Iowa GOP Leader Decries ‘Concerning’ Actions Before Caucus Voting Ended

The decision by the Associated Press, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC to call the Iowa race early, only 31 minutes after the caucuses had begun at 7 p.m. CT, has angered many Iowans—including the head of the state’s GOP.

With 99 percent of the votes counted, Donald Trump won by a landslide with 51.0 percent of the vote. The former president, who’s currently the Republican primary frontrunner by a huge margin over his rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, won in 98 out of 99 counties in the state. DeSantis got 21 percent of votes, while Haley finished third with 19 percent.

Shortly after AP declared that DeSantis took the second place in the race, Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann blasted the media for calling the results so early.

“Media outlets calling the results of the 2024 first-in-the-nation caucus less than half an hour after precinct caucuses had been called to order—before the overwhelming majority of Iowans had even cast their ballot—was highly disappointing and concerning,” Kaufmann said in a statement published on Monday night.

“One of the key differences between the Iowa Caucus and a standard primary election is that Iowans have the chance to listen to presidential candidates or their surrogates and deliberate to make an informed decision,” he added. “There was no need to rush one of the most transparent, grassroots democratic processes in the country.”

Newsweek contacted the Iowa GOP for comment by email on Tuesday.

DeSantis was also upset about the early call, with his campaign calling it “election interference.”

Andrew Romeo, DeSantis’ campaign communications director, said in a statement: “It is absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote. The media is in the tank for Trump, and this is the most egregious example yet.”

AP explained that it called Trump the winner of the Iowa caucuses so quickly based on analysis of early returns and results of AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 1,500 voters who planned to caucus on Monday night.

“Both showed Trump with an insurmountable lead,” the news agency said.

“Initial results from eight counties showed Trump with far more than half of the total votes counted as of 8:31 pm. ET, with the rest of the field trailing far behind. These counties include rural areas that are demographically and politically similar to a large number of counties that have yet to report.”

Nate Silver, founder of polling website FiveThirtyEight, said it was “not great that the networks called the race while there was still voting going on at many caucus sites,” on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Also part of a longstanding back and forth where the networks veer between overcaution and overzealousness. But it doesn’t show a lot of concern for the democratic process.”

Silver added that the whole process of networks “calling” races is “inherently a bit weird and will begin to lose value if there aren’t standards and practices, ideally stipulated in advance.”

In case there’s a disputed outcome in November after the presidential election, networks would provide an important check, Silver said. “Why blow your credibility tonight,” he asked.

“Caucuses started at 7 CST and races were called by 730. I guess you can pedantically argue 7 was “poll closing time”. But if you’ve ever covered a caucus, you know they can take 1+ hours since there are speeches. Most people hadn’t voted. Clearly violated [the] spirit of the policy,” he wrote.

Newsweek contacted Silver, AP, Fox News, CNN and CNBC for comment by email on Tuesday.

Talking to his supporters after the caucuses, the Florida governor spoke of his 30-point defeat as a victory, after he defied polling saying he would finish third, trailing Haley.

The results of the race represented a defeat for both DeSantis and Haley, who invested heavily in Iowa and needed a strong result to emerge as Trump’s clear and only rival. Now, as DeSantis and Haley are unlikely to drop out of the primary race, the two are likely to continue splitting the support of Republican voters seeking an alternative to Trump.

The Republican primary race is a little less crowded after the Monday caucuses in Iowa. Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the race for the 2023 presidential nomination after finishing fourth with 8 percent of the vote.

“As of this moment we are going to suspend this presidential campaign. There’s no path for me to be the next president absent things that we don’t want to see happen in this country,” Ramaswamy said, giving his endorsement to Trump.