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Was Trump’s Iowa victory declared too soon? State party leader criticizes news organizations’ fast projection of caucus win
Multiple national news organizations called the caucuses for Trump at around 7:30 p.m. Monday, just a half-hour after caucuses were scheduled to start
Jan. 16, 2024 5:15 pm
DES MOINES — Many Iowa Republicans had not yet cast their choice for president, state party chairman Jeff Kaufmann said, when outside those schools and churches that were hosting the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential precinct caucuses, a slew of national media organizations had already declared Donald Trump the winner.
Kaufmann and at least one of the other presidential campaigns took exception with the early declaration of Trump’s victory.
The Associated Press, Fox News, CNN, CBS News and NBC News all called the caucuses for Trump at around 7:30 p.m. Monday night, just a half-hour after the caucuses were scheduled to start.
The national news organizations’ expansive and sophisticated elections reporting operations often enable them to project election winners long before the official results are tallied, especially when the outcome is not particularly close, as was the case with Trump’s 30-point win in the Iowa Republican caucuses.
Nonetheless, that early report rubbed Kaufmann the wrong way. The state chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, which put on Monday night’s caucuses, on Tuesday morning issued a statement about the fast calls of Trump’s victory. In the statement, Kaufmann said “just around 300 votes” had been officially counted when the news organizations declared Trump the winner.
“Media outlets calling the results of the 2024 first-in-the-nation caucus less than half an hour after precinct caucuses had been called to order — before the overwhelming majority of Iowans had even cast their ballot — was highly disappointing and concerning,” Kaufmann said.
A spokesman for the campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who finished a distant second to Trump in the caucuses, equated the early projections of Trump’s victory to election interference.
“It is absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote,” DeSantis campaign communications director Andrew Romeo said. “The media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example yet.”
Trump made history with his victory Monday night: he became the first non-incumbent presidential candidate to surpass 50 percent in an Iowa Republican caucus, and his 30-point victory margin was easily the largest ever by a non-incumbent in the Republican caucuses.
National news organizations were able to determine quickly that Trump would be the winner by analyzing data from interviews with Iowa Republicans on their way into the caucuses. Those entrance polls were conducted by the news organizations themselves, and by Edison Research, whose National Election Pool is used by multiple national news organizations.
Spokespeople for multiple news organizations that made the early call for Trump said the data in those entrance polls, combined with the early results that were reported by the Republican Party of Iowa, gave them all the information they needed to determine Trump was poised for victory.
Many of the news organizations, including the AP, CNN, Fox News and NBC News, reported on or explained on air Monday night how their organization came to determine so quickly that Trump would win the caucuses.
“The Associated Press declared the former president the winner based on an analysis of initial returns as well as results of AP VoteCast, a survey of voters who planned to caucus on Monday night. Both showed Trump with an insurmountable lead,” the Associated Press reported. “Initial results from eight counties showed Trump with far more than half of the total votes counted as of 7:31 p.m. (local time), significantly ahead of the rest of the field. These counties included rural areas that are demographically and politically similar to the large number of counties that had yet to report.”
On its caucus night live blog, CNN staff wrote, “At the time of CNN’s projection, at 7:30 p.m. (local time), the former president’s broad lead in the entrance poll’s representative sample was statistically significant. By that time, votes had been reported in multiple counties and from several sample precincts, which also suggested a broad Trump lead.”
The news organizations’ early call was complicated by the difference between an election and a caucus.
In order to avoid disrupting voters’ participation in an election, news organizations will not project an election’s winner until after the polls close — that is, they will not declare a winner until voters can no longer cast a ballot.
Caucuses do not have a hard time for the presidential preference section. The Iowa Republican caucuses began at 7 p.m. Monday, but the presidential straw polls occurred depending on each of the 1,657 precincts’ order of business.
Kaufmann said the early calls of Trump’s victory interfere with the caucuses because, unlike an election, at a caucus, participants hear from speakers and could be swayed to change their mind before making their choice.
“One of the key differences between the Iowa caucus and a standard primary election is that Iowans have the chance to listen to presidential candidates or their surrogates and deliberate to make an informed decision,” Kaufmann said in his statement. “There was no need to rush one of the most transparent, grassroots democratic processes in the country.”
Spokespeople for multiple national organizations who made the early call for Trump said they were told by the state party that voting would take place by 7:20 p.m. local time, 10 minutes before the networks called Trump the winner.
NBC News’ Chuck Todd said the same on the air on Monday night.
“And what the state party told us is that doors open at seven and the voting begins at about 7:20. So look, there was some folks that thought, ‘OK, we’ll call it at 7:20. I was like, ‘No, you should give people (time) as the voting begins, then that means you’re gonna have that conversation,’” Todd said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by NBC. “So we decided not to even look at calling the race until at least the bottom of the hour, because according to the state party, voting should have already begun. Because we were mindful of this.”
CNN had enough information to make the call at 7 p.m., but held off until after the caucuses were underway and the state party began reporting official results.
Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com
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