WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump secured the first victory of the 2024 presidential primary season on Monday with a sweeping and broad victory in the Republican caucuses in Iowa. The Associated Press declared the former president the winner based on an analysis of initial returns and results from AP VoteCast, a survey of voters planning to caucus Monday night. Both showed that Trump had an insurmountable lead.
Initial results from eight counties showed that Trump had counted far more than half of the total votes as of 8:31 p.m. ET, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in a tight battle for second place, far behind the former president. These counties include rural areas that are demographically and politically similar to many counties that have yet to report.
In traditional primaries, AP does not declare a winner in any race until the last polls in the contest close. Sometimes it is possible to declare a winner in those races immediately after the polls close, before the voting results are announced. AP does this only when its VoteCast survey of voters and other evidence, including a state’s election history, details of ballots cast before Election Day and pre-election polls, provide overwhelming evidence of who won.
The Iowa caucuses are different. There are no “polls” and no set time at which all voting ends. Instead, there is an 8:00 PM ET deadline for participating voters to arrive at their caucus location, after which deliberations among caucusgoers will begin behind closed doors. Some caucus sites can complete their activities in a few minutes, while others require some time to determine the outcome.
For that reason, AP followed past practice and did not make a “poll close” statement on the winner on Monday evening. Instead, AP reviewed results from caucus sites in Iowa and declared Trump the winner only after those results, along with VoteCast and other evidence, made it indisputably clear that he had won.
This is the same approach AP has taken in declaring winners in previous Iowa caucuses. In 2020, as Trump sought reelection, AP declared the former president the winner of the caucus at 8:25 p.m. ET. Explanations have taken longer in more closely contested races. In 2016, AP could not call Senator Ted Cruz of Texas the winner until 10:26 PM ET.
AP VoteCast is a comprehensive survey of both voters and non-voters that provides a detailed snapshot of the electorate and helps explain who voted, what issues they care about, how they feel about the candidates and why they voted the way they did.
AP VoteCast found that Trump had significant leads among both men and women, as well as every age group and geographic region in the state. The survey found that Trump was favored by about six in 10 voters planning to caucus who identify as born-again Christians. Polls showed that there was a relatively weak group of Trump supporters in Iowa in 2016.
In the early returns, Trump significantly outperformed his second-place finish in the 2016 caucus, when he received 24% of the vote, compared to 28% for Cruz. That year, Trump came in third in some of the state’s most populous counties, including Dallas, Johnson, Polk, Scott and Story, all of which were carried by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. This year he led or ran much more competitively in those provinces.