We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at fdr LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to
the premium version of the Federalist dot com as well. Today is January sixteenth,
which means the long awaited, much anticipated Iowa caucuses are now in the
rear view mirror. As a slight tangent, I did finally learn today,
many years into this job and political journalism, that the correct way to say
Iowa caucuses is plural. That sounds so obvious to all of you listening,
I'm sure, but I actually always wondered if it was sort of this thirty
thousand foot caucus. Of course, there are many caucuses happening in many different
precincts, so this was not obvious to me, but it probably should have
been. Some people just say Iowa caucus. I'm sure I've said that on
the show before, Iowa caucus as the one big event, but again I
looked it up finally got to the bottom of it. I'm ashamed to say
after all this time, and it is correctly referred to as the Iowa Caucuses.
So now the Iowa Caucuses are in the rear view mirror and we have
all kinds of numbers to dive into. So I jumped on a zoom really
quickly with my friend Spencer Brown, and it turned into a longer conversation,
in fact, than I thought it would. Spencer's the managing editor over at
town Hall. He is on special Report all the time. He probably seen
him on Fox or he's it's Spencer Brown on Twitter. Go ahead, give
him a follow. He's prolific. He writes all the time at Townholl so
you can go read his work there, his analysis there. So this was
a zoom that turned into a podcast and wanted to bring it to everyone.
So we walked through what happened in Iowa, we look ahead to what could
happen in New Hampshire, then in South Carolina, and then ultimately on Super
Tuesday, which is March fifth. So this thing is going. Now we're
the snowball that is headed down the hill, and you know, it seems
like there's a certain outcome at this point. If I were a betting woman,
I would feel pretty good about where I'm putting my money in this case,
So I hope you enjoy again. What is a zoom conversation that we
just kind of blew up into a whole podcast here. We'll of course be
back tomorrow with You're Wrong. I can't wait to hear what Molly and David
have to say, and I'm sure I'll be back with Christopher Bedford on Thursday.
I have some great, great guests coming up, so please stay tuned
for all of that. Thank you, as always for subscribing. It is
super helpful if you subscribe, and if you leave the show review that helps
a ton appreciate it. Everyone, please enjoy this again. Zoom conversation that
turned into aodcast was Spencer Brown from Townhill, Right. We have some interesting
exit poll numbers that I want to get to Spencer. Also, the New
York Times did an analysis that isn't reliant on these sort of faulty and untrustworthy
exit polls. They actually did a great breakdown in real time. They must
have had their algorithms and fine working order last night, because as the results
were coming in, they were spitting it out by how candidates were doing in
low income areas, high income areas, suburban areas, rural areas, educated
areas, less educated areas, and the like. So we're going to break
all that down. But the basic news, the fact of the matter is
that Donald Trump crossed the fifty percent threshold in Iowa. So not only did
he win, he crossed that fifty percent threshold, meaning most voters went to
the polls and selected Donald Trump in Iowa. The bak around Aswami came I
think seven point seven percent, so he's nearly eight percent. He dropped out
after Iowa. Most of that go most of those votes likely would have gone
to Donald Trump. So Donald Trump probably if THEVEK had dropped out before people
who want to see Donald Trump nominated in Iowa. I think it's safe to
say it's probably somewhere between fifty and fifty eight, close to sixty percent.
Nicky Haley came in a fairly distant third place. She was around nineteen percent.
Around DeSantis won the second place contest, which was the only real contest
last night, by about two points. He came out about twenty one percent
Spencer, so the second place race was close, but either way, we're
talking double digit losses. For second place, which mirrors what we see in
national pulling. The RCP average nationally has Donald Trump around sixty one percent,
and I think Nikki Haley is at twelve percent to Saints's is at ten percent.
So massive gap between the first candidate and the second and third place candidate
there, Spencer, just quick reaction for you, now that we have the
big numbers and the the sort of thirty thousand foot breakdown out of the way,
what did you think. I imagine you were shocked to learn that Donald
Trump was the favorite candidate last night. You know, I was shocked to
see how long it took for that call to be made. You know,
I thought thirty minutes was a little too long after the caucuses began. I
think it was interesting to see because after like a few main takeaways after the
twenty twenty two midterms, and we saw how wrong polling could be and how
expectations set by poles could just be shattered in like one evening. I always
was nervous about all these polls showing this lead, because again in twenty twenty
two, so many of the polls were wrong. Did I think they would
be like thirty forty points wrong. No, not necessarily, but I did
think there was always that chance that it could be maybe a little bit closer
than what the polls were saying, but they weren't. The polls were actually
incredibly accurate, at least in Iowa. Like you said, the RCP average
had it almost you know, right on the money as far as how things
were going to shake out, and it's not even close. Like you said,
turned out to be pretty accurate. That Dumoines Prodister turned out to be
pretty accurate, which I hope is a standard that stays because for people in
the media and people covering and commenting on this, until yesterday, polls were
all we had to go on. And it's such an uneasy feeling to be
just saying, you know, well, these people talk to a thousand people
in this state and then this is what it looks like. You know,
it's hard to really make predictions based on that. But at least if people
are polling and the polsters doing these are, you know, accurate in Iowa,
hopefully they will be through the next couple contest, which again we go
to New Hampshire at the end of this month, and then about a month
after that we're in South Carolina. I think in Iowa, one of the
notable things to me was uh, and this kind of comes from both of
our backgrounds at You in America's foundation, looking at where the youth vote was,
because that's something that conservatives are always worried about, you know, like,
are the kids all right? What are they thinking, what are they
doing? I mean, they're never all right. They're never all right.
That is definitely true. But it was interesting to see sort of a very
clear break among young Republicans in Iowa going for DeSantis. And I don't know
necessarily what that means about the future of the party and things like that,
but I did think it was interesting that they didn't necessarily scatter across the candidates,
it seems like, and the DeSantis campaign pointed out quite a bit last
night that young people sort of broke for their candidate. And that was interesting
for me to see because I think some people may have expected Ramaswami to maybe
do better with young people because he's a younger person in the race. You
know, he's got a young family. He is speaking in ways that are
a lot more frequently kind of resonating with young people. You know, he
used TikTok, whatever you make of that decision, I would disagree with that.
But you know, he was seemingly kind of running a younger campaign,
but that didn't seem to, you know, help him out that much.
But in general, I think trump speech at the end of the night I
actually really liked because he was complimentary to everybody else who was running against him,
even though he had been sort of throwing them under the bus one at
a time and the run up to the Iowa caucuses, but he stuck struck
I think was even a vague yeah, who had denied when asked about being
thrown under the bus that he had been thrown under the bus. But it
was pretty clear that he was un the Trump bus that had its snow tires
on for Iowa. But his speech I think was the right tone, and
he's right that, like, based on results like this, it is time
for Republicans to come together because Democrats, of course, even though they're shutting
out any challengers, are very much at least pretending they're united around Joe Biden
or the ghost of Joe Biden that's going to hobble through to November. But
I did think that his speech was very well put in kind of assessing the
state of the race. DeSantis's speech was very brief. At the end of
the night, he didn't say much other than, you know, they punched
our ticket out of Iowa, which with a second place finish in Iowa would
normally be the case. I don't know how far that ticket that's punched with
a second place finish that's you know, thirty points behind gets you. It's
a little bit different than you know, first, second, third in Iowa.
You know, when you're that far apart, I don't know how far
it'll get them. And then Nikki Haley of course commented that this was a
two man race after coming in third place, which was a little confusing on
that argument from her, want to go into my very solemn and pr voice
and say, well, Spencer, there's a lot to unpack there. Truly,
you took a tour of the Iowa caucus from start to finish, it
in all ninety nine counties, well did on the special report training on the
point of ninety nine counties, I do think that it is somewhat funny that
Trump was deprived of sweeping all ninety nine counties by one vote in one county,
that he lost to Micky Haley, which it's not really lost when it's
by one vote, but Johnson County said, we're going to throw one in
the other column. And it's just like, I feel like that always happens
though, Like there's always kind of one spoiler that stops it from being like
the perfect sweep of something. It's not funny, it's uproarious. So some
can say that, Yeah, many people are saying. So. The other
thing you get to here is turnout was low. It wasn't you know.
So basically there's been a record level of turnout in twenty sixteen for Republicans.
I think it is somewhere around one hundred forty seven thousand people turned out for
those caucuses. Yesterday was really really cold. There's been a lot of snow
in Iowa, reces the cold. Yeah, that's what. Yeah, Like
historically they're saying it was actually the coldest ever caucus and there had been all
kinds of predictions about what that was going to do to turn out. You
know, turnout was down. It's fairly low turnout. We're talking somewhere north
of one hundred thousand votes were cast in Iowa. But that is to say,
this selection of people who did come out in the cold to caucus last
night had been many, many, many millions. We're talking hundreds of millions
of dollars had been spent trying to persuade them to vote for particular voters,
or for particular candidates, or vote against particular candidates last night and when push
came to shove, and by the way, not just time, but lots
of money, which we know also Spencer is time all of that going into
the last year in Iowa. And it looks like Nikki Haley in terms of
AD dollars, ended up spending the most. Ronda Santis was pretty close to
her, spending a little bit less. Ronda Santis' entire campaign strategy was predicated
on Iowa. He hired as his top consultant basically Jeff Rowe, who was
sort of known for helping Ted Cruz lose. And I say that tongue in
cheek because in d C that's how you can, you know, build repute
as you can help Ted Cruz lose. And then he had some success with
Glenn Younkin, which your credit record is do there, but you know,
was seen as somebody is in Iowa guru because cruise by Trump in Iowa,
and that means that, you know, just if DeSantis wins Iowa, he
can you not worry so much about New Hampshire, which is probably seen as
more favorable ground. It's an open primary to Nikki Haley. And then South
Carolina, which is, you know, at least seems like it should be
more favorable territory to Nikki Haley, who was the former governor of the state.
She is pulling second to Trump in South Carolina as of right now,
but a very very very very distant second it as is the case, or
we should just say many such cases, Spencer. So all of that is
to say, this is to set up a big question for you, which
is does Iowa do How much do the results from last night actually matter?
I think they matter, maybe primarily because of what they show about Republican primary
voters. And by that you ticked through a lot of the things, whether
it's the ad spending. You know, Nikki Haley and Ronde Santis both spent
a significant amount of money for each vote that they got. Like if you
break it down and you realize that like the final vote totals, Rond de
Santis had twenty three thousand, some hundred votes and how much money he spent.
The cost per vote is absolutely astronomical. But that's how Iowa works because
you have to try to get every single person there, so you have the
ad dollars that are spent. Then you look at Nikki Haley and you know
she got the endorsement of Americans for Prosperity, so she had the whole Coke
network behind her in Iowa. And it's grassroots game that's generally regarded as like
the grassroots organization on the center, right, And then it still does,
by the way heading into noon for South Carolina, correct. And then you
have someone like Ramaswami who did the full grass lee not once but twice,
visiting all ninety nine counties at least two times in the run up to the
caucuses. And look at what that got them. That got them distant second,
third, and fourth and dropping out. And so I think what you're
looking at and this was reflected I think in some polls going back even before
this year started, even before last at the end of last year, and
it was so many Republican voters are so committed to Donald Trump that they've made
up their mind maybe even before he announced that he was running, that they
were going to support him in twenty twenty four, and so no amount of
ground game from AFP or visits from candidates you know, doing full grass lees
twice over, or ads on TV are going to change their mind. And
I think maybe wrongly, I guess in I was case obviously wrongly, A
lot of people and Republican consultants or pundits or anyone may have thought that multiple
indictments against Trump and all of these things would have dinged him and made those
people who have been committed to Trump for maybe over a year at this point
changed their mind was just the wrong conclusion. And I think you've seen as
those cases have all progressed, they've moved the goalposts on what it will take
for Republicans who say they support Trump to vote for someone else. And now
the only thing really left is that he's a convicted felon, maybe in prison.
That would make those voters change their mind. And I honestly don't think
that that would change their mind either. But that's of course kind of an
open question because we haven't gotten to that point yet, and so we don't
know officially that Republicans will stay with Trump even if that happens. But everybody
kind of assumed that their minds could be changed, when clearly, based on
what we justa on Iowa, nobody really changed their mind. The Watched Out
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So, before we get to New Hampshire, Spencer so eager to turn the
page here on Iowa. No, because I mean, actually the question that
I just asked you, which is how much does Iowa mean actually directly tied
into New Hampshire and South Carolina and the rest of the race. I want
to the just pause on Iowa for a second, so that we can address
what happened with the media last night, because the Desants campaign came out swinging
when around eight thirty pm, so that's that's East Coast time, so seven
thirty pm FO time in Iowa, almost every network started calling the race for
Trump. And the process in Iowa is that you check in to caucus,
so you have to check in by like six thirty or seven pm. The
caucus starts, as people probably remember a story tradition in American politics, so
it works a little differently for both parties. But you have the surrogates in
each location give the stuff speech on behalf of their candidate, and then people
cast physical paper ballots. I don't know if you were watching CNN last night,
Spencer, so yeah, it was actually neither of us regularly watches CNN,
but I tuned in last night and there was just like this amazing presumably
retired woman who was on a volunteer basis, presumably also walking Dana Bash live
for minutes. I mean, it was like watching reality TV basically because it
was so raw as she was tabulating the physical paper ballot with her team at
this local Iowa precinct think it was just incredible, and you have all of
that disrupted as it's happening about half an hour in because some of the smaller
precincts especially are able to tabulate these results more quickly, and all the networks
are just like, yeah, Donald Trump won this. He won it handily
enough that we can call it a half an hour into this thing. But
in other larger precincts, not even everybody had gotten through their speeches. The
process was not over. People have cell phones now and so they're seeing that
the race is called. The Disantis team immediately had a fairly testy exchange on
air on I think that was on NBC with someone in the news. They
immediately put out a statement saying this is election interference. And again, you
know, they had one of their campaign representatives and he's actually a campaign manager
going back and forth with this NBC reporter on whether that was appropriate. Spencer,
I think one of the important things that we think about, and it's
the reason that a lot of these news outlets, if not all of them,
have a policy not to call a race while ballots are still being cast,
is that it can affect turnout. That's one of the biggest things that
we think about in Iowa last night, it could not have effected turnout because
everybody had to have already been checked in to caucus by the time the results
were called. That's said. That's said, and with the additional caveat that
the polls were pretty accurate to the results. That said, just in principle,
it does seem to be an unnecessary and disturbing violation and I'm not even
saying disturbing sarcastically. It does seem to be like an unnecessary and disturbing violation
of norms for the sake of ratings and beating the other guys to the punch.
Well, and it's I think it was kind of a perfect storm of
things that all happen. Things, some things that have been a long time
coming, some things that are more unique to the twenty twenty four cycle.
But if you think about how the coxes work, again, a very fun
to watch process because it's just these people, it's like hyper local Republican political
officials, many of them wearing very colorful, sparkly red, white and blue
hats and coats and everything else whatever doing this process. And because it's a
caucus and not a primary. Again, at seven pm. That's when the
doors are closed on the caucus sites, and you know people are in,
and the turnout at that point isn't going to change. Of course, that
doesn't mean people aren't going to turn around and walk out the door, which
according to some people, was happening in some sites after that call was made.
But it's unique in that the policy that a lot of the networks were
called out for apparently violating with the call so early didn't. It's not a
perfect match for what a caucus is. But like you pointed out, it's
twenty twenty four. Everybody has a cell phone and Apple Watch, and I've
had who knows what else, and every single news outlet called it within about
five minutes thirty minutes after the caucus has started. And so even if you're
not reading the news on your phone, if you're on Twitter, you definitely
saw it immediately. But even if you weren't actively looking to see how it
was going, everybody got a push notification from one of those news outlets,
so they immediately then know okay, Trump has won this. And so the
interference part, I feel like, is just sort of on the rationale that
people had going in because there were so many people, according to some of
those polls, that had still remained undecided into caucus night, and maybe until
they walked in that room and heard the pitches from in some cases the actual
candidates, you know, they go to one or two sites, but surrogates
at these other places. And so if you think about what if you go
in and you're undecided, and then you know you're standing there listening to the
second candidate pitch and you find out Donald Trump is one, does that change
how you're going to vote? You know? Does that mean that you then
vote for Trump? Because you want to vote for the winner, so you
can say like, oh, yeah, I helped him do that, or
do you vote against him because you know he's already won it, but you
want to show that there's interest in another candidate. Like, there's all these
things that are unique to each person who was there and when they found out
and what their mindset was when they went in that there's just so much unknown.
It seems like there needs to be some sort of maybe and I think
the only way to fix this is the Republican Party of Iowa would need to
change either its reporting process or the reporting rules where there's a certain cutoff,
at which point they then release all the numbers instead of because like you said,
each of these locations, some were large school gymnasiums, some were large
church you know areas, some were tiny, little like small businesses where there
were like four people at that precinct location. And so when you say,
okay, four people are here, who are your voting for? You write
it down. You have your number in a minute. And so those are
reported in and then made public immediately. Is there something that needs to change
with you know, the caucuses start at seven and results are made public starting
at eight local time. You know, I don't know what to do,
but it seems like there's nothing as it stands now that necessarily prohibited anyone from
doing that, even though the spirit of sort of how you cover an election
may have been breached. But then I think the other more recent problem is
that Donald Trump, as the poll showed, is up so much that it
is most Iowa caucuses are not a runaway landslide like this, like Trump's win
was historic that had not happened by that much before, and especially when you
look at the twenty twenty Democrat caucuses, which were a disaster because I don't
really actually know who won, but if you look at just how close it
was that you had both Britney Sanders and Pete boot Judge coming out of Iowa
claiming that they had won, and in Republican caucuses in prior years they've had
very close I think it was between san torm and Romney. There was that
back and forth over who won on election or on caucus night, then it
changed, then more votes were counted, and it went back and forth.
This is not a case where it's even close to that. And so I
think the sort of novelty of Trump being the far and away front runner compounded
the fact that everybody has a phone, this stuff is reported immediately, and
it just created what I think was a good point maybe for DeSantis to seize
on. But I was surprised that his first response was to that and not
focused on making sure that he got second place behind Trump. If that makes
sense, No, it does. I was talking about this with my colleagues
at Breaking Points. We did a segment earlier this morning, and it was
interesting because Crystal Ball, who's obviously on the left, was thinking back to
what happened that scarred a lot of Democrats in twenty twenty with their Iowa caucus
process. We still actually do not know who won the Iowa coccus in twenty
twenty, like, but a judge claimed it, other people have claimed it,
but honestly, goodness, like, it's just really hard to know what
actually happened there and what the voter sentiments really were down to like an accurate,
precise figure. And that's why she was looking at this and saying,
I actually think that the Santa's team is one hundred percent right to go hard
on the paint here, because if you think hypothetically about a nightmare scenario where
Republican voters who were told by the former president by the way, that there
was literal vote tampering happening, you know, it wasn't some like as much
as you know, I think it might have been coming from some really fringe
voices like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who at the Federalist we had been
critical of from the very beginning of when some of these ideas were being floated.
Still, the President made the mistake of repeating some of them. For
everything he said that was accurate about the election being rigged. As my cognmally
Hemingway has written, I think, in great detail with fantastic reporting on for
all of that. There are a lot of people primed now and for good
reason, to not trust anything. And what scared me a little bit,
I will admit last night is when the Desantas campaign immediately jumped to the phrase
election interference. They emailed that a statement as this was all happening, just
criticizing them for quote election interference. And you could just see in the future
a close caucus where I mean, I guess maybe presumably they wouldn't be able
to call it that early if the results were closer, but still, let's
say we're talking about a ten point difference, it's easy to call maybe an
hour into the caucusing, and still everybody isn't done with all of their speeches.
You can just envision because of how divided and of how low trust of
a society we are right now, not because of Donald Trump, but because
of the freaking media. I mean again, to blame Donald Trump for sowing
distrust among voters is outrageous, Like is perfectly rational not to trust the results
of elections anymore because the media is lying to you all the time. About
everything else. And as much as I think, you know, there were
unfortunate, outright lies and crazy theories that were being spread, I don't think
that reflects on people. I think it reflects on you know, the the
leaders that you decided to lie to people, but the rest of us have
no idea what the hell is going on, So you can just envision the
nightmare scenario going forward. No, that's exactly right. And I mean how
many times and just the last I mean, I think of people who have
been in Washington and conservative politics for like forty years, and I'm like,
how do you keep going? Because we've been doing this now for I would
say too long in my case, but we've been doing this and we have
so many examples that we would need like three podcasts just to list them all
of how many times an official source says X and then the rest of the
media says, well, these experts say X, and then it turns out
the opposite is true, or it's total bunk, or none of that actually
happened. And that's everything from you know, the intelligence community letter before the
election about you know, the hunter Biden's laptop. It goes to COVID stuff.
It goes to winning yes, and it's and the thing that I think
is really disturbing is it's not like those are the things that come to mind
quickly when we're thinking about it, because those are like massive, you know,
sort of narrative changing potentially election changing outcomes from those. But it also
like that happens every single day, and so this whole idea that like Republicans
are the one undermining trust in our institutions is so ridiculous. And like I
just covered today, the Biden administration just got caught pushing another false narrative at
the border with the situation where the mother and two children drowned near Eagle Pass,
and the Biden administration said that it was because Governor Abbott had seized that
park there that's on the border and kicked the federal border agents out in order
to actually enforce the border. The Border Patrol Union applauded that decision, but
then there were these three drownings, and the Biden administration blamed Abbot. But
now in a filing, Biden's own DJ admits that the drowning happened at least
an hour before anybody bothered to tell the Texas officials there that that had happened,
and so it's another complete live ap ran with it. They put it
all over the place, and it's just like every almost every single story that
comes out, you have to just be like, I don't trust it,
like you have to be skeptical about it. And you can't trust experts necessarily,
you can't you take the government's word or these agencies that are supposed to
be impartial or anything like that, and it just and you're right. So
immediately when Desanta says this is election interference, it's like, sure, what
okay, Like, how do we how are we going to make it through
New Hampshire South Carolina and then God help us the general election and we don't
know what's going on or who to trust, or who's saying the right thing
or the wrong thing or whatever. Yeah, well, no, I meant
and I think that's why. I think that's why when you look at and
I'm going to pull this up right here, because it's the I don't know,
did you have a chance to look at some of the exit polling.
I'm sure you did, obviously you are the managing editor Revenues say that's a
dumb question. I don't really love news, well, when you can force
yourself to read the news. Spencer, there was some interesting stuff in the
exit polling, so you mentioned the age thing, which also reminds me by
the way, one poll that I saw back in twenty fifteen, I think
it was had the only Republican candidate beating Hillar Clinton with young voters as Marco
Rubio, which I've always that's kind of stuck with me for one reason or
another. I've always thought that that was interesting. But last night, among
voters who were seventeen to twenty nine, Ronda Santis got thirty percent, It
was only nine percent of total voters, and Trump got twenty two percent.
So again this is from makes it pulling some college or less than some college.
That was half of voters last night, and Donald Trump won them by
sixty seven percent. Donald Trump also had a plurality of college graduates though,
so he had thirty seven percent to DeSantis's twenty six percent and Haley's twenty eight
percent. And then of this was probably my favorite of people who identified not
as Republicans but as independents or something else or I'm sorry, this was my
favorite as people who identified as moderate slash liberal Niki Haley cleaned up was sixty
three percent of the vote that FNNY I assume, Yeah, eleven percent of
people who caucused last night identified as moderate slash liberal, and Nicky Haley got
sixty three percent of their vote. People who identified as very conservative went for
Trump at a rate of sixty one per Somewhat conservative went for Trump at forty
seven percent. White evangelical Christians. That was fifty five percent of people who
voted in Iowa. That went to Trump by fifty three or he won fifty
three percent of that demographic. DeSantis was at twenty seven percent of that demographic.
People said that they decided, So if you were a Trump voter,
you had decided before this and you decided before this month, that was sixty
six percent of people. So sixty five percent of people said that they decided
before the last month, when so much money went into the race. We're
talking like that's a huge swath of voters had already decided before this month.
If you decided within the last month, twenty five percent of those voters said
Trump. They went for Trump, twenty nine percent said they went for DeSantis,
and thirty two percent went for Nikki Haley, and then Spencer. This
the last sort of two punch one two punch that I'm going to get to,
which one of these four issues mattered most in deciding whom to support today.
So thirty eight percent of people said the economy, thirty four percent said
immigration, eleven percent said abortion, and twelve percent said foreign policy. If
you said the economy, which was the highest number of voters, fifty two
percent of those people went for Donald Trump. If you said immigration, sixty
four percent of those voters went for Donald Trump. If you said abortion again,
that was just eleven percent. Actually, forty six percent went for Ron
DeSantis and only twenty five percent for Trump and Haley. And then if he
said foreign policy, forty five percent went for Nikki Haley, only thirty six
percent for Donald Trump. But when you asked, when you were asked which
one of these four candidate qualities mattered most in deciding who to support today?
If if you were one of the thirty two percent of voters who said,
quote, fights for people like me, eighty two percent of you went for
Donald Trump. If you answered has the right temperament, sixty six percent of
you went for Nicky Haley. Only ten percent for Trump, fifteen percent for
DeSantis. If you answered, can defeat Joe Biden, forty percent went for
Trump, only thirty three percent for Nicki Haley. And that's her central argument
that she made in what sounded like a victory speech last night. She said,
Iowa, you just made this a two person race. Her campaign put
out a memo this morning saying that it's a two percent race because only Haley
and Trump have a significant support, in substantial support in New Hampshire and South
Carolina, which is true, it is true, but Nikki Haley still trails
by double digits in both of the states that she is touting as her path
going forward. Spencer, what do you make of those really interesting exit pole
results. Yeah, I think starting sort of with the tail end of the
numbers first, I think you're right that Nicki Haley's argument has been because there
have been polls, which again this gets back to are the polls accurate?
There have been polls that show her performing best of all the Republicans in the
race against Joe Biden. But it's January of twenty twenty four. There is
a lot of time between now and the election day. Assuming it is Joe
Biden who's actually the Democrat on the ballot in November. But her whole point
has been you need to pick me because I do best against Biden. And
that means and I think in a smart point for her based on what the
polls show, which seemed to be contradicted now by Iowa Republicans and exit polls.
But she's right that if you if she is winning by double digits over
Joe Biden in November,