The NPR Politics Podcast - How The Iowa Caucus Works

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Republicans across Iowa will gather Monday night at 7:00 pm CT to caucus for a presidential candidate. What does that mean? We tell you how caucusing works, what you should watch for on Monday & how Iowans are reacting to former New Jersey governor Chris Christie suspending his campaign. This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national political correspondent Don Gonyea, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Kelly Burton in Santa Barbara, California, where my husband and I just successfully dropped off all three of our kids at three different schools on time and with breakfast. This podcast was recorded at 1225 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, January 12th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we will still be celebrating all the parents who made it through the challenging but wonderful daily ritual of morning school drop off. Okay, here's the show. It just never gets easier.

Kids, man. You know, my daughter's figured out that I can cook. So every morning now or the night before, she's asking me for very specific things to make her in the morning. I want avocado toast with egg today. Okay. Well, you know, a girl knows what she wants. She does.

And it's good. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Monday night at 7 p.m. Central Time, Iowa Republicans will gather in school gyms and libraries and maybe even people's houses to caucus. It is happening. And we hope that this podcast will be your guide. Don, you are joining us from Iowa. What does it look like there right now? This is where I exhale deeply before I start describing the weather. I'm looking out my hotel room window, and visibility is practically at zero. And the temperature is in the single digits. It is snowing. And this is the calm part of the weather system.

Wait, you're telling me this is the good part? On caucus day, which is Monday, the high is expected to be two degrees below zero. The low that day, which will hit sometime around the time the caucus door is open, is expected to be in the range of 19 degrees below zero. Oh, and it's going to be windy. So some projections are for that to be like 50 below zero wind chill. Don, do you expect that the weather will affect the turnout? I don't see how it doesn't affect the turnout. The big question is how much. So record Republican caucus turnout in Iowa took place in 2016.

Ted Cruz won that caucus over Donald Trump, but it was pretty close. And they had like 186,000 people. And there was initially some talk that maybe Republicans would exceed that number this year. Except I'm talking to people who are involved in the ground games of these campaigns, and they're saying now, perhaps optimistically, it could be as low as 150,000 or lower than that. I don't know. That might feel like a crazy optimistic number as well. The real question with this is whose voters actually show up? Yeah, that's a huge question. And, you know, the thing about the Iowa caucuses is that it has a

pretty low participation rate to begin with. I mean, even the highest of Iowa turnouts, if you were to look at what that means for registration today, it's only about one in four registered Republicans who would participate and usually more like one in five, one in six. So that's pretty low. And when you have weather like this and you have candidates who are dependent on some people who may not have caucused before, it really throws a huge wildcard into things. And I'm specifically thinking of the Trump campaign because they've really appealed to first-time caucus goers. They did that in 2016. They won over those first-time caucus goers who made up almost half of the caucuses in 2016. And by the way, almost half of Iowa caucus goers say that they decide within the last week on who they actually want to be their nominee. The Trump team has a much

better field operation this time, but they're going to need snow plows and ATVs to get people to the polls. Domenico, let's just step back. Remind us, what is an Iowa caucus? Well, a caucus is unlike what you normally think of when you go vote. You know, it's not going to a voting machine and putting in something on an electronic voting machine. Then it's tallied. You walk in, walk out. No, it's not quite like that.

It takes a little bit more time. It's a meeting, it's run by the state party. And, you know, these are happening in precinct caucuses. So in little places all over the state, 1,657 different locations, actually, this time around. And that's going to mean that people are there for a while, because they're going to have a process. You're going to hear from representatives of the campaigns who make kind of these one minute speeches. And that's why it's really important for these campaigns to have representatives, precinct captains, as they call them, at each of these places to try to sway people. Now, for people who think they know what the Iowa caucuses are like because they think they've seen some videos or whatever about how

the Democrats do things, it's very, very different from that. The good news is for this Monday, we don't have to understand that process. No, this is just people just basically put in folded sheets of paper and submit a secret straw poll ballot that then gets added up and tallied to a central location to tell us who won the thing. Don, you were able to get out before the storm hit and got all over Iowa. You saw three different candidates. What did you learn? I saw Nikki Haley in the morning in the suburbs of Des Moines. She had 120 people or so at her event.

And people there are feeling good because she has actually been moving up into the polls. If you look at the polling averages, she's in second place over DeSantis, barely in second place. But that would be a good finish for her. Then in the afternoon, I went to a Trump event. It was not the former president. It was Donald Trump Jr. Again, at this kind of classic place for political gatherings, the Machine Shed Restaurant in a town called Urbandale. He was talking, kind of riffing off the cuff,

but he was talking about the weather a lot and telling people, you have to show up. We're really going to make a big statement here in Iowa. Then in the evening, I saw again a crowd of a little more than 100 turn out for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. That was an event where he took questions and he really talked about people not believing the polls. He has slipped into third place in Iowa, which would be disastrous for him. And you could kind of sense that urgency last night.

Don, you have covered several caucuses. Paint a picture of what they're like for us. buzz on caucus day because these are the very first official votes being cast during the election primary caucus season. So there's good energy and Iowans who have been enduring television ads for a year and candidate visits for a year, there is a sense that it's all coming to an end. Now, the other reality is, given that Iowa is no longer a battleground state, the show will leave town, go off to New Hampshire and the subsequent states, and people won't start paying any attention to Iowa again for about three years. This year, there are even questions as to whether or not the circus will come back to town in three years at all. Domenico, we've said this before. We will say it again. Iowa, in a lot of ways, because it goes first, it's all about expectations. And we are

now in the phase of the campaign where people are trying to temper expectations or play the expectations game. But what could various results scenarios mean for these candidates, especially based on the expectations that have already been set? Yeah, I think there's two things to watch. One, it's the margins for Trump. How much does he win by if he wins? And what's the order of finish? You know, I think when Don was mentioning that Nikki Haley has sort of crept up and maybe a little ahead in the poll averages of Ron DeSantis, which would be a big, big deal if that were the case, because if Haley were to

finish ahead of DeSantis in the place where DeSantis has gone all in, you know, it's hard for DeSantis to make a case that his campaign should continue. For Haley, it's really cake. If she's able to finish ahead of DeSantis, then she's got some momentum going into New Hampshire. Even if she finishes a close third, she's going to have met the expectations that a lot of people thought she would. And Trump, you know, this weather, who knows what it's going to mean, but he's been ahead by 20, 30 points in Iowa for the entirety of this campaign. If he finishes with a margin that's much smaller than that, there's going to be some questions about his candidacy and a much more important fight that then lines up between him and likely Haley in New Hampshire. All right, well, we will stop there and take a break. And when we come back, a roundup of all the other campaign news.

And we're back. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has ended his presidential campaign. Really the only candidate who was left in the race willing to run directly against Donald Trump. This was part of the speech where he said he was suspending his campaign. If Donald Trump becomes the nominee of this party, the moment that it happened was when Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott and Mike Pence and Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy stood on that stage in Milwaukee in August. And when we were asked, would you support someone who is a convicted felon to be president of the United States, they raised their hands. You know, Chris Christie never really ran to be the nominee. And I think that what he's saying there really their hands. You know, Chris Christie never really ran to be the nominee. And I think that what he's saying there really reflects that, you know, he was really there to pressure candidates and other Republican leaders and to try to make this case to Republican voters

to abandon Trump, whether or not he thought he was actually going to be the nominee. I, you know, in talking to people around his campaign, they said that he understood very well what the odds were in front of him. And that in campaign speak is he doesn't expect to be the nominee. The idea here was, again, to try to move on from Trump. And, you know, that's why his campaign has really become, you know, hard to look back on it and think is anything but a failure because and it has to confound him. It has to frustrate him. So he made the arguments very clearly and concisely. Democrats liked what he was saying, but Republicans didn't pick up on it. And I think what he's arguing there is he was the only one saying it. And because he was the only one saying it, he was isolated.

Yeah. And that's another thing that Republican strategists have said to me since the beginning of the Trump presidency and candidacy, frankly, is that without a unified voice from Republican leaders talking out against Trump's conduct, then they were ceding the ground to him to basically make the case to Republican voters. And, you know, by the time now he's running again, they don't have much chance of rolling any of that back. Dawn, Christie never actually campaigned in Iowa that I know of. He was betting it all on New Hampshire. Now he's dropped out before New Hampshire. You know, he had something like 12 points-ish in various polls in the Granite State. Do you have any sense of what his departure from the scene means for the race? I was talking to voters at three different events within 24 hours of him dropping out, and nobody brought it up. They just have not been thinking about Chris Christie here in Iowa. He hasn't been

campaigning here, so that's no surprise. But it's also like there are no Christie votes here to now be divided amongst other candidates. There's no sense that these candidates here who are campaigning here are ready to capitalize on this. Yeah. And his campaign and the super PAC supporting him haven't spent a nickel in Iowa. I mean, they focused exclusively in New Hampshire. Well, and Domenico, I think it is worth noting, he has not endorsed someone. Nope. He did not say, all right, guys, you're coming to my events. Now go vote for Nikki Haley, which I think is what Nikki Haley would have liked.

Yeah. And I think that the reality here is that if the whole point of his candidacy was to say move on from Trump and the way that people speak about him is is what he's really after. To saying that you're going to pardon Trump or making excuses for his conduct or then pointing toward the Justice Department, that's really muddying the waters. It's playing into Trump's hands and And it's not what Christie wants. All right. Let's talk about Donald Trump a little more. He attended a town hall event that was aired on Fox News this past week. And he made some comments on abortion. They're getting a lot of attention. For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated. And I did it. And I'm proud to have done it. They wanted to get it back, right? You wouldn't be happy. There would be no

question. Nobody else was going to get that done. And we did it. And we did something that was a miracle. I mean, I did it and I'm proud to have done it. That no matter what Trump says in trying to appeal to the middle and saying that six week bans go too far, which is a thing that we've heard him say. This is what Democrats are going to clip and use over and over and over again, spending millions of dollars to remind voters that Trump is the reason that Roe v. Wade was dismantled, why the Dobbs decision happened in the first place, because he was able to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court. And that is if there's anything that is a lasting legacy for Donald Trump, it is that. Domenico, you've been watching what Iowa television viewers have been seeing way too much of,

which is ads. So they are spending a lot of money. They have spent a lot of money on campaign ads. Right now, everybody is trapped in their house. All they can do is watch TV. What are they seeing? I mean, you know, a lot of people are waking up and sort of starting to focus on Iowa and New Hampshire. Well, these candidates have been doing that since before even Trump got into the race, which was in 2022. So that's how long we've been covering Iowa and New Hampshire and how they've been spending this kind of money. By state, by the way, Iowa has seen $123 million in ads spent. So by far the most of any state. New Hampshire, $73 million. And poor South Carolina and Nevada, $9 million in South Carolina. That's sure to go up really quickly soon. And only about a million dollars in Nevada. They're like the two forgotten states when normally the top four usually get a whole lot more attention. But this time around, because Haley and DeSantis have really had to stake all of their candidacies in one of these

two places or both, they've really focused on Iowa for DeSantis and Haley for New Hampshire. But what's really surprising here is that Haley and the super PAC that's supporting her have outspent DeSantis by a lot, actually. And this is only something that's come up in the last two weeks. DeSantis' team had been really dominating the airwaves. He has three super PACs that are supporting his candidacy. But with all the infighting, all the turmoil, his poll numbers starting to go down, people leaving those places and Haley going the other direction. She raised $24 million in the last quarter of 2023, and they're using that money and putting it to a lot of TV ads.

Right. I just want to spell out what you showed me on your computer before we walked into the studio. Nikki Haley and her allied super PAC have actually spent more money on ads in Iowa than Ron DeSantis, who is betting it all on Iowa. That's right. Thirty seven million dollars that Haley and the team supporting her are spending there. Thirty five million for DeSantis and the three super PACs that are supporting him. You know, the other part of this that's really important is the role of super PACs, because usually super PACs and campaigns spend roughly about the same amount of money. You know, the campaigns might spend like 47 percent or so in the super PAC spend like 53 or whatever it is this time around. Listen to these numbers. 70 percent of all of the ads that have aired for Trump have come from super PACs. 75 percent for Haley, 92% for DeSantis. They're really outsourcing a lot of what is happening on these

airwaves, giving the airwaves over to the super PACs for good reason in some respects, because they have no contribution limits. They can raise money from the wealthiest Americans, from corporations, from labor unions. A lot of times we don't even know which ones wound up supporting them in many cases. Now, the difficulty with that is that the candidates and the super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with each other at all. And that makes it a little difficult to really control the message. All right. Let's take a break. And when we get back, can't let it go. OK, let's get into it. It is time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the pod where we talk about the things that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Domenico, kick us off. And, you know, a lot of people with, for good reason, obviously were focused on what went wrong and whether or not it could affect any other planes.

But I was kind of obsessed with something else that happened, which was this phone that got found from after falling 16,000 feet. It was still intact and it still worked. I was like, how could this even be possible? uh it's crazy it just got like sucked out yeah and then survived yeah i mean can you imagine i mean i i guess that's uh i i don't know i mean i dropped this thing from like five feet and seems to like not do so great anymore but you know i guess it should be from 16 000 i. I think the credit goes to physics. Was it a cushion? At least according to a story that I read.

Well, it fell on grass. If it had fallen on asphalt, game over for the iPhone. But it fell on grass. That's why when I drop it from 10 feet and it, you know. Yes, or three feet. And additionally, it floated down. You know, it wasn't just like straight down cutting through the air. Wind resistance?

There was wind resistance. Oh. Yep. Okay. The more you know. I guess I'll buy that. Okay, Tam, let's go to you. What can't you let go of this week?

I walked into the office. I looked at the TV, and there was something crazy happening in a congressional hearing, and I had to turn on the volume. Hunter Biden, the president's son, who has been indicted a couple of times and has been in an ongoing battle with the House Oversight and Judiciary committees who want him to testify in private in a deposition as part of their potential impeachment of President Biden, the committees were holding a hearing. The oversight was holding a hearing to move forward in the process of finding him in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify in a closed door deposition. And so what did Hunter Biden do? He showed up in the hearing room, just sat there in the hearing room as they were planning to do the where's Hunter? He's afraid to testify. He sat right there in the room as if to say, I'm here, but I will only testify in public. And let's just say it was bonkers.

This is Congresswoman Nancy Mace. You are the epitome of white privilege coming into the oversight committee, spitting in our face, ignoring a congressional subpoena to be deposed. What are you afraid of? It was like some WWE style stuff. It honestly was pretty much a masterstroke in public relations. He's got a very good attorney, Hunter Biden, and he just doesn't trust that Republicans behind closed doors are going to, you know, not selectively edit what he has to say. It really was a stunt. If the public thinks that Congress is just like a bunch of people shouting at each other who can't get along, and then they saw that hearing, they'd be like, oh, yeah, that's the Congress I expect

to see. It was all your worst impressions of Congress all on display in one committee room. Don, what can't you let go of? If I may, I think we need a moment of serenity here. After all of that. So at the Des Moines Art Center, that's their art museum. It's in a neighborhood in the middle of town. They have a painting by Edward Hopper that I have gone to visit many, many times over the years I've been coming here. It's called Automat, and it features a lone woman seated in one of those automated diners that New York City and Philadelphia once had, the automat.

She's wearing a yellow hat, a green coat. She's cradling a cup of coffee. There's a radiator off to the side. And behind her is this blank window with the lights from the ceiling reflected in it in a row. And it is such a gorgeous painting. Edward Hopper, obviously one of the great American artists, and people know his Nighthawks painting, which is on display in Chicago. But Auto-Mat rivals Nighthawks. It is a stunning work, and it's hanging in the Des Moines Art Center. And I go see it every time I come, and I just have a moment of calm listening to it. Don, let me just tell you what I love about you. You go to museums in every town, every city.

And, you know, I was going to Detroit on a reporting trip. And I was like, hey, Don, what should I do? Where should I go? And you were like, you should go to the art museum and see the Diego Rivera murals. Exactly. And I hope you did. I did. And it was amazing.

And you always find a way to take that breath. It's, you know, and it's part of my philosophy of reporting. I'm traveling the country. I'm talking to voters everywhere. Every town you go to has its treasures. And I think it's important to find them and know what they are. Well, before we go, if you want to hear more about the Iowa caucuses, specifically what life is like on the campaign trail, check out our upcoming bonus episode. I have a fun chat with Danielle Kurtzleben, who knows all about dealing with the cold on caucus night. So if you want to hear that bonus episode, it will be out in the feed this weekend for NPR Politics Plus supporters. You can sign up at plus.npr.org slash politics. And as a reminder, our daily episodes are and will always remain free.

On Monday, we will be in your feed much later than usual with fresh news from the Iowa caucuses. Our executive producer is Mathani Mathuri. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our producers are Jung-Yoon Han, Casey Morrell, and Kelly Wessinger. Special thanks to Krishnadev Kalamer and Megan Pratz. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And thanks, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.