At long last, the race for the 2024 Republican nomination has officially kicked off, with the traditional precedent-setting contests, Iowa and New Hampshire, in the books. And with what was once a field with 11 major candidates now whittled down to just two, former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, it seems the race, six months out from the Republican Convention, could already be over. With Florida Governor Ron DeSantis surprisingly dropping out and endorsing Trump before New Hampshire, it seems that the former president, who has long been touted for his party’s nomination, is all but certain to emerge victorious. However, the race isn’t quite over yet, and below are a few key takeaways from the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
Still Trump's Party
If there’s anything New Hampshire and Iowa taught us, it’s that Donald Trump, however polarizing he may be on the national level, is still the undisputed figurehead of the Republican Party. He is the Republican Party, despite the hopes of his opponents’ supporters - most notably those of Nikki Haley - and has permanently redefined the Republican coalition. In Iowa, for example, an electorate once dominated by Evangelical Christians, somewhat conservative voters, and voters with at least some college education, groups with whom Trump performed poorly in 2016, now comprises an ultra-paleoconservative base fit perfectly for his liking. 52% of Iowa caucus goers self-identified as “very conservative,” up from 40% in 2016. The share of voters in Iowa who identified as independents decreased from 20% in 2016 to 16% in 2024. Most influential, however, was the massive downturn in the share of Iowan voters who consider themselves Evangelical Christians (just 55% in 2024, down from 64% in 2016). The results in Iowa clearly indicate that Donald Trump has fundamentally remade the Republican electorate in politically polarized states. What was considered the “Trump base” in 2016 now completely controls the Republican Party, and despite 91 criminal charges, the former president reigns supreme.
The results in New Hampshire tell a slightly different story but still lead to the same conclusion. The 2024 results largely mimic their 2016 counterpart: Voters above the age of 45 made up the vast majority of voters, but were, like 2016 the least pro-Trump group, and the percentage of voters with a college degree remained pretty much constant, at just above 50% in both 2016 and 2024. However, most interestingly, in the Republican primary, only 50% of the New Hampshire electorate self-identified as Republicans in 2024, and these voters overwhelmingly supported Trump, who won 74% of their vote. However, among the remaining 50%, which comprised self-identified independents and Democrats, Haley dominated, winning over 60% of their vote. These results, while slightly different to those in Iowa, tell a similar story: while Trump only performs well amongst his base within the Republican Party, what was once just a “Trump supporter” is now the vast majority of the Republican coalition.
Haley's Tough (And Perhaps Impossible) Path to the Nomination
While Nikki Haley was successfully able to keep the race in New Hampshire relatively close, with Trump’s final margin of victory being in the low double digits, her failure to emerge victorious in a state with favorable demographics, despite the endorsement of its popular governor, spells doom for her campaign. While the results in New Hampshire may indicate a close national race, they are inflated by a number of state-specific factors: New Hampshire allows registered independent voters to cast ballots in its primary, thus inflating Haley’s support, and has a disproportionately high amount of college-educated voters, a notoriously anti-Trump group. If there was any state in the early primary cycle a non-Trump candidate had a chance of winning, it was New Hampshire, and in being unable to do so, Haley has taken her first step on the path to the end of her campaign. In order to mount a serious challenge for the nomination, she now has to win her home state of South Carolina (which according to current polls, which currently show her over 30 points behind Trump) and then run even with Trump on Super Tuesday. With Haley currently down a staggering 55 points on Trump nationally, the possibility of her coming even remotely close to achieving such performances is essentially zero.
Due to these insurmountable odds, as well as Trump’s other strong challenger, Ron DeSantis, dropping out, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the race for the 2024 Republican nomination is officially over, and it has ended at the scenario which we all ultimately knew it would: A Trump vs Biden rematch in the general election.
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