Despite receiving support from ‘Republicans for a day,’ it wasn’t enough for former South Carolina governor to avoid third-place finish in first 2024 vote.
DES MOINES, Iowa—Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was in the air and headed for New Hampshire before all Iowa caucuses had reported results on Jan. 15, leaving behind a third-place finish and speculation about how many of the nearly 21,100 votes she received statewide were cast by Democrats playing “Republican for a day.”
Former President Donald Trump cruised to a dominant victory in the first presidential preference vote of the 2024 election cycle, garnering 56,260, or 51 percent, of the 110,300 votes by Iowans registered as Republicans in the one-day, in-person, paper ballot election.
President Trump won the GOP vote in 98 of Iowa’s 99 counties. While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis finished a distant second with 23,420 votes, or 21.2 percent, edging past Ms. Haley by 1.1 percent, she was the only candidate not named Trump to win a county.
In Johnson County, the home of the University of Iowa and one of few counties in the state where Democrats outnumber Republicans, the former South Carolina governor—who served as United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration—received 1,271 votes, one more than the former president.
As of Jan. 3, there were 39,216 registered Democrats, 13,948 registered Republicans, and 21,475 unaffiliated voters on the county’s rolls, according to the Johnson County Auditor’s Office.
Several polls and anecdotal observations that caucus captains and voters shared with Epoch Times reporters strongly suggest that Ms. Haley benefitted from state election law that allows eligible citizens to register to vote or switch parties at caucus sites before ballots are cast.
According to entrance polling of 1,628 random caucus-goers across the state published by ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and The Washington Post, 63 percent of those who supported Ms. Haley identified as either moderate or liberal. Of those who backed President Trump, 22 percent said they were moderate or liberal. Only 6 percent of Mr. DeSantis’s supporters identified as such.
By John Haughey
