Turnout Mattered in Iowa

Per the current vote count, 110,263 votes were cast in Iowa last night. That’s probably within a few thousand of the final number with over 99 percent reported.

In 2016, 186,932 votes were cast in the Iowa caucus. That includes 94,831 who voted for either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

That’s a drop-off of 76,669 votes.

Donald Trump’s vote total was 56,260, up from 45,427 in 2016.

In other words, the number of voters who stayed home compared to 2016 was 20,049 greater than the total number of Trump votes.

We can debate the reasons why. Iowa’s population has grown by nearly 100,000 people since 2016. The Iowa Secretary of State reported 638,207 active registered Republicans in the state after the caucuses in 2016, a number that surged to 681,871 in 2022, after overtaking Democrats for the first time in 2020. Per the secretary of state’s data, active Republican registration peaked at 695,420 in January 2023, but has since plunged to 594,533 amidst a drop-off of active voter registrations in the state from 1,908,972 in January 2023 to 1,518,210 now. In large part, however, that reflects cyclical declines in “active” voters; if you include inactive Republicans, the drop-off is far less significant, from 766,616 to 752,249. That will probably inch up a bit in next month’s post-caucus report.

The horrendous weather certainly didn’t help turnout at the margins, both in terms of deterring voters and limiting the ability of the campaigns to send out volunteers to turn out voters — something Ron DeSantis had banked on heavily, as had the Americans for Prosperity Action plan to boost Nikki Haley. Polls showing Trump far ahead probably convinced people it wasn’t worth coming out as well. But at the end of the day, it’s also down to DeSantis and Haley that they couldn’t fire up enough people to show up and counter Trump. Of all the elements that traditionally go into voter turnout, nobody has ever found a substitute for enthusiasm for the candidates themselves.