Hawkeye State political nerds have taken a look at the brutally fucking cold forecast for Monday night’s Iowa caucus and concluded that fat former President Trump’s support is most likely to suffer given his reliance on older voters more susceptible to slipping on ice and what not. Important to remember is that a “caucus” is definitionally a meeting, so there’s no mail-in vote option like the primary elections held in most other states. Either you show up in person or you don’t count.
“Forecast now is for 7 degrees,” Iowa GOP strategist David Kochel tells Politico. “That’s just bone-chilling. Definitely can impact turnout. Caucus attendees tend to be older than the average voter in a general election, so it might be even more pronounced. Not sure it will help/hurt any specific candidate vis a vis the field but generally, it’s my sense that lower turnout is unhelpful to Trump.”
Local Dem consultant Jeff Link tells Axios that turnout overall will drop, hurting Trump because his fans will assume he’s so far ahead that their vote doesn’t matter (some fanboy operative said to Politico that he told Trump he can expect “80,000 votes, likely over 50 percent of total turnout… Our folks are motivated”) and that, again, Trump’s support skews older than that of Haley and DeSantis.
None of it means Trump is going to lose, but complacency plus -5° F nighttime lows in Des Moines have the potential to embarrass the fat bastard due to mismanaged expectations of a crushing victory and real-world circumstance easily turned into knocks on his tedious “enthusiasm” circlejerk.