On the morning of the Iowa Caucuses, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman spotted Donald Trump publishing a potentially ill-considered social media post — implausible as that may sound:
As is so often the case, comments attributable to Trump’s online persona are in no way reflective of what his subordinates are saying or doing. “A win is a win,” said Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita ahead of the caucuses when confronted with a polling landscape that has set a historically high bar for the former president’s performance. To be fair, Trump himself prudently declined to say whether he believed he would win majority support from caucus-goers as the pre-caucus polling suggests he would. “I don’t know,” Trump said, “I think we are doing very well.” Even the former president’s actions betray at least a little doubt in his own standing. Some have speculated that Trump’s attacks on Vivek Ramaswamy over the weekend are indications that the Trump camp believes the presence of Trump’s mimic on the ballot precludes the possibility of emerging with the support of 50 percent or more from Iowa’s caucus-goers.
Trump’s camp is wise to run away from the expectations set by his prohibitive dominance of the polls, but he is dominant, nonetheless. The final RealClearPolitics average of the polling in Iowa assigned 52.5 percent support to Trump heading into the caucuses. Only the last NBC News/Des Moines Register survey of Republican caucus-goers in the Hawkeye State found Trump drawing less than a majority of the vote.
Only the most optimistic of Ron DeSantis’s or Nikki Haley’s supporters entertain the notion that the scale of the polling error heading into tonight’s contest is so profound that Trump might actually lose. The expectations-setting game has focused primarily on whether the former president can match or exceed the high bar survey respondents have set for him. But that will matter.
As the race turns away from Iowa and toward New Hampshire — on paper, the most competitive GOP primary contest on the calendar — the narrative Trump carries with him into that contest could have a real effect on voters’ psychology. Is the former president a prohibitive force who can claim the support of a majority of the first contest’s voters, or is he a wounded creature whose prohibitive performance in canvassing turned out to be illusory?
LaCivita is right: a win is a win. It won’t be difficult for the Trump campaign to spin a plurality victory on caucus night as evidence of the former president’s dominance. But if he underperforms his average, it undermines one of Trump’s favorite, albeit circular, arguments in his own favor. As the anti-Haley tweet suggests, Trump believes his dominance in the polls should compel his competitors to hang up their spurs. But if the polls exaggerated Trump’s support, the only recourse will be to allow the primary process to clear up that ambiguity. That condition, if it materializes, might force Trump to do something he’s tried to avoid: campaign for his party’s presidential nomination.