Iowa rarely predicts a winner but Donald Trump may be the exception

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

There are two ways to interpret Donald Trump’s cruise to victory in Iowa. The first, which I lean towards, is confirmation that the former president owns the Republican party in a way that no figure has done before. But we have known that for years. It looks as though he has the 2024 nomination wrapped up.

The second interpretation, which cannot be dismissed, is that Iowa is a quirky state that presages nothing. The Midwestern state is routinely bad at predicting what will happen in other primaries. A quick glance at history tells us why: it has only identified the eventual nominee of either party six times in nearly 50 years.

The last time Iowa picked the Republican winner was at the turn of the millennium. For the most recent Republicans, victory in the state’s caucuses has been a better predictor of a career on cable TV. In 2012 it was the former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, and in 2008 it was the Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Ted Cruz, who won in 2016, remains a US senator but also graces Fox News frequently.

Those three names were natural draws for the state’s heavy evangelical Christian vote. They fared far less well the following week in New Hampshire, where religion is far less of a factor.

Their example is particularly bad news for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the only candidate to visit 99 counties but who finished a distant second on Monday with just a fifth of the vote. Not only was he the natural candidate of the state’s so-called values-based voter, he also threw his campaign’s kitchen sink at the state. DeSantis could hardly expect to do better in New Hampshire. His rapid exit from the field would not be a shock.

It was a less bad night for Nikki Haley because her campaign never bet on winning in Iowa. Her big test will come in New Hampshire, where she has placed most of her chips. If Haley does not pull off…