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I kind of like doing math, so I did some math, relying on the 2023 census. I wanted to know about the voters who turned out for the Iowa caucus. Here is what I found. Iowa had a population of 3,207,004 in 2023. Of these, 910,789 were 18 years old or younger, which leaves 2,296,215 Iowans eligible to vote. The number of registered voters (in 2023) was 2,083,979. The Republican Party has 34.5 percent of Iowa voters, a total of around 718,900; and the Democratic Party has 30.31 percent of registered voters, a total of around 631,600.
Attendance at the Iowa caucuses was low, due to very dangerous weather. In the end, approximately 110,000 people turned out, around 15 percent. Of these, 51 percent of Republican voters who attended the caucuses voted for Donald Trump — a total of 56,260 votes in a state with more than 2 million adults. And then there were 49 percent (54,046 voters) who voted “not Trump,” favoring Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson or Vivek Ramaswamy.
This is being trumpeted all over the media (pun intended) as a huge win for Trump. Is this really a huge win?
Carey Donovan
Bernard