--- title: Iowa Doesn't Pick Winners. It Culls Losers. description: And neither party can afford to ignore the message that Iowa will send on Monday night. canonical: https://time.com/6555387/iowa-winners-and-losers-trump-destantis-haley/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-01-14T22:25:54.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T16:57:18.739Z article:section: Politics og:title: Iowa Doesn't Pick Winners. It Culls Losers. og:description: And neither party can afford to ignore the message that Iowa will send on Monday night. og:url: https://time.com/6555387/iowa-winners-and-losers-trump-destantis-haley/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt05d7700d64018ac2/698a43c8457a526882d684ed/iowa-caucus-weather-cold-snow-06.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Iowa Caucus Weather og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Iowa Doesn't Pick Winners. It Culls Losers. twitter:description: And neither party can afford to ignore the message that Iowa will send on Monday night. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt05d7700d64018ac2/698a43c8457a526882d684ed/iowa-caucus-weather-cold-snow-06.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Iowa Doesn't Pick Winners. It Culls Losers. > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. Senior correspondent Philip Elliott brings sharp context to the issues driving the capital, connecting the decisions made in Washington to the institutions, industries and people they affect. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jan 14, 2024 10:25 PM UTC  Signage for the Iowa caucus during a storm in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 9, 2024. Signage for the Iowa caucus during a storm in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 9, 2024. Rachel Mummey—Bloomberg/Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jan 14, 2024 10:25 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ To listen to the pundits and pollsters tell it, Monday’s lead-off caucuses are a critical test in the Republican primary. Months have been spent tracking the aspirants' bobs and weaves, this tick up or down in polling, that [endorsement](https://rollcall.com/2023/11/13/why-kim-reynolds-endorsement-in-iowa-is-meh/) or [defection](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/13/trump-loses-iowa-endorser-reichman-00106201). For some candidates, the caucuses have been years in the making, the culmination of their first introduction to a national audience. But here’s the dirty truth: when Republicans gather for their convention in Milwaukee this summer, less than [2%](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/01/11/iowa-caucus-2024-explained/72181192007/) of the total delegates will be awarded from Iowa. No one wins the nomination in Iowa; there are only losers coming out of the 1,657 activist-run caucus sites scattered in high school gyms, church basements, and fire houses. No, the real prize is the Big Mo’, the sense of hope that the caucuses can bestow on the candidates hoping to derail ex-President Donald Trump’s third nomination in eight years. Would it even matter? In the last five competitive Republican caucuses, the winner of Iowa averaged fewer than 37,000 supporters, ranging from the 1996 tally of 25,000 supporters behind Bob Dole to the 52,000 Ted Cruz fans who set the modern record in 2016\. Among those five, dating to 1996, the most recent three winners in Iowa failed to be the actual nominee; the last to win Iowa and the big prize was George W. Bush in 2000.And all at the cost of millions upon millions of dollars; Republican ad spending in the state has [topped](https://time.com/6551836/nikki-haley-fundraising-ads-iowa/) $100 million this cycle alone. As many GOP candidates have lamented, Iowa is hardly representative of the party as a whole. More people live in one square mile of Manhattan than will be behind Monday night’s Iowa winner. Yet candidates can’t ignore it. Plenty have tried skipping the Hawkeye State’s vast plains in favor of friendlier terrain. As Chris Christie knows well by now, it’s exceedingly difficult to pull off. None of this is to disparage Iowa, a place where I’ve watched seemingly knowledgeable and competent national figures crumble into brow-beaten know-nothings as the party activists pepper contenders with detailed policy questions. The Christian Evangelicals there are a good test for candidates’ ability to message to the party’s base and can very quickly spot a huckster—or reward a Mike Huckabee. And the state’s tricky caucus system demands that candidates figure out how to build a machine beyond headlines and hype; it’s how Cruz bested the biggest braggart in politics in 2016. Democrats, burned by the caucus system after the failure of the party’s app four years ago and looking for an electorate more representative of their party, decided to can Iowa’s lead-off position in 2024 and instead start their official calendar in South Carolina on Feb. 3\. (New Hampshire, meanwhile, has something to say about that, and will have a [rogue](https://time.com/6238835/new-hampshire-primary-dnc-future/) primary on Jan. 23 that won’t [feature](https://time.com/6315461/joe-biden-new-hampshire-primary-ballot/) Joe Biden on the ballot.) And yet, neither party can afford to ignore the message that Iowa will send on Monday night. If Trump dominates as expected, it will reaffirm his sense of inevitability heading into New Hampshire on Jan. 23\. If Trump loses—or fails to meet expectations, as described by TIME’s Eric Cortellessa [here](https://time.com/6554726/donald-trump-iowa-caucus/)—it sends him to New England with wobblier odds. The fight in Iowa [appears](https://time.com/6551836/nikki-haley-fundraising-ads-iowa/) to be for second place, and it has put Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on a collision course. A disappointing result could well be the end of the road for DeSantis, who has pinned the future of his campaign on a strong result in the caucuses. Put simply: the result of Monday’s caucus matters as much as each watcherallows it to mean. Not because the outcome will determine who gets crowned at the convention this summer, but because it offers a hint about who is viable and—perhaps more importantly—who is not. The race is not won in the first moments, but you sure can stub a toe at a starting line and never recover from it. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6555387/iowa-winners-and-losers-trump-destantis-haley/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6555387/iowa-winners-and-losers-trump-destantis-haley/"},"headline":"Iowa Doesn't Pick Winners. It Culls Losers.","datePublished":"2024-01-14T22:25:54.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T16:57:18.739Z","description":"And neither party can afford to ignore the message that Iowa will send on Monday night.","url":"https://time.com/6555387/iowa-winners-and-losers-trump-destantis-haley/","keywords":["The D.C. 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