On this episode of news World. The election cycle is clearly beginning, and this Monday, January fifteenth, the Iowa Caucus kicks it all off, a historic pattern that has been around for a while, and then of course is followed by the New Hampshire primary, and then it's going to be wild and willy for a brief period of time. I thought it'd be fun to share with you some thinking about it. I've been involved in the Iowa caucus a number of times. I ran, of course, to myself for president in Clinton. I spent a lot of time in Iowa. Cliston went to college at Lutheran College in Decorah, Iowa. We have many friends from that state. But in addition, I was campaigning in the late eighties for Jack Kemp in Iowa and have a long relationship with former Speaker of the houseland Upmeyer and many of the Iowa Republicans. So I feel very comfortable sharing with you a little bit about the Iowa caucus. The important thing to remember about a caucus is you have to actually go somewhere and stay. In a primary, you vote and it's over, takes three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. In a caucus everybody gathers at a living room or a fire department, or a church or a school cafeteria. I think there are about nineteen hundred sites in Iowa Monday night. And if you get together and you actually group up so that there will be a sort of a Haley group, and there will be a Dasadus group and a Ramaswami group and a Trump group, and then each side gets to make a pittch So the campaign's. One of the big challenges we had when we ran in twenty twelve was you have to find a spokesperson in every one of those precincts who will get up and say, I am for my candidate. Here's why I am for my candidate. So that's the beginning of the process. Now Iowa is evolving politically because the world's evolving. In the old days, Iowan's liked presidential candidates to drop by for coffee, and if you went by somebody's place about three times, they'd begin to consider you. That gradually became more and more unwildy. Trump basically campaigns in large sessions. He doesn't campaign the way Iowan's historically used to, but he is so popular and has such huge name id. That doesn't matter much when Obama upset everything by defeating Hillary Clinton. In Iowa, he had a huge number of offices and a very large number of paid staff, because again you have to identify everybody in a precinct, get them to turn out, make sure it's all organized. Trump's probably the best organized for Iowa. I would say that Dessantus is the second best organized, but Dessantus seems to be collapsing. And I would say that Haley is probably the least organized of the top three, but she has momentum psychologically, and Iowa has a tradition of shifting very rapidly. Governor Dean was ahead and all of a sudden, John Kerry borrowed money from his wife, poured it all in, and he surged and he won the primary in two thousand and four in a huge upset. So these things can change almost overnight. In the twenty twelve caucus I was involved in, I was the front runner until about three weeks out. Because Romney figured out I was the front runner, he poured advertising attacking me. But in the process Rick Santorum came along and Santorum actually won by just thirty four votes. But one of the things which changed history, I think was the Iowa state chairman was committed to Romney and reported early that Romney had won, and so coming into New Hampshire it was Romney the victor, Whereas if they had been honest and accurate, he would have reported that Santorum had won and Romney come in second. That might well have changed the entire outcome in New Hampshire. Four years later, Trump was doing pretty well, but Ted Cruz came from behind beat Trump by about three percent. Now, given the way that Cruise campaign, which was very normal for Iowa, hands on, face to face, you go from pizza place to pizza place, you drop by churches, you go to stores, you visit people's homes, Cruz was doing the traditional things, and Cruz had very good micro targeting. For example, they figured out that they were about eight hundred people in Iowa who really wanted Iowa to have a ability to purchase fireworks, and so Cruz literally sent an email to those people the day of the Iowa Caucus committing to help them get the right to by fireworks in Iowa. That little group voted for Cruise. Then Cruiser sort of pieced together just enough to beat Trump by a narrow margin, but of course Trump then went on to become the party's nominie. Anyway, there are people who lost Iowa but went on to win. Ronald Reagan lost in nineteen eighty he'd been told by his campaign manager that he didn't need to go there, that was all locked up. He lost, i came back to win in New Hampshire. George H. W. Bush lost in nineteen eighty eight and came back to win in New Hampshire. Donald Trump, who had lost by a narrow margin, came back to win. So Iowa doesn't automatically define who's going to win. But Iowa does attract attentions the first big test, and it's the first place where people who love politics get to see how people are responding. The Iowa Party actually runs the caucus, So in Iowa, the Republican Party runs the caucus done by ceas good ballot. They're very good at it, they're very efficient. The Democrats have a very different approach. And the Democrats, of course have worked very hard this year with Joe Biden to make sure that nobody's running anywhere. So the Democrats really will not have much of a game but the Republicans are going to have I think even though current projection is it could be as bad as minus twenty five if you count windshill. Midwesterners are used to really cold weather, so what would be stunning to most of the country just becomes a normal problem in midwinter. But I think it will be particularly hard on Haley because she's the least organized, and I think when weather gets bad enough, having somebody who calls you and says, now you are coming to the caucus, aren't you is a big deal. The caucuses are only open on a partisan basis. That is, you can go to the Republican caucus if you are a registered Republican. You can go to the Democratic caucus if you're a registered Democrat, but you can't switch over. Independents can't participate. This is particularly important because Trump, like George W. Bush, is enormously strong among Republicans. Now New Hampshire is very different. The fact is, in New Hampshire people who are not registered by party, and there are more people not registered by party than registered as either Democrat or Republican. Those folks can vote in either primary, so you end up at for example, in the year two thousand, you ended up with John McCain winning in New Hampshire because he carried the independence and the unaffiliated while losing the Republicans. That could happen this year Trump clearly if you look at the polling numbers, Trump is clearly beating Haley among Republicans, but he's also losing to Haley in New Hampshire among independents and among Democrats who re registered as independent for the purpose of voting against Trump. So it would not shock me to see Halley do well. The latest poll in Iowa showed that Haley is now in second place, a distant second place. Trump's at fifty four percent in a field of four candidates, and fifty four percent would be the first time ever that a Republican candidate got a majority in a primary like this. So Trump will almost certainly come out of Iowa as the big winner. My hunch is as of today that DeSantis will probably come in third, which will be a devastating result for him. I think the weather will play some role. I think de Santis probably I'm not saying this with any sense of certainty, but probably has a better turnout mechanism than Haley, and that might help him some, but at least as of the most recent poll, she's now significantly ahead of him to be in second place, but it's a very very distant second place to Donald J. Trump. The key thing to look at in Iowa is does Trump break fifty percent. Trump could win in the forties and the story would be that he didn't do as well as he could have. But if he breaks fifty percent, that is going to be a very significant number and will propel him towards New Hampshire with a strong sense of opportunity. The challenge for Trump is, as I said, in New Hampshire, you have an open primary where independence can vote. And the fact is in every pole I've seen Haley wins independence, Trump wins Republicans, and depending on how many independents vote, she could end up doing well. Plus she has the current governor Sanunu, the former Senator Sanunu, and the former governor Sanunu, the entire family actively working against Trump and for her, and so we'll have to see what effect that'll have in Hampshire. By the way, according to five thirty eight, which is a major election site, as of January tenth, Trump in Iowa is at fifty two point three percent, Haley's at seventeen point one, Desatus is at fifteen point seven, and Ramaswami the six point three. So Trump has consistently been very, very strong. The big deal in Iowa will be the famous Iowa poll done for the Des Moines Register. It is widely regarded as the gold standard, not always totally accurate, but often setting a sense of momentum. It'll come out Saturday night, being the Sunday Morning Des Moin paper. If it shows that Haley has clearly passed a Santus, that will be a very big blow and might well force the Santus out of the race even before he gets to New Hampshire. Suffolk University just did a poll on January eleventh, and they show again that Trump is totally dominant, but it finds that Nikki Haley's begin to open up a clear lead. Suffolk. Trump is at fifty four percent, followed by Haley at twenty percent. Notice that that means she has jumped about three points. But more importantly, DeSantis is at thirteen, which means he's dropped almost three points, and ramaswamis at six. Ramaswami, by the way, takes all of his vote from Trump. If Ramaswami was not in the race, Trump would have six percent more none of his vote go to either Desanis or Haley. In terms of what matters to people in Iowa, among Republicans, eighty one percent say the economy and inflation, eighty percent say immigration and border security, seventy two percent say government spending in deficit, fifty seven percent the Israel Hamas War, fifty percent relation with China, forty one percent abortion restrictions, and thirty three percent the Russia Ukraine War. So it turns out the Republicans now have the largest lead on the economy that they have had since the question started being asked in nineteen ninety one. I think they have a twenty one point lead now when asked about which party does a better job with the economy. Now, when you come out of Iowa, you then go straight to New Hampshire, which on Tuesday, January twenty third will hold its primary. New Hampshire is one of the earliest primary states for president. They began local and state elections primaries in nineteen ten and put in a presidential primary in nineteen sixteen. Primaries were considered a great progressive reform when they first came along, because they took power away from the machine and gave it back to the people. For a long time, New Hampshire was not the first primary, but in nineteen twenty, following a huge snowstorm, it became the first in the country, and it has been the first in the country ever since nineteen twenty. Normally, they only had ballots for delegates to the party. Conventional they didn't have the name on you named your delegates. People knew the delegate was for you, but they were voting for the delegate. In nineteen fifty two, they added that the delegate would actually have a ballot for the presidential candidate, with their names listed separately. And starting in nineteen fifty two, when Eisenhower had a tremendous run, the New Hampshire primary began to really have an impact. It really became a popular place to look at. The news media could get there from New York and it's a real primary. That is, people can go and vote. They have a much bigger turnout percentage wise than you do in a caucus. And there was a sense that New Hampshire was the beginning that sort of if Iowa was the appetizer. New Hampshire was the first course in dealing with presidential campaigns, and in New Hampshire there are two party's ballots, one for the Democrats, one for the Republicans. But again as part of the Bidens strategy, he is not on the ballot, and they've really worked hard to not have anybody pay attention to the Democratic primary. By example, I think they probably Biden was vividly aware of this. In nineteen sixty eight, Senator Jean McCarthy, who is a liberal Democrat, ran against Lyndon Johnson, the President, basically on the Vietnam War issue, got a surprisingly high percent of the vote, didn't win, but had a very high percent, and shortly thereafter Johnson withdrew from the presidential campaign. There is a certain danger. Pat Buchanan did very well in New Hampshire taking on President George H. W. Bush in nineteen ninety two, so New Hampshire has had a role. Incumbent presidents have to recognize it. If people are unhappy, New Hampshire is one of the first places where they get to show up and indicate how unhappy they are. The Democrats are working very hard to minimize anybody running against Biden, and initially Biden did not file. He's not on the ballot, But because there are people on the ballot, the Biden team now is organizing a write in campaign. It'll be interesting to see how well they do at getting people to write in Joe Biden's name. There will be debates, and I participate in a number of these. I ran in twenty twelve, and they'll have a debate at send Ansom College on January eighteenth and at New England College on January twenty first, this on the Republican side, and maybe down to you know, with Chris Christie having now dropped out, you don't quite know what Ramaswami's going to do if he comes in at six percent in Iowa. You don't quite know what Dusantus will do if he comes in third in Iowa. You could get it could be only two people available, Trump and Nicky Haley. And I'll be curious to see whether not Trump would even show up. So far, he has very successfully avoided the debates and it has not hurt him at all. Now we do have polling data from New Hampshire. Emerson College did a poll on January eleventh, they show Trump leading with forty four percent, followed by Nicki Haley at twenty eight. She'd gained ten points since November. Well, Trump had lost five, So it went from forty nine to eighteen to forty five to twenty eight. And if I were Trump, that would make me a little shaky. Christie had twelve percent of the vote, and that I was told this morning that with Christie dropping out of the race, about two out of every three Christie voters will go to Nikki. If that's true, then she would pick up eight points out of Christie dropping out. Nasantas was already at seven so in the poll done on January eleventh, the Santus is already running fourth and Ramaswami was at four percent. And it's kind of hard to understand what Ramaswami thinks he's doing at this stage, but I think, you know, he's getting a name idea, and he's getting his ideas out, and he's a billionaire, so he didn't care. It doesn't caust him any any great pressure to stay in. Haley has jumped from four percent in August to twenty eight percent, and I would say that she has a real opportunity to overtake Trump. Ironically, she leads Trump thirty eight to thirty five among people over seventy, leads among voters with postgraduate degrees, which should not be a surprise. Trump's weakest area is people who have lots of college degrees, and she leads among independent voters. On the other hand, among young Republicans, fifty four percent of the voters under thirty support Trump. Among male Republican primary voters, he leads her forty two thirty one. He actually leads her by twenty points forty six to twenty six among women Republican primary voters. She doesn't necessarily penetrate as much as you would think she would with Republican women. In this particular survey of the people who are for Chris Christie, over half named sniky halis her second choice. Only two percent named Trump. That's really pretty remarkable indication of how strongly anti Trump the Chris Christie vote was and the Democratic primary, forty nine percent of the voters planned to write in President Biden. He should be okay, the Democratic congressman from Minnesota, Dean Phillips, who's willing agains him is that sixteen percent, So Biden should come out of this pretty well. The key issues in New Hampshire are the economy, first, housing affordability, second, threats to democracy third, which means that the Biden message is penetrating to some extent. Then immigration is fourth, and then health care and education, and finally abortion access so not clearly as defined by abortion as a lot of people in the media will tell you. I think that it's pretty clear that you have a situation where for the next few weeks, just to share numbers game is going to matter. You end up first paying attention to the numbers in Iowa. My hunches that'll be Trump and probably Hailey getting a boost because the elite media and the anti Trump money people are desperate to find some way to try to stop Trump, and I think as a result, you are very likely to see Hailey at say twenty two percent, may be carried more as a winner than Trump at fifty four percent, because the media is so desperate to have an alternative to Trump. If she then goes on to win New Hampshire, then her media coverage will be amazing, and then it will be a really interesting test. Because the third big test is South Carolina. It is far enough away that you could have a real campaign in South Carolina. All the evidence right now is that Trump beats her badly and that it's a Republican only primary, so she doesn't get the advantage of having independence come and vote. This is, by the way, exactly what happened in the year two thousand and two thousand. John McCain, who was very attractive to independent voters, ended up with a majority in New Hampshire, and so he had real momentum coming out of New Hampshire. The Bush people understood that when they got to South Carolina that McCain, both by style and by being a much more moderate Republican, would be much weaker than Bush. In the Bush campaign plan, South Carolina was always the firewall that would stop McCain, and South Carolina only allows Republicans to vote, whereas New Hampshire allows Republicans and independents to vote. McCain also carried Michigan, where independence could vote, but anywhere that there was a closed primary of Republicans only, George W. Bush was going to win by a big margin, and that is precisely what happened. So the McCain campaign had a brief moment of glory looked like it had real momentum and then just got ground up by the Bush team and in particular ended up losing South Carolina. If you remember back in twenty sixteen, South Carolina was an enormously important state for Trump. It's really the state where he broke loose and where things began to happen in a very, very big way. And I think that the core of his strength in South Carolina is very deep and very real. I would be very surprised to see lose South Carolina under virtually any circumstance. Once you get beyond South Carolina, there are a couple of possibilities here. Trump wins Iowa, loses New Hampshire, ultimately wins in South Carolina. That's one round. Trump wins New Hampshire, wins Iowa, and barely wins New Hampshire, but does win it. If that happens, he becomes at that point the nominee. If he wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, it's over. On the other hand, it could take an extra month if he loses New Hampshire and has to go on to win in Nevada and in South Carolina, and then on Super Tuesday, one of the challenges that Haley has and the challenge that Dessanta said, although he had a longer time period, he had more money putting together a nationwide campaign. Something close that I learned in twenty twelve that this is a huge country and the one person who has been consistently now since twenty fifteen, reaching across the country to Idaho to Arizona, to Colorado, North Dakota. You name it is Donald Trump. If you were just to measure the scale of the political machine, it's astonishing. I was really reminded of this twice once. It's not I'm invited to speak to Club forty five, which is a group of pro Trump activists in Palm Beach. They meet once a month. They have forty five hundred members and they've been meeting ever since twenty twenty. So you have this group of people, this core group that's enormous. They get together just because they're for Trump. They're not organized by anybody, that doesn't cost any money. They have one meeting, they all get to go together. They have a speaker. In that particular occasion, it was me, and it's remarkable. Well, recently Clista and I were at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, a small town up in the corner between Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, right on the edge of Iowa and Decora is a town of about seven thousand. And we're walking down main Street and there's a store that's Club forty five and it had been organized locally, no campaign money, no organizational structure, no directions from Mary Largo, just local pro Trump people. As Vin Weber has said recently, because he has a lake house up in northern Minnesota, every time he goes back home, he sees Trump signs everywhere in rural Minnesota. When he comes to Washington, he gets told by all the people who disliked Trump that they're sure Trump's not going to be the nominee. And he kind of wonders, do they ever drive outside the Beltway? Do they have any idea what it's like. And so I look at all of that background, and here I have to give credit to Mark Alpern, who I really enjoy and I think that his Worldwide News is a remarkable daily newsletter which I look forward to every single day. And I would just say that Alprin has the insight of practical politics that when you have this kind of organization, this kind of volunteerism, this kind of energy all across the country. It is really hard to figure out how you're going to beat that person. Now, that means that we are almost certainly faced with Trump versus Biden in the general election. I hear people, particularly Democrats, wish that somehow Biden wouldn't run again. But I ask you, if you have the White House, Air Force, one marine, one Camp David, and the alternative is to retire and bicycle in Delaware, do you really think Joe Biden is going to go home without at least trying to get reelected. I don't so. I think the odds are very high that the election will be clear, certainly no later than mid to late March, and that the two nominees will be Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden. Which is kind of ironic because in a theoretical world, probably seventy percent of the country would like to have somebody else. But the fact is, the way the business works, person who's on top of the hill is very hard to knock off the hill. And what you have is the top of the Republican hill is occupied by Donald Trump. The top of the Democratic hill is occupied by Joe Biden, and I don't see anybody in either party capable of knocking off the person who currently leads their party. So I think you will see a general election, and you can already tell with Trump that he is already moving towards talking about general election issues. He's already talking about what he would do to make America great again. He's already talking about big ideas. I think they've now produced something like sixty or seventy videos on specific issues of what Trump would like to do moving forward. And it's very formidable to watch somebody who started running in twenty fifteen, spent four years as the incumbent president and has now spent over three years thinking about lessons he learned and what he would do differently and how he would lead the country. So I think it's going to be an absolutely fascinating year. And my hope is as things happen during the year, starting with Iowa, where I'll do another podcast to report on what's happened and what it means, and then again after New Hampshire. But I hope to be able during the course of the year to have a series of campaign reports that sort of bring into context exactly what's happening and what it means, not just for the presidency, but you have huge opportunities in the House, huge opportunities in the Senate. It's going to be as it always is, fascinating. Tell people if you want to avoid boredom, then government and politics is something you should do. It's always changing, it's always different, it's always complicated. There are no real experts except the American people, and anybody who tells you that the polls are right doesn't understand. Until the people vote, you don't really know, and the people can make up their mind up to the last minute. So I'm always very cautious about knowing the outcome until there is an outcome. And I hope this is helpful and I look forward to reporting to you more as we go forward. Thank you for listening. Newts World is produced by Ginglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Carnesie Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Ginglish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworm can sign up for a three freeweekly columns at ginglishfree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is neutworl

On this episode of news World. The election cycle is clearly beginning, and this Monday, January fifteenth, the Iowa Caucus kicks it all off, a historic pattern that has been around for a while, and then of course is followed by the New Hampshire primary, and then it's going to be wild and willy for a brief period of time. I thought it'd be fun to share with you some thinking about it. I've been involved in the Iowa caucus a number of times. I ran, of course, to myself for president in Clinton. I spent a lot of time in Iowa. Cliston went to college at Lutheran College in Decorah, Iowa. We have many friends from that state. But in addition, I was campaigning in the late eighties for Jack Kemp in Iowa and have a long relationship with former Speaker of the houseland Upmeyer and many of the Iowa Republicans. So I feel very comfortable sharing with you a little bit about the Iowa caucus. The important thing to remember about a caucus is you have to actually go somewhere and stay. In a primary, you vote and it's over, takes three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. In a caucus everybody gathers at a living room or a fire department, or a church or a school cafeteria. I think there are about nineteen hundred sites in Iowa Monday night. And if you get together and you actually group up so that there will be a sort of a Haley group, and there will be a Dasadus group and a Ramaswami group and a Trump group, and then each side gets to make a pittch So the campaign's. One of the big challenges we had when we ran in twenty twelve was you have to find a spokesperson in every one of those precincts who will get up and say, I am for my candidate. Here's why I am for my candidate. So that's the beginning of the process. Now Iowa is evolving politically because the world's evolving. In the old days, Iowan's liked presidential candidates to drop by for coffee, and if you went by somebody's place about three times, they'd begin to consider you. That gradually became more and more unwildy. Trump basically campaigns in large sessions. He doesn't campaign the way Iowan's historically used to, but he is so popular and has such huge name id. That doesn't matter much when Obama upset everything by defeating Hillary Clinton. In Iowa, he had a huge number of offices and a very large number of paid staff, because again you have to identify everybody in a precinct, get them to turn out, make sure it's all organized. Trump's probably the best organized for Iowa. I would say that Dessantus is the second best organized, but Dessantus seems to be collapsing. And I would say that Haley is probably the least organized of the top three, but she has momentum psychologically, and Iowa has a tradition of shifting very rapidly. Governor Dean was ahead and all of a sudden, John Kerry borrowed money from his wife, poured it all in, and he surged and he won the primary in two thousand and four in a huge upset. So these things can change almost overnight. In the twenty twelve caucus I was involved in, I was the front runner until about three weeks out. Because Romney figured out I was the front runner, he poured advertising attacking me. But in the process Rick Santorum came along and Santorum actually won by just thirty four votes. But one of the things which changed history, I think was the Iowa state chairman was committed to Romney and reported early that Romney had won, and so coming into New Hampshire it was Romney the victor, Whereas if they had been honest and accurate, he would have reported that Santorum had won and Romney come in second. That might well have changed the entire outcome in New Hampshire. Four years later, Trump was doing pretty well, but Ted Cruz came from behind beat Trump by about three percent. Now, given the way that Cruise campaign, which was very normal for Iowa, hands on, face to face, you go from pizza place to pizza place, you drop by churches, you go to stores, you visit people's homes, Cruz was doing the traditional things, and Cruz had very good micro targeting. For example, they figured out that they were about eight hundred people in Iowa who really wanted Iowa to have a ability to purchase fireworks, and so Cruz literally sent an email to those people the day of the Iowa Caucus committing to help them get the right to by fireworks in Iowa. That little group voted for Cruise. Then Cruiser sort of pieced together just enough to beat Trump by a narrow margin, but of course Trump then went on to become the party's nominie. Anyway, there are people who lost Iowa but went on to win. Ronald Reagan lost in nineteen eighty he'd been told by his campaign manager that he didn't need to go there, that was all locked up. He lost, i came back to win in New Hampshire. George H. W. Bush lost in nineteen eighty eight and came back to win in New Hampshire. Donald Trump, who had lost by a narrow margin, came back to win. So Iowa doesn't automatically define who's going to win. But Iowa does attract attentions the first big test, and it's the first place where people who love politics get to see how people are responding. The Iowa Party actually runs the caucus, So in Iowa, the Republican Party runs the caucus done by ceas good ballot. They're very good at it, they're very efficient. The Democrats have a very different approach. And the Democrats, of course have worked very hard this year with Joe Biden to make sure that nobody's running anywhere. So the Democrats really will not have much of a game but the Republicans are going to have I think even though current projection is it could be as bad as minus twenty five if you count windshill. Midwesterners are used to really cold weather, so what would be stunning to most of the country just becomes a normal problem in midwinter. But I think it will be particularly hard on Haley because she's the least organized, and I think when weather gets bad enough, having somebody who calls you and says, now you are coming to the caucus, aren't you is a big deal. The caucuses are only open on a partisan basis. That is, you can go to the Republican caucus if you are a registered Republican. You can go to the Democratic caucus if you're a registered Democrat, but you can't switch over. Independents can't participate. This is particularly important because Trump, like George W. Bush, is enormously strong among Republicans. Now New Hampshire is very different. The fact is, in New Hampshire people who are not registered by party, and there are more people not registered by party than registered as either Democrat or Republican. Those folks can vote in either primary, so you end up at for example, in the year two thousand, you ended up with John McCain winning in New Hampshire because he carried the independence and the unaffiliated while losing the Republicans. That could happen this year Trump clearly if you look at the polling numbers, Trump is clearly beating Haley among Republicans, but he's also losing to Haley in New Hampshire among independents and among Democrats who re registered as independent for the purpose of voting against Trump. So it would not shock me to see Halley do well. The latest poll in Iowa showed that Haley is now in second place, a distant second place. Trump's at fifty four percent in a field of four candidates, and fifty four percent would be the first time ever that a Republican candidate got a majority in a primary like this. So Trump will almost certainly come out of Iowa as the big winner. My hunch is as of today that DeSantis will probably come in third, which will be a devastating result for him. I think the weather will play some role. I think de Santis probably I'm not saying this with any sense of certainty, but probably has a better turnout mechanism than Haley, and that might help him some, but at least as of the most recent poll, she's now significantly ahead of him to be in second place, but it's a very very distant second place to Donald J. Trump. The key thing to look at in Iowa is does Trump break fifty percent. Trump could win in the forties and the story would be that he didn't do as well as he could have. But if he breaks fifty percent, that is going to be a very significant number and will propel him towards New Hampshire with a strong sense of opportunity. The challenge for Trump is, as I said, in New Hampshire, you have an open primary where independence can vote. And the fact is in every pole I've seen Haley wins independence, Trump wins Republicans, and depending on how many independents vote, she could end up doing well. Plus she has the current governor Sanunu, the former Senator Sanunu, and the former governor Sanunu, the entire family actively working against Trump and for her, and so we'll have to see what effect that'll have in Hampshire. By the way, according to five thirty eight, which is a major election site, as of January tenth, Trump in Iowa is at fifty two point three percent, Haley's at seventeen point one, Desatus is at fifteen point seven, and Ramaswami the six point three. So Trump has consistently been very, very strong. The big deal in Iowa will be the famous Iowa poll done for the Des Moines Register. It is widely regarded as the gold standard, not always totally accurate, but often setting a sense of momentum. It'll come out Saturday night, being the Sunday Morning Des Moin paper. If it shows that Haley has clearly passed a Santus, that will be a very big blow and might well force the Santus out of the race even before he gets to New Hampshire. Suffolk University just did a poll on January eleventh, and they show again that Trump is totally dominant, but it finds that Nikki Haley's begin to open up a clear lead. Suffolk. Trump is at fifty four percent, followed by Haley at twenty percent. Notice that that means she has jumped about three points. But more importantly, DeSantis is at thirteen, which means he's dropped almost three points, and ramaswamis at six. Ramaswami, by the way, takes all of his vote from Trump. If Ramaswami was not in the race, Trump would have six percent more none of his vote go to either Desanis or Haley. In terms of what matters to people in Iowa, among Republicans, eighty one percent say the economy and inflation, eighty percent say immigration and border security, seventy two percent say government spending in deficit, fifty seven percent the Israel Hamas War, fifty percent relation with China, forty one percent abortion restrictions, and thirty three percent the Russia Ukraine War. So it turns out the Republicans now have the largest lead on the economy that they have had since the question started being asked in nineteen ninety one. I think they have a twenty one point lead now when asked about which party does a better job with the economy. Now, when you come out of Iowa, you then go straight to New Hampshire, which on Tuesday, January twenty third will hold its primary. New Hampshire is one of the earliest primary states for president. They began local and state elections primaries in nineteen ten and put in a presidential primary in nineteen sixteen. Primaries were considered a great progressive reform when they first came along, because they took power away from the machine and gave it back to the people. For a long time, New Hampshire was not the first primary, but in nineteen twenty, following a huge snowstorm, it became the first in the country, and it has been the first in the country ever since nineteen twenty. Normally, they only had ballots for delegates to the party. Conventional they didn't have the name on you named your delegates. People knew the delegate was for you, but they were voting for the delegate. In nineteen fifty two, they added that the delegate would actually have a ballot for the presidential candidate, with their names listed separately. And starting in nineteen fifty two, when Eisenhower had a tremendous run, the New Hampshire primary began to really have an impact. It really became a popular place to look at. The news media could get there from New York and it's a real primary. That is, people can go and vote. They have a much bigger turnout percentage wise than you do in a caucus. And there was a sense that New Hampshire was the beginning that sort of if Iowa was the appetizer. New Hampshire was the first course in dealing with presidential campaigns, and in New Hampshire there are two party's ballots, one for the Democrats, one for the Republicans. But again as part of the Bidens strategy, he is not on the ballot, and they've really worked hard to not have anybody pay attention to the Democratic primary. By example, I think they probably Biden was vividly aware of this. In nineteen sixty eight, Senator Jean McCarthy, who is a liberal Democrat, ran against Lyndon Johnson, the President, basically on the Vietnam War issue, got a surprisingly high percent of the vote, didn't win, but had a very high percent, and shortly thereafter Johnson withdrew from the presidential campaign. There is a certain danger. Pat Buchanan did very well in New Hampshire taking on President George H. W. Bush in nineteen ninety two, so New Hampshire has had a role. Incumbent presidents have to recognize it. If people are unhappy, New Hampshire is one of the first places where they get to show up and indicate how unhappy they are. The Democrats are working very hard to minimize anybody running against Biden, and initially Biden did not file. He's not on the ballot, But because there are people on the ballot, the Biden team now is organizing a write in campaign. It'll be interesting to see how well they do at getting people to write in Joe Biden's name. There will be debates, and I participate in a number of these. I ran in twenty twelve, and they'll have a debate at send Ansom College on January eighteenth and at New England College on January twenty first, this on the Republican side, and maybe down to you know, with Chris Christie having now dropped out, you don't quite know what Ramaswami's going to do if he comes in at six percent in Iowa. You don't quite know what Dusantus will do if he comes in third in Iowa. You could get it could be only two people available, Trump and Nicky Haley. And I'll be curious to see whether not Trump would even show up. So far, he has very successfully avoided the debates and it has not hurt him at all. Now we do have polling data from New Hampshire. Emerson College did a poll on January eleventh, they show Trump leading with forty four percent, followed by Nicki Haley at twenty eight. She'd gained ten points since November. Well, Trump had lost five, So it went from forty nine to eighteen to forty five to twenty eight. And if I were Trump, that would make me a little shaky. Christie had twelve percent of the vote, and that I was told this morning that with Christie dropping out of the race, about two out of every three Christie voters will go to Nikki. If that's true, then she would pick up eight points out of Christie dropping out. Nasantas was already at seven so in the poll done on January eleventh, the Santus is already running fourth and Ramaswami was at four percent. And it's kind of hard to understand what Ramaswami thinks he's doing at this stage, but I think, you know, he's getting a name idea, and he's getting his ideas out, and he's a billionaire, so he didn't care. It doesn't caust him any any great pressure to stay in. Haley has jumped from four percent in August to twenty eight percent, and I would say that she has a real opportunity to overtake Trump. Ironically, she leads Trump thirty eight to thirty five among people over seventy, leads among voters with postgraduate degrees, which should not be a surprise. Trump's weakest area is people who have lots of college degrees, and she leads among independent voters. On the other hand, among young Republicans, fifty four percent of the voters under thirty support Trump. Among male Republican primary voters, he leads her forty two thirty one. He actually leads her by twenty points forty six to twenty six among women Republican primary voters. She doesn't necessarily penetrate as much as you would think she would with Republican women. In this particular survey of the people who are for Chris Christie, over half named sniky halis her second choice. Only two percent named Trump. That's really pretty remarkable indication of how strongly anti Trump the Chris Christie vote was and the Democratic primary, forty nine percent of the voters planned to write in President Biden. He should be okay, the Democratic congressman from Minnesota, Dean Phillips, who's willing agains him is that sixteen percent, So Biden should come out of this pretty well. The key issues in New Hampshire are the economy, first, housing affordability, second, threats to democracy third, which means that the Biden message is penetrating to some extent. Then immigration is fourth, and then health care and education, and finally abortion access so not clearly as defined by abortion as a lot of people in the media will tell you. I think that it's pretty clear that you have a situation where for the next few weeks, just to share numbers game is going to matter. You end up first paying attention to the numbers in Iowa. My hunches that'll be Trump and probably Hailey getting a boost because the elite media and the anti Trump money people are desperate to find some way to try to stop Trump, and I think as a result, you are very likely to see Hailey at say twenty two percent, may be carried more as a winner than Trump at fifty four percent, because the media is so desperate to have an alternative to Trump. If she then goes on to win New Hampshire, then her media coverage will be amazing, and then it will be a really interesting test. Because the third big test is South Carolina. It is far enough away that you could have a real campaign in South Carolina. All the evidence right now is that Trump beats her badly and that it's a Republican only primary, so she doesn't get the advantage of having independence come and vote. This is, by the way, exactly what happened in the year two thousand and two thousand. John McCain, who was very attractive to independent voters, ended up with a majority in New Hampshire, and so he had real momentum coming out of New Hampshire. The Bush people understood that when they got to South Carolina that McCain, both by style and by being a much more moderate Republican, would be much weaker than Bush. In the Bush campaign plan, South Carolina was always the firewall that would stop McCain, and South Carolina only allows Republicans to vote, whereas New Hampshire allows Republicans and independents to vote. McCain also carried Michigan, where independence could vote, but anywhere that there was a closed primary of Republicans only, George W. Bush was going to win by a big margin, and that is precisely what happened. So the McCain campaign had a brief moment of glory looked like it had real momentum and then just got ground up by the Bush team and in particular ended up losing South Carolina. If you remember back in twenty sixteen, South Carolina was an enormously important state for Trump. It's really the state where he broke loose and where things began to happen in a very, very big way. And I think that the core of his strength in South Carolina is very deep and very real. I would be very surprised to see lose South Carolina under virtually any circumstance. Once you get beyond South Carolina, there are a couple of possibilities here. Trump wins Iowa, loses New Hampshire, ultimately wins in South Carolina. That's one round. Trump wins New Hampshire, wins Iowa, and barely wins New Hampshire, but does win it. If that happens, he becomes at that point the nominee. If he wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, it's over. On the other hand, it could take an extra month if he loses New Hampshire and has to go on to win in Nevada and in South Carolina, and then on Super Tuesday, one of the challenges that Haley has and the challenge that Dessanta said, although he had a longer time period, he had more money putting together a nationwide campaign. Something close that I learned in twenty twelve that this is a huge country and the one person who has been consistently now since twenty fifteen, reaching across the country to Idaho to Arizona, to Colorado, North Dakota. You name it is Donald Trump. If you were just to measure the scale of the political machine, it's astonishing. I was really reminded of this twice once. It's not I'm invited to speak to Club forty five, which is a group of pro Trump activists in Palm Beach. They meet once a month. They have forty five hundred members and they've been meeting ever since twenty twenty. So you have this group of people, this core group that's enormous. They get together just because they're for Trump. They're not organized by anybody, that doesn't cost any money. They have one meeting, they all get to go together. They have a speaker. In that particular occasion, it was me, and it's remarkable. Well, recently Clista and I were at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, a small town up in the corner between Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, right on the edge of Iowa and Decora is a town of about seven thousand. And we're walking down main Street and there's a store that's Club forty five and it had been organized locally, no campaign money, no organizational structure, no directions from Mary Largo, just local pro Trump people. As Vin Weber has said recently, because he has a lake house up in northern Minnesota, every time he goes back home, he sees Trump signs everywhere in rural Minnesota. When he comes to Washington, he gets told by all the people who disliked Trump that they're sure Trump's not going to be the nominee. And he kind of wonders, do they ever drive outside the Beltway? Do they have any idea what it's like. And so I look at all of that background, and here I have to give credit to Mark Alpern, who I really enjoy and I think that his Worldwide News is a remarkable daily newsletter which I look forward to every single day. And I would just say that Alprin has the insight of practical politics that when you have this kind of organization, this kind of volunteerism, this kind of energy all across the country. It is really hard to figure out how you're going to beat that person. Now, that means that we are almost certainly faced with Trump versus Biden in the general election. I hear people, particularly Democrats, wish that somehow Biden wouldn't run again. But I ask you, if you have the White House, Air Force, one marine, one Camp David, and the alternative is to retire and bicycle in Delaware, do you really think Joe Biden is going to go home without at least trying to get reelected. I don't so. I think the odds are very high that the election will be clear, certainly no later than mid to late March, and that the two nominees will be Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden. Which is kind of ironic because in a theoretical world, probably seventy percent of the country would like to have somebody else. But the fact is, the way the business works, person who's on top of the hill is very hard to knock off the hill. And what you have is the top of the Republican hill is occupied by Donald Trump. The top of the Democratic hill is occupied by Joe Biden, and I don't see anybody in either party capable of knocking off the person who currently leads their party. So I think you will see a general election, and you can already tell with Trump that he is already moving towards talking about general election issues. He's already talking about what he would do to make America great again. He's already talking about big ideas. I think they've now produced something like sixty or seventy videos on specific issues of what Trump would like to do moving forward. And it's very formidable to watch somebody who started running in twenty fifteen, spent four years as the incumbent president and has now spent over three years thinking about lessons he learned and what he would do differently and how he would lead the country. So I think it's going to be an absolutely fascinating year. And my hope is as things happen during the year, starting with Iowa, where I'll do another podcast to report on what's happened and what it means, and then again after New Hampshire. But I hope to be able during the course of the year to have a series of campaign reports that sort of bring into context exactly what's happening and what it means, not just for the presidency, but you have huge opportunities in the House, huge opportunities in the Senate. It's going to be as it always is, fascinating. Tell people if you want to avoid boredom, then government and politics is something you should do. It's always changing, it's always different, it's always complicated. There are no real experts except the American people, and anybody who tells you that the polls are right doesn't understand. Until the people vote, you don't really know, and the people can make up their mind up to the last minute. So I'm always very cautious about knowing the outcome until there is an outcome. And I hope this is helpful and I look forward to reporting to you more as we go forward. Thank you for listening. Newts World is produced by Ginglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Carnesie Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Ginglish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworm can sign up for a three freeweekly columns at ginglishfree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is neutworl