Iowa, New Hampshire drain suspense out of primary season

Just days after voters began casting ballots in the year’s first contests, the suspense of the primary season seems to have melted away. Iowa and New Hampshire primaries brought the presumptive nominees — Joe Biden and Donald Trump — into quick and clear focus. But there’s still plenty of real spectacle and confusion about who’s running, in which format, and in which state.

• In New Hampshire, President Joe Biden won the primary as a write-in candidate after the Democratic National Committee reshuffled the primary calendar, elevating South Carolina to the first-in-the-nation spot and stripping New Hampshire of its delegates after the state refused to accommodate the scheduling change.
  
  
• In Nevada, similar confusion will soon play out as Republicans will have both a caucus (Feb. 8) and a primary (June 11), but voters will not have a true race like in every other state. Former President Donald Trump is committed to participating in the caucus, while former Governor Nikki Haley is planning to skip the caucus and instead focus on the primary. To make matters even more confusing, Nevada Democrats will now have a primary on Feb. 6 after scrapping their caucus system.

Zooming out of this chaos, it’s worth reflecting on how quickly the GOP evaluated their options and seemingly settled on Trump. In 2023, we had 13 Republicans running for their party’s nomination, and there were a series of raucous debates though none featured the former president. Then immediately before the Iowa Caucus on Jan. 15, the Republican roster was winnowed down to three candidates. Just nine days later, the race appears to be over with former President Donald J. Trump viewed as the presumptive nominee (designated as such by Biden¹ and many others) after just two contests.

Since voting began, Trump has again made history despite spending considerable time in courthouses managing over 90 indictments across four trials. Among other distinctions, here are just a few of the historical highlights for the former president:

• Trump is the first non-incumbent in history to win both Iowa (51% of vote) and New Hampshire (54% of vote).
• Trump won Iowa by roughly 30 points, beating Bob Dole’s previous record for margin of victory in a contested election by 13 points. Trump also won 98 out of 99 counties, losing one county by a single vote.

In case there was any question about the presumption that Trump will be the Republican nominee, the contests in South Carolina (Feb. 24) and 16 other states (March 5, otherwise known as Super Tuesday) will surely settle the matter. Those looking for opportunities to speculate and read tea leaves can continue to investigate the insurgent Democratic candidacies of Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, and Robert Kennedy, Jr., though it seems almost assured that when the dust settles, we we’ll be facing the longest general election in history, featuring a rematch for the ages.

With contributions from Cogent Strategies.