An empty road in Council Bluffs, Iowa on Saturday.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The last time this few GOP voters showed up for a competitive Iowa caucus was in 2000.Just over 110,000 voters braved the freezing temperatures and icy roads. For comparison, nearly 187,000 voted in the 2016 GOP caucus.
It was an unquestionably good night for former President Donald Trump.
It was also perhaps a good night — if you buy into the low expectations that they’ve set for themselves — for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Ambassador Nikki Haley.
But it was decidedly not a good night for voter participation in the 2024 GOP Iowa Caucus on Monday.
Just over 110,000 people showed up to participate in the caucus, according to the Iowa Republican Party.
For comparison, nearly 187,000 GOP voters participated in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, which were fiercely contested between several candidates, including Trump, according to NPR.
In 2012, just over 121,000 voters showed up. In 2008, it was about 118,000.
To find a GOP Iowa caucus with fewer voters, you have to go back all the way to 2000, when just 86,440 voted.
Altogether, turnout this year was roughly equivalent to that of 1988 — when then-Vice President George HW Bush was seeking the party’s nomination — where nearly 109,000 voters showed up.
It’s not hard to see why turnout was so poor.
In the days ahead of the caucus and continuing into Monday, the state was beset by a punishing winter storm, bringing freezing temperatures, icy roads, and otherwise treacherous conditions that even led to the rear-ending of Republican Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks on Saturday.
(The congresswoman was unharmed, later posting a video of herself with a turkey pot pie she had presumably just baked.)
But the poor showing may also be a product of a simple fact that many have been slow to acknowledge — the 2024 GOP primary, in general, hasn’t been that competitive.
Trump has long held a commanding polling lead among primary voters, both in Iowa and nationally.
The former president is, on some level, the incumbent in the race, and in the days before voters headed to caucus sites in Iowa, Trump managed to amass majority support among Republicans in Congress.