Are Iowa Caucus Victories Predictive of Presidential Campaign Success?
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The Iowa Caucuses are just around the corner, and that means the plethora of commentary about them is only going to ramp up even more — for the Republican Party, at least. Assumedly, Joe Biden will win the Democratic side as the sitting U.S. president. Donald Trump is the heavy favorite for Republicans.
Much is made in the media about the impact of the Iowa Caucus results as the first actual contest between presidential candidates each election cycle. But just how much stock can we put into winning the Iowa Caucus? Is it really that important to win if a candidate wants to become president?
Obviously, gaining early momentum is a big boon. But as to whether Iowa Caucus victors experience great success in their overall campaigns…well, it’s a mixed bag, at best. Let’s take a look at the data for both the Republican and the Democratic Parties.
The Data
Iowa’s status as the first presidential contest in the nation began in 1972, so that is where the data starts. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as straightforward gathering a sufficient amount of stats for historical Iowa Caucus results as one might expect. But through a combination of sources, I put together this table showing the following data points that were available:
- The number of voters that turned out for the parties in each year (not always available and appears to sometimes be an estimate)
- The name of the winner of the caucus
- The percentage of the vote the caucus winner garnered
- Whether the caucus winner eventually won their party’s nomination
I also added whether the incumbent president was running (though I only signified “yes” if the incumbent was of that party). To verify the respective party nominations for president, I used the presidential election archive from UC-Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project and compared the names to the Iowa Caucus winner.
Bolded rows indicate if the Iowa Caucus winner went on to become president that year. Grayed-out rows mean a contest was not held for that party that year.
The Democratic Side’s Stats
The Democratic side’s Iowa Caucus history indicate that while caucus winners win their party’s nomination more often than not, it’s not that predictive. Democratic caucus victors became the party nominee seven out of 11 times (64.64%). No Democratic incumbent faced a challenge in Iowa for their reelection bid except for Jimmy Carter in 1980, who received a fairly tough challenge from U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts but still won the caucus comfortably (59.1%).
Such victors also had a wide array of vote percentages in the caucus that later won their party’s nomination. Jimmy Carter only 27.6% of the Iowa vote on his way to his 1976 presidential election victory, while Al Gore won 63% en route to his close loss in the hotly contested 2000 election to George W. Bush. Barack Obama was the only other Democrat listed in the table above that also became president the year he won the Iowa Caucus, with 38% of the vote.
A strong showing in Iowa does not guarantee a Democrat the party’s nomination for the general election, however. Tom Harkin won 76.4% of the Iowa vote — though it helped immensely that he was a U.S. Senator for that state during the 1992 election cycle . But he would soon have a weak showing in the ensuing New Hampshire primary.
Overall, though, eventual Democratic nominees at least had a reasonably competitive showing in Iowa — with one notable exception. In that same 1992 election, then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton only managed 2.8% of the vote, but that was against Harkin, the Iowa native. Clinton’s fortunes became the opposite of Harkin’s starting with that same New Hampshire primary. While he did not win that state’s primary, Clinton’s surprisingly strong showing eventually propelled him to the nickname “The Comeback Kid” (insofar as a 40+ year old man could be considered a “kid,” but one is in federal politics), the Democratic nomination, and the first of two terms in the White House.
The Republican Side’s Stats
The Republican side’s Iowa Caucus history is even less predictive of future success than for Democrats. The only Republican caucus winner that later became president was George W. Bush in 2000. Only four out of nine (44.44%) Republican caucus victors would eventually secure the party’s nomination. Two of those winners were incumbent presidents, and even those victories come with asterisks.
- The percentage of the vote in 1976 that Ford won isn’t very clear, but neither he nor challenger Ronald Reagan campaigned much in the state that year. (Reagan would later win the presidency in 1980 and 1984.)
- Donald Trump’s win in the state in 2020 wasn’t even remotely close, as he had consolidated Republican Party support well before that point.
(One could perhaps argue Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee in the 2012 election, also won the Iowa vote that year, though officially Rick Santorum was declared the victor by a razor-thin margin. The result was not without controversy, however. In any case, Rick Santorum’s campaign wouldn’t last much longer as he would end his campaign in April 2012.)
Republican Iowa Caucuses are also generally more competitive than on the Democratic side, at least in terms of the winner’s vote share. Apart from Trump in 2020, none of the caucus winners won a majority of the vote — the highest was 41% by Bush in 2000. In contrast, three of the Democratic winners took a majority of the vote.
Usually, though, the eventual Republican nominee was competitive in the Iowa Caucus even if they didn’t win. There are two arguable exceptions.
- In 1988, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan’s vice president, placed third with 18.6% of the vote, behind a U.S. Senator from Kansas, Bob Dole (37.4%), and Southern Baptist minister and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson (24.6%). Bush actually won the Iowa Caucus in 1980, but unlike in 1988, he did not secure the Republican nomination.
- In 2008, John McCain only won 13.1% of the Iowa vote. That placed him behind former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (34.4%), Mitt Romney (25.2%), and U.S. Senator/actor Fred Thompson (13.4%).
The Democratic and Republican Stats Put Together
Overall, 11 of 20 (55%) of the Iowa Caucus winners won their party’s nomination, and only 3 out of 20 times (15%) did a caucus winner go on to become president. So, more often than not, a caucus victor competes in the general election, but it’s not nearly the boon that the media fanfare might make the caucuses out to be.
Interestingly, the political party for which the Iowa Caucus is a little bit more predictive of the eventual nominee is the party that will be delaying the caucus’ results this time around. Last year, the Democratic National Committee changed the scheduling so that Iowa’s results are not released until Super Tuesday in March.
Another interesting data point is that we’ve only had two presidential elections that pitted both major parties’ caucus winners against each other in the general election: Jimmy Carter vs. Gerald Ford in 1976 and Al Gore vs. George W. Bush in 2000. Some of that can be explained by the fact that incumbent presidents usually didn’t face intraparty opposition in their reelection bids (leaving their Iowa Caucuses uncontested), and five of the last seven presidents went on to serve a second term. But even when the incumbent did face challenges in the Iowa Caucus — Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Donald Trump in 2020 — the data indicates that they didn’t face much trouble in getting their party’s nomination again.
What Does the History of the Iowa Caucus Mean for 2024?
It means that, regardless of what the results turn out to be for either party in Iowa, we should pump the brakes before making any broad predictions about how the rest of the election season will play out. But we do have two unprecedented aspects, one for Democrats and one for Republicans, to consider:
- On the Democratic side, it’s the first time that the caucus results will be at a much later date.
- On the Republican side, it’s the first time that a former president is running in the caucus.
Democrats and Iowa in 2024
Let’s start with the Democratic side. Since the results will be revealed at a later date, analogizing the influence of Iowa in 2024 to previous years is not an entirely apples-to-apples comparison. While Iowa has not been that predictive of future success for Democratic winners, it may be that a later date for the results may be a better predictor of who the eventual nominee is for the Democratic Party.
And despite Joe Biden running for reelection, there will be other names for Iowa Democrats to vote on. U.S. Representative Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson are both trying to lead insurgent campaigns to take the party’s nomination, though voters can choose to be “uncommitted.” Assumedly, Biden will have little trouble winning Iowa as most Democratic operatives and officeholders have tried to rally the party behind his bid for reelection.
But in the event that Phillips and/or Williamson put up strong opposition in the vote share, it won’t be unprecedented for an incumbent Democratic president. Jimmy Carter faced a similar situation in 1980 from Ted Kennedy and won only 59.1% of the Iowa vote, still getting the Democratic nod in the general election. That said, Carter had very little chance at winning reelection, and he would be blown out by 7.5 million popular votes (489 to 89 in the Electoral College) by Republican Ronald Reagan. Biden arguably has a much better chance at winning a second term than Carter did, but if he doesn’t win Iowa decisively that could spell trouble for his reelection campaign.
Republicans and Iowa in 2024
In the Iowa Caucus as we know it, we’ve never had a previous president who lost a reelection campaign come back to try again for a second term. But Donald Trump, as is his wont, has upended that. Back in 2020, he did face opposition primarily from former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, but he left little doubt in the results as he won 97.1% of the Republican vote in Iowa. Only Bob Dole has won the Republican caucus in Iowa twice (1988 and 1996).
But while Trump has had strong polling numbers, it’s a safe bet that the 2024 Iowa Caucus is going to be much more competitive than in 2020. With the exception of 2020, the Republican winner of the Iowa Caucus has never won a majority of the vote (Gerald Ford in 1976 might be an exception, but the data there is murky). Polling suggests that Trump could the first for the Republican side to get a majority of the Iowa Caucus vote in an actually competitive contest, but polling is not necessarily the end all be all.
But even if Trump gets a majority of the vote, don’t assume that the Republican nomination is a foregone conclusion just yet. Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, or Vivek Ramaswamy might put up stiff competition in later states, which could also be influenced by their Iowa results. And Trump’s legal issues put his potential renomination up in the air.
Concluding Thoughts
All in all, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions one way or the other after the Iowa results. Previous history suggests that an Iowa win is not as big of a primary campaign boost as you might think. Still, the aforementioned differences in 2024 for the Democratic and Republican sides might make their results more indicative of their eventual nominees than in previous years.
But if Biden and Trump both have particularly dominant showings in Iowa, that could make it much more likely that we’ll see the two go head-to-head in November for a rematch of the 2020 election. That would make it just the third time that both the Democratic and Republican winners of the Iowa Caucus faced each other in the general election. In the 1976 instance, Jimmy Carter won it for Democrats. In the 2000 instance, George W. Bush won it for Republicans. In that sense, you can think of it like a 1–1 game in soccer going into extra time, or 1–1 going into extra innings in baseball, between Republicans and Democrats.
There are a couple more interesting wrinkles: The last time we had a rematch between presidential candidates was in 1956, when Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson a second time after their first bout in 1952. But more comparable to a potential Biden vs. Trump round two is when the incumbent Democrat Grover Cleveland lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1892 but then beat him in their 1896 rematch, making Cleveland our only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.
So will we get Biden vs. Trump round two? And if so, will Trump pull a Grover Cleveland and become our second nonconsecutive president? We’ll find out in the coming months.
