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By Ewan Palmer
News Reporter
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Donald Trump was the clear winner of the Iowa caucus on Monday night, with polls suggesting where the former president could rely on votes in a general election.
Trump's victory in Iowa is already an improvement on 2016, where he lost the caucus to Texas Sena. Ted Cruz, but eventually clinched the Republican nomination and won the presidential election. In 2020, the former president had no serious challengers and carried 97% of the vote.
Trump has now cleared the first hurdle in his race to the White House, gaining 51 percent of the vote in Iowa—a record breaking 30 points ahead of his nearest challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—and getting more votes than the rest of the Republican candidates combined.
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Eyes will now be turned to the GOP primary in New Hampshire on January 23, which is expected to be a closer race and possibly a bigger indicator of how much support Trump has in the overall contest.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who came third in Iowa with 19 percent, is hoping she can present a greater challenge in New Hampshire, with polls suggesting she has closed the gap to Trump to single digits in the state.
When broken down further, the results in Iowa also give some indications as to how much standing and electability the former president has while heading into a potential 2024 race against President Joe Biden.
Newsweek has contacted the offices of Trump, DeSantis and Haley via email for comment.
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According to a CNN entrance poll, Trump also performed better with key demographics in Iowa this campaign than he did in 2016, including receiving a majority of female votes (53 percent) on Monday night, as well as those aged 65 and over (58 percent). A 2016 CNN poll showed Trump only gained 24 percent of the female vote and 26 percent of those 65 or above.
The 2024 CNN entrance poll results also showed that Trump was able to get a majority of the rural votes in Iowa, as well as dominating the demographic of people with no college degrees (67 percent).
However, both the CNN poll and an Associated Press VoteCast survey showed that Trump continues to struggle with college educated voters and those who live in the suburbs, suggesting some vulnerabilities for Trump in 2024.
According to The AP VoteCast, nearly half of voters in the 2020 general election which Trump lost to Biden said they lived in the suburbs. Monday night's results showed that only around one third of Iowa Republicans who live in such areas backed Trump in the caucus, with the remaining two thirds going for Haley or DeSantis.
Trump fared better with suburban voters in the CNN entrance poll, with 47 percent of the votes, with DeSantis receiving 27 percent and Haley 15 percent.
Both polls show that Trump is still struggling with the college educated, getting just over a third (37 percent) in the CNN entrance poll. The AP said only around two in 10 of Trump's supporters in Iowa hold a college degree in their survey, compared to roughly half of those who backed DeSantis. The figure is slightly higher for Haley, with more than half of her supporters having successfully completed college.
The former president's legal problems, where he has pleaded not guilty to felony 91 charges and is due to stand trial across four separate investigations, continue to loom over the 2024 bid.
However, the Iowa results suggest that his strong MAGA base is not concerned, with just 10 percent of Trump supporters telling CNN that he would no longer be fit for president if he is convicted of a crime.
What is possibly more concerning is that 33 percent of DeSantis voters and 49 percent of Haley supporters do not believe that Trump would be fit for president if convicted, suggesting they will not support Trump as the Republican candidate if he is a felon by the time November's race comes around.
Trump has long accused all criminal investigations into him as being politically motivated "witch hunts" that aim to prevent him winning the 2024 election.
In a statement after the results were declared, Alex Pfeiffer, communications director for Trump's Make America Great Again Inc. super PAC, said: "The people of Iowa sent a clear message tonight: Donald Trump will be the next Republican nominee for president. It's now time to make him the next president of the United States."
The CNN entrance poll for Iowa's Republican presidential caucus was conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool, featuring 1,628 people interviewed across 45 different caucus locations. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.0 percentage points.
The AP VoteCast surveyed more than 1,500 voters who said they planned to take part in the Iowa caucuses. It was conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
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