How Trump might destroy a decades-old playbook
Front-runner’s caucus path bucks tradition
CLIVE, Iowa — For two decades now there has been a tried and true formula to winning the Iowa caucuses as a Republican.
First step: Campaign all over the state. The second step: Win over evangelical Christians, who made up two out of every three Republican Iowa caucus-goers during the last of the contested GOP caucuses here, in 2016, according to entrance polls.
In the 2000 caucuses, George W. Bush said at an Iowa debate his favorite political philosopher was “Christ. Because he changed my heart.” He then won. Iowa Republican caucus winners since then include a Southern Baptist preacher (Mike Huckabee, 2008), a devout Catholic (Rick Santorum, 2012), and a son of a preacher (Ted Cruz, 2016).
In 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis followed this playbook. He hired Cruz operatives, visited all 99 counties, and won the endorsements of not just the popular Republican Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds but also of the most influential evangelical political leader, Bob Vander Plaats. The Vander Plaats endorsement was notable because it previously went to Huckabee, Santorum, and Cruz when they were longshots.
However, heading into the final weekend before the year’s Iowa caucuses, polls suggest the traditional Iowa path is not working for DeSantis the same way. And it’s a reflection of the changes underway among Iowa voters and with the religious right nationwide.
The preferred candidate of not just Iowa Republicans but a majority of evangelicals here is former president Donald Trump. This is the same thrice-married Trump who rarely goes to church, can’t cite any favorite part of the Bible, was mocked after he incorrectly referred to a specific book in the Bible, and said he never asked God for forgiveness, a central tenet to bornagain Christians.
Trump has barely campaigned in the state but still had a dominant lead in every poll taken this cycle of likely Republican Iowa caucus voters. A Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll released Saturday night found Trump held a 28-point lead over the nearest competition. The same poll found that among evangelical voters specifically, Trump had 51 percent, DeSantis had 22 percent support, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley had 12 percent, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy had 8 percent.
Interviews with over a dozen Iowa political experts, activists, and everyday Iowa evangelical voters suggest there are many reasons why Trump is so successful with this group and why DeSantis appears to have fallen short.
One reason, as Kendron Bardwell, a religion and politics professor at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, explained, is research has found that calling yourself evangelical doesn’t mean the same as it used to 15 years ago.
“What is different now is that folks are taking on the evangelical label mainly because of its cultural connection, not because they are religious or they go to church,” said Bardwell, an evangelical himself. “And this has happened during the same period when secularism is on the rise and church attendance is down.”
This means that evangelical voters are demanding less that
‘Trump rubs the church elite the wrong way, but they are afraid to say anything that may anger those who show up ... Sunday.’
KENDRON BARDWELL, religion and politics professor
the people they vote with identify with them spiritually, but they help them win politically, he noted.
Shellie Flockhart, 52, of Dallas Center, a hair salon owner and ministry leader at a non-denominational evangelical church, said she’s voting for Trump in the upcoming caucuses because he “will remain strong” and is someone “who can put their foot down in the cultural war.” She believes Trump is a man of faith and that “the spirit in me recognizes the spirit in him.”
Trump has worked very hard to cultivate this image, especially here in Iowa. Unlike his previous runs for president, invocations from a local pastor have become a key part of the programming at Trump rallies, turning sidewinding prayers into political calls to action.
In the final days before first votes in Iowa, Trump posted a video called “God Made Trump” to his social media site.
“God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump,” the video began.
It quickly went viral and made some local faith leaders upset with its over-the-top messianic language.
Interestingly, where Trump is emphasizing faith themes, DeSantis largely does not.
At a rally with Vander Plaats at his side Thursday night, DeSantis, who is Catholic, repeatedly talked about COVID, never about Christ. But the way DeSantis handled COVID as Florida’s governor is what got evangelical Christians Maggie and Luke Loftin, parents of five children from Clive, backing DeSantis in the first place. The couple voted for Cruz over Trump in the 2016 caucuses.
For them, that DeSantis was working with faith networks to get support “is a plus” but not the motivator.
There is also a huge divide between leaders of churches and those in the pews, according to Bardwell, the religion and politics researcher.
“Trump rubs the church elite the wrong way, but they are afraid to say anything that may anger those who show up every Sunday,” said Bardwell.
This is something that Ryan Binkley, a lesser-known Republican presidential candidate, has seen firsthand. Binkley, a businessman, is the founder and lead pastor of Creation Church in Richardson, Texas.
Binkley is probably the world’s leading expert on what evangelical voters are thinking in the 2024 Iowa caucuses after spending a year trudging along in small groups and having intimate conversations about faith while trying to earn their vote. He talked to the Globe prior to meeting an evangelical pastor.
He described the evangelical support for Trump as partly transactional. During his presidency, Trump not only delivered a Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade, but stood up to “a movement from the last 50 years of trying to remove God from the country.” He, as many Iowa evangelical voters did, also cited Trump’s moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as a very positive development.
But what would it mean if Trump somehow breaks the traditional mold with a big win in Iowa, as he is expected to do on Monday night?
“It’s an atypical caucus. You have a former president running and he delivered a lot for evangelicals,” said Vander Plaats, the religious leader backing DeSantis. “I think the jury is still out,” he said.