going to look like because it feels too credulous that this is going to be competitive. But did we learn something about what 2024 is going to look like based on the way the candidates talked about those three issues? I mean, Ukraine, I think, was the one with the sharpest divide. And I thought it was the most... It was a subject where Nikki Haley was clearly the most confident. I think it had her some of her strongest performances. But...
It was her strongest performances on an issue that is probably appealing again to that college educated portion of the Republican Party. Like her delivery, her kind of defense of why it's important to provide funding to Ukraine, support Ukraine. It was a strong performance, whether or not you agree with her. But if you are...
if you just disagree with that, it doesn't matter how strong her performance was. So I don't know that that stood out. I think the big, the big thing I learned like from tonight is that Nikki Haley is trying to make Ron DeSantis seem like a kind of untrustworthy hack, which was a little bit of a new, I hadn't really internalized or I hadn't really fully appreciated that before. I don't know if it's,
just occurring to me late or if it was stronger in this performance than previous ones. But like her message was like, Ron DeSantis like spends too much money on planes and on his campaign and, and he lies more than kind of like, he's too extreme. That wasn't really her. She didn't really go there.
Yeah, I tuned in right when she was attacking DeSantis basically for mismanaging his campaign and being like, you know, you like totally squandered your all of your money and polls that you had at the beginning of the race, which like, you know, is a totally fair critique because he really had a great position and he he choked.
and it seemed to really kind of get to desantis um maybe um i don't know that was just me tuning in after what was a very kind of you know laid back trump and desantis seemed very kind of you know
very tense. But, uh, I don't know. I think it's interesting because like, arguably it's in Haley's best interest to have DeSantis stick around and like beating him in Iowa would actively like discourage that. Like if he finishes third in Iowa, um,
he is in very real danger of dropping out of the race but like polls again polls of the second choice of desantis supporters suggest that nationally they would tend to go toward trump they are on the trumpier side of things and like
Haley kind of got like the perfect scenario for Haley is like for her to consolidate like everyone on her left so like Chris Christie drops out and she gets all of his votes but then the Trumpy vote get continues to be divided among Trump mostly but also somewhat DeSantis and Ramaswamy and right now she's in that sweet spot but like it's not going to stay like that forever but she should probably want it to stay like that for as long as possible which means Ron DeSantis like
doing well enough to survive to Super Tuesday. But I don't know if he's going to do that at this stage. One of the... Actually, this is kind of funny. Hailey went after DeSantis for his campaign spending just hours after this hot mic moment where Chris Christie poked fun at Hailey for her own spending. Like, there was this moment...
Was it before he went on? Yeah, he was about to give his dropout announcement speech. And he had sent out a link of like, I'm having a town hall at 5pm. Tune in here. And it was a black screen with just mics on and him seemingly talking to an ally or donor or something and trashing them and
Yeah. What exactly did he say about cash? He said, yeah, he said of Haley, she spent 68 million so far and we spent 12. I mean, who's punching above their weight and who's getting a return on their investment? So I was kind of surprised she went there right after that. But
People probably weren't watching as closely as I was. I mean, the only people getting a return on their investment are Trump backers. None of the Republican candidates other than Trump, regardless of where they are on the polls, better or worse than others, are getting any return on any investment because they're not going to win. Okay, but Haley is getting a return on her investment in that she's not doing worse. But to what end? To what end, that is the question.
So I know that we've been talking about Haley as sort of a candidate for a Republican Party that doesn't exist anymore. But like,
You kind of never know which direction the party will go in next. And there is a micro trend of winning New Hampshire the first time you run for president, losing overall, and then going on to become the nominee next time. John McCain in 2000, and then Hillary Clinton in 2008. To me, like people are like, oh, you know, Nikki Haley is running for vice president. I think Nikki Haley is running to be the nominee in 2028.
So I think that's totally fair. They all are. Speaking of return on investment. It's just all these people, all these people are running for 2028. It's going to be like all the also-ransomed 2024. It's going to be all the also-ransomed 2016. You're going to see Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio redux. And then they're all just going to lose to whoever Trump picks as his vice president. Yeah.
I'm not convinced that Ron DeSantis will run again after this performance. Oh, really? Oh, he wants to be president and he's so young. Yeah, so did Scott Walker, but sometimes it's just not in the car. I'll say I'm not sure he will enjoy nearly as much success as he once did if he runs again. I don't know what he's going to do, but yeah, there's only so much coming back you can do from going from 40% in the polls to 10, even over a long time period. Will any of these, like,
pre-Trump candidates, because Nikki Haley, she is a pre-Trump Republican. She was also, like, during Trump Republican. But, like, how are they going to fare in 2028 when we have, like, a new group of Republicans, a new class of Republicans? Like, it might seem even more dated, but
in four years than it does now. It's not necessarily like, oh, well, we're going to go back to the 2012 Republican Party in 2028, not 2024. Well, I think we have to hold our horses a little bit here and say that it really probably matters who wins in 2024. If Trump is nominated and loses again in 2024, I don't think it's like automatic that Kristi Noem is the next nominee for the Republican Party. That's true, because Trump would probably run again. Yeah.
Okay, we're gonna let that lie. Elliot, you sort of undertook a data-heavy endeavor of setting up benchmarks for all of the candidates to be on track to win the nomination.
And I know that we have sort of said here that that all may not matter because this may not be so competitive in the end. But I think the numbers that you lay out actually paint that really well of like why it seems so in the bag for Trump. Can you give us a little bit of that? Like how well would DeSantis or Haley have to do in these early states to be on track to actually win the nomination? Yeah.
Well, for my own sake and for the sake of return on my investment, I do hope the primary becomes more competitive so that our delegate benchmarks are a little bit more relevant. Here's one way to think about this. Trump is at 60 percent in national polls today, but we don't elect candidates.
presidents or we don't nominate presidents by the parties uh in national popular vote what matters is of course the percent they get at the state level trump is doing a little bit worse than that 60 in iowa and new hampshire which just means by definition he's going to be doing better in other states uh it turns out he's doing much better in later voting states uh
At and after Super Tuesday, he's routinely getting 60, 70, 75 percent of the vote in the polls and in some of our projections of what the polls would say in states without polls. We make those projections based off of like the political and demographic composition of the states.
And anyway, all of this suffice it to say, by the time the primary gets to these later voting states, if things stay the same, that's a huge if, right? Obviously, we're not trying to predict the future here.
Those states Trump is stronger in and they are by and large winner-take-all delegate states So the math is really stacked in his favor even if he Performs poorly like wins a dozen delegates between Iowa and New Hampshire We still think he would be on track to win the nomination Just because of how many delegates he has banked in the later voting states big states like Florida, Texas, California
California another way to think about this is um our benchmark for Nikki Haley to have her on track to win the nomination is to get 26 delegates out of Iowa and 22 delegates out of New Hampshire New Hampshire only has 22 delegates so she's probably not going to hit that benchmark and that's just because
The rest of the calendar is so stacked against her. We don't expect that she's basically ever going to get delegates out of some of these winner-take-all states because of how far behind she is. States like Tennessee, for example, which means she has to win more early on. And at some point, you reach the point where you can't win any more delegates. So if things don't change, Brontes-Hantis and Nikki Haley will probably hit that point by Super Tuesday or after we have the results in Super Tuesday. Yeah.
So Nikki Haley needs to win. She needs to win more than 50 percent of the vote in Iowa in order to win the nomination. That's what you're saying. Yeah, because she is stronger in these early voting states and states with more college educated and white voters. She needs to draw more delegates from them to make up for deficits in the later voting states. To me, this seems like a pretty tall task. I mean, I don't want to really oversell this here, but...
Yeah, you're sort of in a dire situation if you're the Haley campaign and you're not gaining like 15 to 20 percent in the national polls after New Hampshire. Right. Like the caveat here is that part of the reason that.
Haley and DeSantis are doing better in the early states than they are in the later states as they've been doing a lot of campaigning. And what oftentimes happens if there is going to be a shift in the polls nationally or in the subsequent states, it happens after the early states. Like, I mean, the big example would be Obama in 2008, right?
Hillary Clinton is leading basically everywhere, and then he wins in Iowa. It sort of creates this idea, this permission structure or whatever for people to switch their support. So, like, there is the caveat that the sort of sequence of events matters to all of this. But I think nonetheless, like, the idea that in a state like Iowa with 40 delegates that, like, Nikki Haley would have to win 26, I mean, I—
You might rate that as like a 0% probability, and we don't like 0% probability. Right. So we're not going to talk about it. But maybe the relevant point here, Obama's polls increased by 8 to 10 points after Iowa, I think, and then more after he like –
roofs, this sort of permission structure in New Hampshire. He was only down 20 points. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are, of course, down 50. So there's this sort of chicken and egg problem. Are they doing well in these early states because they've been there or because these states have the demographic and political characteristics of the type of
They have the type of voters that would support Iran DeSantis and Nikki Haley Anyway, like at some point we have to acknowledge that the primary does take does take place to some extent nationally So these voters and other states aren't like totally totally tuned out So I don't want to I don't think we want to get into the realm where we like talk ourselves into a zero percent probability of any of these events happening, but Yes, it's a tough sell I think for any of these campaign managers. I
Okay, so this may be the last time we all gather before Iowans head to the caucuses on Monday because we're going to shift our schedule a little bit because putting out a podcast Monday evening as Iowans are heading to the caucus is...
Probably just not a good idea from if we're talking about returning our investments here, having a podcast that is only relevant for two hours is not our goal. So we're going to have a podcast late night on Monday that will come out early Tuesday to react to what happens. All that to say, what are your final thoughts before Iowans try to start their cars in negative 15 degree weather and head to their local gymnasium?
Well, I guess my thoughts are stay warm, Iowans. No, I mean, it would be monumentally shocking, like one of the biggest upsets of my life politically, if anything.
Trump loses Iowa. Polls are off sometimes. In caucuses, they can be particularly weird. If the cold keeps people at home, the turnout assumptions could be really off. But polls aren't off by 30 points, which is what would need to happen. So it really is just going to come down to who's going to finish second. Normally, I'm not a guy who is like, well, a couple of percentage points above.
But you know like Nikki Haley finishing a couple percentage points over Dutton Ron Santis is important to affect for second and third but like because they are like very obviously like Opposing each other and like kind of mutually exclusive in this race
I feel like it does kind of matter just like who gets more raw support between the two of them. But like that's the main interesting takeaway, I think, from from Monday night. That said, there's also, I think, a danger of like, you know, the main headline in the Des Moines Register the next day being like Nikki Haley finishes second. And then like the sub headline being like Donald Trump wins with 55 percent of the vote, which I think would be a little bit disappointing.
Topsy-turvy, but it is true that the suspenseful thing is going to be who finishes second and whether the third place person drops out. I don't think Kaylee would drop out if she finishes third, but if DeSantis finishes third, does he drop out? And obviously that would have significant impacts for the rest of the race and probably wrapping it up sooner rather than later. I think especially after tonight,
debate and, you know, the town hall happening simultaneously with Trump. I'm just kind of processing tonight, like what, where we are in the election and how, um,
We kind of have to just wait to see what happens with DeSantis and Haley without giving anything too much weight at this point. I think it's going to be really frustrating on Monday night and Tuesday mornings hearing all of the hot takes. This podcast is just reminding me to be patient and to wait to see what happens.
That I think that's a good instinct. There's going to be a rush to over interpret the results by a couple of percentage points. But what really matters, of course, is how the polls change nationally and in the later states.
And to Nathaniel's point, Rhonda Santis and Nikki Haley are at 17% in Iowa today. I think they'd have to be closer to like 30% to cause the type of shock that would be necessary, especially for Rhonda Santis, but I'm thinking more for the Nikki Haley campaign, to really catapult her to a victory, let's say, thinking somewhat optimistically for her campaign.
in New Hampshire and at that point, I think my priors about how the rest of the race is going to unfold would start to change. So if there's like a five point pulling error, I think I'm just going to say I'm probably going to shrug this off and chalk it up to an early Trump victory. And then we start getting into the territory where like media interpretation of events matters, sequence of events, risk, momentum can start to play a factor. That's kind of what I'm looking out for.
Right. I think that, like, if the polls end up being largely right and, like, Haley edges out DeSantis 18% to 16%, like, I think that is bad for DeSantis that in essentially a head-to-head with...
With Haley, he came out on the bad side of it. But I agree that 18 percent isn't a particularly strong performance by Haley in order for her to actually turn our heads and make us think that, oh, this could be interesting. She would, as Eliot says, need a significant overperformance.
Yeah. Just to underline this, there is a 10% delegate threshold in New Hampshire. This is very important. If you don't get 10% of the vote, you can't get any delegates out of New Hampshire. Ron DeSantis is at 5%. So I think I'm operating in the world where he drops out of New Hampshire after New Hampshire anyway, because he's going to be in third place in delegates with maybe just a couple. So I'm thinking that, right, as you say, a Haley second place cements that a
DeSantis second place in Iowa maybe gives him a little more staying power. But like, again, to what end? How poor of a showing does DeSantis have to secure in Iowa to drop out before New Hampshire? I think if he finishes in third place, there's no reason for him to continue. And I think if he finishes in second with 18%, that is, he will try to spin it valiantly as a win. But it's also clearly not sufficient.
that's a great heuristic but if he were rational right there's no reason for him to continue right now anyway right exactly right like he would he really he needs to win to elliott's point about like the benchmarks in the early states like if he were actually on a competitive candidate at this point he would need to win iowa which again would be a polling error of unprecedented proportions yeah
Yeah, I guess I'll plug a couple of things before we go. One, we still haven't gotten a lot of polling in Iowa since before the holidays. And so we do want to see the pollsters' final numbers that are going to come out in the coming days. So we're all eager to see those. I don't know that we're expecting a big shift, but that's why we do the polling. And so we're going to find out what we find out.
I'll also just mention a couple weird things, which is that this is a state of a little over 3 million, and the expected caucus population is somewhere around 100,000 to 200,000. We're talking about just like a minuscule number of people here. So keep that in mind when you see the results on Monday, that we are talking about tens of thousands of people of difference.
at most. And also there's going to be a lot of talk about the weather and like, is this going to shape turnout and who could this be good for and blah, blah, blah. And I think at,
At this point, we have a general conception that high turnout environments are good for Trump because he has more marginal support. And I think this is borne out in the polling as well, that first-time caucus goers say support Trump at about 63%, right, in the most recent Des Moines Register Iowa poll, whereas past caucus goers support
support him at about 51%, right? So people who are more marginal and saying, oh, I might caucus for the first time are more likely to support Trump. So say it's really cold and those people are dissuaded from going out and caucusing for the first time ever. Okay, then maybe it does dampen Trump's support. But like, we're not, I don't think this is like a close enough race to focus on that all that much.
That's interesting, Galen. I'm not sure I agree because Trump's supporters in this race have famously been much more enthusiastic than DeSantis' or Haley's supporters. So I actually think that a low turnout environment is probably good for Trump. If you look at the last Seltzer poll of Iowa, 45% of Trump supporters said that they were extremely enthusiastic about their candidate. Only 21% said they were about Haley and only 16% said they were about DeSantis.
I hear that, but to me, the first-time caucus-goer thing is maybe a little more indicative of who is a marginal voter versus who's just, like, enthusiastic. Like, yes, I'm sure previous caucus-goers who know that Trump is their person are very enthusiastic about him, but Trump...
is sort of like what he does is pull people off the sideline, pull people from Democrats, pull the person who hasn't voted in two cycles or whatever.
And in that kind of environment, I think he performs better. But I don't think that's the kind of environment we're going to see on Monday night in Iowa, not only because it's going to be cold as all hell. I mean, the opposite cold is all whatever the opposite of hell is, but also because you can just tell that this isn't a super live campaign in Iowa. Right. Like people are treating this in some ways like Trump is going to end up running in the general election.
In terms of the Iowa expectations game part of this question, like just how much turnout matters, I'll just remind people, average polling error in presidential primaries recently has been close to 10 percentage points on margin. That is significant. So theoretically, you should bet to be somewhat surprised. I guess maybe more to Galen's point, like we don't know
The composition of the voters and the difference between those people who were polled and the voters until Election Day inherently. So and maybe moreover, this is a group of people who was hard to poll. So trying to judge who is more enthusiastic ahead of time based on the polls is kind of like trying to have your cake and eat it, too. Like you can't pull the population. You don't know what they're going to turn out.
So basing inferences on their turnout based on the polling data, the very little polling data we do have is sort of a recipe for that 10 percentage point error. How low would Trump have to poll for you to say, wow, we shouldn't have recorded this podcast. We should have been way more open minded about how competitive this could get. 30 percent. 30 percent. I mean, that seems manageable. That seems like possible. Yeah.
That would be surprising. That's a three sigma error. So that's pretty surprising. That's like 90. That's like a 0.01% probability. All right. We'll leave it there. Thank you, Leah, Elliot, and Nathaniel. Good night, Galen. Good night.
My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chertavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast.538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon. Bye.
American Giant makes great clothing, T-shirts, jeans, and more right here in the U.S., creating jobs in towns and cities across the country. Support America's workers and get 20% off your first order at American-Giant.com with code STAPLE20.
