The FiveThirtyEight Team Goes To Iowa

CEDAR FALLS — It’s tempting, having just attended my first Donald Trump rally last night, to come to one of two hot-takey conclusions: Either Trumpmania is sweeping the Iowa cornfields, sure to produce overwhelming support for him in the Feb. 1 caucuses, or Trump’s whole campaign is a sideshow, attracting curiosity-seekers who have little interest in braving the cold to vote for him. The truth is probably somewhere in between. Let’s consider some benchmarks from tonight:

• Trump mostly packed the West Gymnasium at the University of Northern Iowa. I say “mostly” because there was some empty space toward the back of the room; on the other hand, the fire marshals were turning away late-arrivers. I’d estimate the crowd at somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people. While not a particularly large rally by Trump standards, it was nevertheless impressive.
• When a Trump staffer asked our section of the bleachers how many people were “definitively” planning to caucus for Trump, only about three of 60 hands (5 percent) went up. This is a low estimate of Trump’s potential support, however. (The staffer’s question was delivered somewhat uninvitingly, seemingly with the intention of identifying potential precinct captains and deterring those who might not be safe bets to turn out for Trump.) By contrast, when Trump co-chair Tana Goertz asked more warmly from the stage how many people were planning to caucus for Trump, perhaps 35 percent of the hands in the room went up.
• There weren’t a lot of people between the ages of 25 and 50 in the crowd. Instead, there was a clear delineation between UNI students (perhaps a third of the crowd), some of whom were attending the event for shits-and-giggles or class credit, and older local residents.
• Trump’s staff was making some concerted efforts at organizing: There were instructions from the stage on when and how to caucus; voter registration tables in the front of the gymnasium; and, as I mentioned, staffers looking for precinct captains. It’s not clear how high the uptake was on these efforts, however. Just two prospective voters were in line at the registration table when I left the event, for instance.

As for the substance of Trump’s remarks, they were not quite as exciting as the abridged version you see on TV. Trump came out to “Eye of the Tiger” and began by mentioning the American sailors detained by Iran. Then he went into a long soliloquy about his latest polls. Then (as Harry pointed out earlier) he engaged in some terrifically deadpan concern-trolling about Ted Cruz’s status as a “natural-born citizen.” Then more about the polls; Trump was annoyed that his polls in Iowa weren’t as good as his polls elsewhere. Then a bizarre, spoken-word recitation of the lyrics to Al Wilson’s “The Snake,” repurposed as a metaphor about Germany’s mistake in taking in Syrian refugees. Throw in a few jokes about Hillary Clinton’s legal problems and shoutouts to the UNI wrestling team. It had the feeling of attending a show by a band you’ve heard on the radio a few times. They play their big hits, which live up to their promise, but the new material is pretty rough and the showmanship is covering up for a lot of filler. You go away feeling sated and basically having had fun, but it’s not a concert you’re thinking much about a few days later. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that Donald Trump is getting far more people through the door than the other Republican candidates — that’s obvious. But it’s not quite as obvious how well he’s closing the sale and how many of them he’ll convert into actual Iowa caucus voters. That’s the message you get from the polls and it’s the impression I had on the ground last night, too.