NBC News NOW — Iowa Caucus Special

Right now, it's 8pm here on the east coast and we have a major election alert at this hour, which means doors have just closed at caucus sites across Iowa. Republicans there kicking off the process of picking the next president of the U.S. the NBC News decision desk has made its first characterization that this race is now too early to call. But former President Trump is leading.

A reminder of what I say tonight, 40 delegates, that's a small fraction of the 12, 15 you've secured. Republican nominations about 1.5%. But a strong performance in Iowa, of course, can catapult the campaign. We have full team coverage all across the Hawkeye State.

With voting now underway, our correspondence inside those Caucasi sides at campaign headquarters, as we've been showing you. But first, I do want to go back to NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd here with me in studio. And Chuck, just give me your immediate reaction to this characterization. Again, the poll numbers have been shown that, that much we know.

But I think it's really important because people are going to get home one way. The voting just started and you guys already know what's going on. Look, our entrance poll showed lot. Okay?

He led. You know, there's outside the margin of error. Look, we, we are really confident he's likely, that he's likely gonna win this thing, let alone have a lead all night. So we don't say those things unless we're in the 90 percentiles of believing.

95 plus percentiles. If you just wanna come. This does not mean we think he'll be over 50%. There's a lot of things that still matter tonight, right?

We think he's leaning. We think he's likely to stay the lead. The question is, does he get over 50 or not? You know what?

That's too early to tell. And it's too early to tell us it's competitive. I just tuned in right now. We have that entrance poll.

Fill it out. We get that data, it gets sent back to us in waves. Our decision desk goes through those numbers and they will talk to you until they feel something certain. And not only that, essentially, if you're starting the real bad, end the entrance full battle.

We just start. Essentially, you get rid of it. All right. Speaking of real bad, I wanna get to Hallie Jackson right now.

Hallie, it's begun. The Iowa caucuses are underway. Tell me what you're seeing, what you're hearing, how it feels like doors are closed. It's happening, it's getting ready to start.

You've got the final folks who are checking in here. This table is voter registration. So this is folks coming in, first time caucus goers or first time Republican caucus goers. They're signing up to get to where the action is tonight.

This table is where people again, mostly wrapped up now check in. They get. There's two precincts of this particular caucus site. So in walking here, when they check in, they're gonna get this.

This is essentially the ballot, right? You only get one. I move this little cord that fell in the way. You only get one.

So don't lose it. That's what we're told here. I'm gonna show you where this ballot goes and it's gonna go over the next couple minutes because as we said, the action is beginning here. We've got supporting, you can ask by the shirt, Ron DeSantis, so green people as they walk in, because remember, this is what the caucus process is all about.

You're gonna see people when we go into the gymnasium here in a second talking in support of each of the candidates who are in the running tonight, each of these Republicans to try to miss their friends, their neighbors, the people in their community that they should come out and back, whoever. Well, you talked about with Chuck some of the numbers that we're seeing from the entrance polling. What's interesting to me is the issue is that some of these caucus goals were said that they're most motivated by immigration and the economy. As I'm on campaign trail here in Iowa, that's what I hear at all of these campaign rallies, all of these stump speeches from being scandal, It's a focus on those two issues.

Okay, here's my little bit quiet because as you can see, we're getting closer. This is where the Republican caucus is and this is it. This is the gym where this is all happening. I'm going to walk you in here to show you kind of the lay the land.

And I'm going to tell you before again, this is. It's the beginning now. It's getting ready to begin any second. We could roam around, we could have in the bleachers.

This is about as far as we. As far as members of the media are allowed to go at this point because we don't want to interfere with what's happening in the caucus process. I told you about the ballots. Where do they go?

Let me show you. See those buckets? This is old school. The ballots go in the buckets.

Now, why are there two sets of buckets? Remember, there are two precincts here, right? Three and four in Waukee. So People depending on where they live, which precinct they're going to come and they're going to write the name of the person they're backing and drop it in the.

That person's bucket. I mean, this is like, you know, about as easy as it gets from just a physicality piece of it. We've been talking to some of the folks here. We're seeing, for example, people in trunk shirts.

We'll walk back here with our cameraman Paul here for a second, people with Nikki Haley swag on, people with Ronnie Santos stickers here. And what's going to happen is each of these individual representatives get about three minutes to speak on behalf of whatever candidate they're backing. So you're going to hear those speeches happen. And at that point, people will come up, they'll cast, throw their ballots, put their.

Put their ballots in the buckets for whoever they pick, and then things get counted. And then you have the poll reporter at the caucus location here basically log on to a website, record the data, and then it gets beamed back to whatever shop the decision desk team is looking at to be able to determine where this thing goes tonight, with so much at stake here as it relates to what this is going to tell us, what to tell us about the state of the Republican Party, what is Donald Trump's grit on the gop, who might come in second place and get that momentum heading into the next day, which, of course, is New Hampshire, where it will be a primary that looks a lot different than the caucuses, that looks a lot more traditional, if you will. Can I say why everything, Tom? And I don't know if you notice, there's little kids here.

I mean, that's allowed you to be 18, forced to actually caucus, but you can be younger and come in and watch the process. And so these parents, you know, bring in kids to see it, just to be able to kind of see what the vibe is, what it is like to go to caucus. We actually, our team spoke with a voter on eastern Iowa caucus, I should say, who had been coming to these caucuses since he was a kid watching this process happen. Because this is it.

I mean, this is. You're about to see it. This is democracy here in Iowa. And pretty soon we'll know what's going on here.

Halle's so great. It's democracy in real time. And it's so amazing and wonderful that Iowa lets us shoot all this and broadcast it live and show what's happening. It's just, it's such a great process, and it is spectacular.

Halle, thank you. Stand by as well. And it's not just happening there where Halley's in Dallas County. It's happening all across the state.

This is our big board. This is where I said our range of NBC news. We're all across the state. I'm having a little fun right now.

So we're just talking in Dallas County. If we can go to ren26. I think there's a caucus underway there. This is Lynn County.

If we get right. Hold it up a punch in there. And if we just go a little further south, you guys can tell me we're head number 38. It looks like we have some captains making some calls right there.

Run number 38 all across the state. What about ren number 39 lining up to vote. There's a big, big caucus. Side rent 39 right there.

Long lines to vote. The cold weather not slowing these people down. Run 31 is just for fun. That's my good friend Von Hilder just waited to go live on television.

He's looking great. There he is. What a great reporter. But anyways, we have this massive board.

We have people all across the state. Incredible coverage. Including our Priscilla Thompson. She's in Sioux County, Iowa.

Remember that western rural county boards up to South Dakota. Priscilla, talk to us. What you're seeing as the building is underway there. We first checked in with you and that site was kind of empty.

Has it filled out a little bit more, Tom? It has. This line was out the door at 7 o' clock when the doors closed. They're still working to get folks checked in so they can get this caucus underway.

I'm going to show you the rumor that's gonna happen in just a second. But it is packed in there. But first I want to introduce you to a copy. We talked to some folks who were backing Donald Trump earlier today and now we have a Nikki Haley supporter who we met earlier out and about at the mall.

So Nikki Haley, tell me why. Well, I believe in her values, her Christian values and her policies and I think she's gonna be a strong leader. We really have a lot of faith in her and we should do really well now. Do you think she can win in this county though?

No, to be honest with you. She should have a good showing, I think. But you know, Trump's got a big lead on everybody and we'll see how Nikki does tonight. But you hope a good enough showing gets the momentum heading into the other states?

Yeah, that's correct. All right, well, we will see how it turns out. We'll Let you get in there, and we're gonna move as well, Tom. So I can just give you a look at the room right now.

There were 360 chairs set up in here. Looks like all of them are full right now. There are three different precincts in here, folks ready to make their voices heard. And as we talked about earlier, and mind you, people lined up against the wall, and as you saw, there are still folks trying to get in here.

So it is gonna be a very busy night here. And this is Sioux County. This is a very evangelical county. Donald Trump lost this county.

It was his worst performance in the state of Iowa in 2016. But we've spoken to a lot of people here today who say that they are now backing him, including one caucus who supported ted Cruz in 2016, which is one this county, but is now backing Donald Trump because he says that he helped pay the way to overturn Roe v. Wade and sort of put that ban on abortion. And he's done a lot of things that he thinks is leading the country in a godly direction is what he told me.

But it remains to be seen if the majority of the room feels that way. But certainly in talking, folks, a lot of people talking about Donald Trump tonight, a couple people also talking about Nikki Haley, have not met a Ron DeSantis supporter yet. But I'm sure that they're in here and we'll find out as soon as things get underway. Yeah, it's really interesting.

There are more than 1600 caucusyes, but to see your. Your caucus site, and you're out west in a rural area, and it's filled up, you know, it leads to questions about what turnout's gonna be like. And with that massive control against that turnout graphic we had about historical turnouts in the Iowa caucuses, I think that's really important. We're also getting fresh data in from our entrance polls with chocolate.

But before we start here, I do want to talk about turnout, because turnout is important sometimes. What turnout is low, we won't know yet what the weather. The thinking was the turnout could be lower. But you're seeing caucusy, and there's people filling him up.

Since Donald Trump in politics, all elections have had higher turnout. That's just a fact. I could say perhaps it fires people up because they love them or fires people up because they hate them. Whatever it is.

We have seen higher turnouts. We've had the highest midterm turnout we've ever had in our lifetimes. We've seen again. So what's been interesting is I don't benefits from my turnout.

The question is, with this super cold night, does he also benefit from low turnout because he's the most committed supporters. Here's something though, that's interesting. We've talked about the angelic we just heard. Let me show you here.

It's an even split. Okay. All right. But did you know in 2016, the evangelical vote, 62% were evangelical.

So this is another way that Donald Trump has remade the party. It isn't as evangelical as it used to be. We're seeing this in Iowa. It is less evangelical, but more conservative because Donald Trump sets the terms of the party.

Donald Trump defines what conservative is. So if you're with Trump, you're very conservative. It is no longer, you know, 2016, we had the same categories. People look at it differently.

Trump wasn't seen as a conservative. People were questioning his conservative credential. That's no longer the case. This is fascinating me.

Not only Trump doing better with the evangelicals, but there's fewer of them here. This not a good number for Ron DeSantis. Anyway. There's one other fascinating thing about this electorate and we're still getting it.

So I want to be careful drawing a conclusion. But nearly half of voters are over the age of 65. That's double. It means this would be literally the oldest Republican electorate in the history of the Iowa caucusus.

It is nearly 50% of the electors over 65. In 2016, it was under 30. And talk to us about who this benefit is. We're looking at live pictures right now of Nikki Haley's video caucus site, I believe somewhere near the Des Moines area.

Well, we've seen, I mean, you can see anecdotally, you can see the older voters are now more pro Trump. That has not always been the case. Like his sweet spot during his term actually was Jax, not the boomers. But now you're starting to see, particularly in this lecture, the most voted voters and the primary caucus are older voters in Heath Appalachia.

All right, as the voting gets Underway in Iowa, 12 minutes in a way, back to Halle Gak. She's in Dallas county at caucus location there. She's been walking us through how that location has been going. And Halle, what you've seen so far as the voting just started.

There and they're getting ready to pledge. You can see at this caucus location, I'm just step in front it ask us to stand back a little bit. So we don't care for what's happening here. But you see temporary precinct counting now delivering sort of instructions to people again two precincts here at this caucus location.

And it sounds like what they're going to do first is give the speeches so representatives will come up to speak on behalf of each of the candidates. So that's where you're at the moment. I'm going to talk about you. So we listen.

Anyone here politically campaigning want to speak on his behalf? See none. We will move on to Governor DeSantis. I have a representative from Governor DeSantis right here.

So this is great. As we watch these copses unfold here, this shows me the mobilization. Right. You know someone speaking on the DeSantis side.

Listen for a long time for me my support for the governor is personal in hiring service in the navy. I admire him for Iraq and he's the right guy to take this country in a new direction. Story went to Yale on a baseball scholarship. Tapped the team.

Found himself in after 9 11. As you all know those were tough times. We were at war in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq was beginning and ran put his hand in the air and said I'm going to serve my country.

I'm joining this fast pace. Went to Wall street class went to big buffers he joined, went to F Iraq. Was a chief legal advisor for CMC1 which is a big job. Special operators for those around doing top missions with incomplete information.

You got the Geneva eventually you got the rooms of or not as you were saying spread out across Iowa. As we look at our big board here ren35 we can see Nikki Haley. She's in Weston one giving her final pitch tonight on caucus nine. Let's listen in.

Whether it's lawlessness in our streets or the fact that the world is on fire and America feels home. Our country is in a disarray and the world is on fire. But it doesn't have to be this way. We can do better.

But we have to acknowledge some hard truth. Republicans have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president. That's nothing to be proud of. We should want to win the majority of Americans but the only way we're going to win the majority of Americans is if we have a new generational leader.

That leaves the negativity and chaos of the pass. It moves forward with new solutions for the future. You don't Democrat chaos with Republicans. You know there are a lot of head to head polls and the one thing that keeps me up at night is what happens between now and election day.

And God help us if we ever get a president. Kamala Harris because we won't survive. Her final pitch to voters there as the voting is underway just 16 minutes in, but we already have some data and some important data from our entrance poll that NBC News conducted as caucus doors or walking into the caucus locations. Chuck, we checked in with you earlier, giving us a breakdown, demographics, where people live, things like that.

Now we're talking about education. Just to refresh you, it was basically 50 on education, college grads, non college grads. You can see among college grads, about half the electorate here. Trump and Haley are neck and neck, 35% for Trump, 33% for Haley.

DeSantis also over 20 there with Ron Swami at nine. Now you look at it with those without a college degree and you see why we are characterizing this as a Trump lead, both demographics he sees in both. The other one may be a margin of error. This, though, look at this at 65, DeSantis at 17.

Nobody else in double digits here. This is the reminder. This is, this is how Trump has dominated the party. And this demographic group in particular has been his most helpful.

Chuck Talk presents the data is coming now. I want to move back to the panel now as we're getting our first sort of glimpse of what voters are thinking, maybe who they're choosing, things like that. Carlos, I want to start with you. There was a never Trump lane, right, an anti Trump lane early on in this race.

And Chris Christie maybe sort of took up that entire lane and he disintegrated, he disappeared. Is there no doubt that this is Donald Trump's party and that vote, maybe that lane is non existent? Tom there's no question we can see it in the Iowa results, these early untruthful results, and we're seeing it in national polling. The Republican Party is Donald Trump's party.

If someone wants to take over, if someone wants to overcome Donald Trump, they're going to have to convince Donald Trump supporters that they're the best person, that they're better than Donald Trump. You're seeing Nikki Haley trying to walk that very fine line. She's not the anti Trump candidate. She's also not pro Trump.

She's trying to have it both ways. And it looks like in New Hampshire she might, she might be able to win over some Trump voters who made her tired of him, who maybe don't think he's the best candidate to go up against President Biden. So Nikki Haley has managed for now to kind of have it both ways. We'll see as this process unfolds if that sustainable.

MARY Catherine, after the 2020 inauguration. I surveyed about 30 Republicans all across the country and asked them, who are your top three picks? And a majority of them, Donald Trump was in the top three. They were ready to turn the page.

What happened the last year and why did argument of I'm like Trump but without the chaos possibly not work? What happened was 91 indictments, which has a. It's a real problem with the Republican Party because it consolidates his support and makes his supporters more adhere to him, which is a troll for anybody trying to create an alternative and it makes him more radioactive in a general election. However, the best argument against Trump was he can't win.

I'm better at winning and the national polls lately are not showing that. But I do feel like, can I speak to the disaffected voter? Because I feel like an elephant in the room here, slash donkey in the room, which is that no one wants these two guys to run. And people like me, I am the.

We're talking like 58% don't want either one of these guys to run. People like me, I'm the demo right leaning version of it. Suburban educated mom who has been chased out of the GOP during the Trump years and is being crushed by inflation. Do not feel like these guys are speaking to it and is looking at this election going, are we going to do the same thing we did 2020, but older?

It's not a great pitch to a lot of people. That's why 70 something percent of this nation is like, we're moving in the wrong direction. When you describe sort of the tent you feel you're in right now, are you somebody who, if it is a Trump line race, you're not going to vote or you're going to take someone. I mean, it might end up being the third.

As a political judge, it'll be the third election where I have not felt like I can vote for a major party candidate and that's saying something. And there's a lot of people like me. I got to this with the Trump campaign spokesperson, Bruce, that we talked to earlier, Ruse Lavelle. But I mean, part of this was sort of, I don't call it luck, but the indictments ended up helping Trump, not hurting him.

Right as we see President Trump right now. This is a live look. We're going to see if we can dip and see what he's saying as his final pitch here in Iowa. Israel being attacked.

We didn't have Ukraine being attacked and they would have never been attacked. We didn't have China threatening to take Taiwan. We didn't have ships being blown up all over the Middle east like happened today. We have a strong country with a respected country country.

And everybody was doing much better in this room. Better for the farmers, they say. Thank you. Always better for the farmers, they say, than any president in the history of our country.

$28 billion to the farmers because they took advantage of politicians that were doing a very poor job. And frankly, they took advantage of our great farmers. And it's not going to happen. And it will never happen.

I stood up for ethanol like nobody has ever stood up for it. 5 Iowa, that's a little west of Des Moines. The excerpt, if you will, of the M.O. right there making his final pitch to caucus goers as we have been voting on Iowa for 21 minutes.

With that said holding the point, I was trying to make a question. A lot of this last year, you know, the indictments end up helping him, not hurt him. That according to polling and other reporting, the polling not being ripped for President Biden. That also made the argument that can be Biden, Trump can't.

Right. And then he just sort of laid back and school risk went up. Sure, absolutely. And you hit on it, I think.

And this is where most people are in this country. And that is we used to have to, as Republicans point all the way back to Reagan and say, look how good it was back in the 80s. This was just a few years ago when you could afford gas and groceries and rent and car payments and house payments. You can't do that anymore.

It was just a few years ago as Trump was kind of lying right there. There weren't wars breaking out all over the world. We had a sane, rational Southern border policy. And immigration, which was a backbench issue, is now a top two issue for most people.

So he did these things and a lot of people sat back and said, wait a minute. In this time when we were sold, Joe Biden was just good old Uncle Joe and he's gonna keep things calm. And now he's doing all these things. It hurt real Americans.

And they. One of those American first policies. We had that with him. And as you point out, the rest of the field just says, if you, if you let me out, promise I could do that, too.

He's like, I did it already. I don't have the problem. It was also a few years ago that January 6th happened. It was also a few years ago that former president was accused and now he has to defend himself of trying to steal a Democratic election in the United States.

And he hasn't seemed to have faced, at least for now, Republican voters in Iowa. Well, that's right. And I think that these indictments, as you pointed out, have really ended up helping Trump and have helped him just kind of overshadow all those concerns about the 6th of January, all those concerns that a lot of these middle of the road voters may have had. Now, having said that, Tom, this race for second place still matters and New Hampshire could really jolt this race.

New Hampshire could really scramble this race. If Nikki Haley comes in a close second, if she manages to win in New Hampshire, we could see a big reset in this race. And a lot of those people who were maybe unsure about Donald Trump might give someone like her a second look. It will all depend on what happens here tonight and then what happens in New Hampshire.

If Donald Trump can have a solid win tonight and then a solid win in New Hampshire, he's probably going to be the nominee. If Nikki Haley can come in second tonight, go into New Hampshire with more momentum, maybe overtake Trump in New Hampshire, at least come in a close second, then anything can happen after that as she goes back home to her stay in the South Carolina. I appreciate it. I want to get right over to Chuck Todd.

Chuck, you have an interesting data point that could be a potential game changer in this race. We talked about the evangelicals. We talked about them breaking together, breaking late. Ron DeSantis got big endorsements.

Trump got 100, you know, pastors in Iowa. But this is not a number that Ron DeSantis, I remember Cruz carried evangelicals last time. And as we showed you, there were more evangelicals in the last competitive Republican caucus. But look at this.

Trump's over 50% of them evangelicals. That's half the electorate. And DeSantis is not even a quarter of the electorate. That, I mean that, you know, this again, how many different ways we want to characterize the Trump's ahead and head by a lot here.

But is another way he's, he's remade the party. And as I said, you know, you talk to evangelical leaders and they will say it's the congregants that led this shift. It's not as if pastors and leaders said, oh, this is what it really is. The rank and file.

He has in many ways moved, almost sort of forced the leaders of evangelical churches to be with Trump. Something else happening here. Right. Because there were some questions before we got the last poll and before this data came in that, that some people were like, well, the former president, you know, he hasn't been supporting the harpy bills across America.

He hasn't been as tough on LGBTQ evangelicals. Yeah. My point is. But that being said, there was something else here.

Yeah, but there's something else here. There's something they can look beyond whenever elections, they will look past that. No. And again, I think it goes back to also Trump delivered something the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court.

So they see it as that way and they're not getting at the detail. So I think this has been among the miscalculations that somehow and this is the other thing that I feel like that's coming through loud and clear from this poll. DeSantis is theory that case he could run just like Tekker's. Did he run to the right of Trump, that there was somehow room to run to Trump's right.

The problem is Trump has defined what right is. Yeah. So no matter what DeSantis did, the voter has never got perceived. DeSantis is somehow being pro.

Trump is also being seen as the most conservative. Right. So there's and this is the case where again, those of us have been doing this a long time have to almost unlearn the definition of conservative, because what was conservative 10 years ago and what is voter conservative Conservative today are two different things. But Donald Trump is the avatar for conservatism now, no matter what old school conservative want to say about.

Right. He debate the meaning of that. Right. We appreciate that.

I want to get back to our big board over here that shows the countdown clock. We are 26 minutes into the Iowa caucus voting. We actually already have some vote in. It's not a lot, it's 1%.

But with 1% reporting, we can say that Donald Trump is far away in the lead. Again, just 1%. Not much to say there. You can see here 75% for former President Trump, 50%, 5.3% for Haley.

Again, 1%. Not much we can draw out of here, but if you're Team Trump, you'll take a win anyway. It is more Barrett is at Paucasci in Clinton county for us tonight in the eastern part of the state. She was outside hopefully now she's inside.

Laura, tell us what you're seeing with birds are telling you hey, down. So this is actually a really interesting unique location. If you let into the crowd here, we're in a high squatted touring through it in Clinton County. This straight high section in front of me is one precinct.

Then over in the middle it's another precinct. And then all the way on the other side is another precinct. So the way this is supposed to work is that each precinct has a chair. They run the individual caucusite each candidate gets someone can speak for them.

But basically what's happening here that all of them are going one by one together. And so right now they're having a conversation about whether each of the caucus, the campaign captains will get up and speak on the stage together. I'm going to bring you just downstairs. You'll see some of the signing registration forms on the stage and you can get them out of the way as they're conducting their party business.

I was actually just speaking with Patty Anderson. She is the woman just in the middle of the I was trying over here with one wearing the Trump campaign captain hat. I'm just behind me and she was helping check people in. An interesting fact that stood out to me was that she checked in about 10 to 15 people that changed their party registration in order to show up and be able to Republican caucus on the Republican side.

And that's something that's really unique that you have to be registered with the party caucus here. And that's something that we heard a lot from Democrats. Democrats. I checked in the from sources I had met when I lived here back in 2019, 2020.

They were talking about duplicate doing that for Nikki Haley. So that's something we're watching definitely in terms of that campaign and have Gil show just kind of the action behind the scenes here because they're kind of figuring this out on the fly. But this is definitely a busier campaign copycite. Excuse me.

Patty said she's never seen a turnout like this here and she's been involved in DeWitt politics for the last few cycles. And so that's something that I think we were looking especially in this rural they told me it's a lot more crowded here in rural southeastern Iowa than they typically see. And that's something that we were concerned about because of those icy roads, because of the snow, because of the cold. And yet this is definitely a more crowded sense than they were anticipating.

And so they haven't started the voting yet. They're going to be doing the speeches and we're actually getting a motion. We're going to get out of the way so we're not interfering. That's one of the bylaws that we agreed to.

I'm going to send it and I'll keep you updated. But yeah, this is, this is a pretty crowded site tonight. We'll be watching as a post. Mora, great job.

We appreciate it. I want to go back to Dallas County. That's West Of Des Moines actually the site of, if you're political junkie, the Romney Iowa headquarters back in the day. Maybe it's the alien country, maybe it's Rhonda, the Santa's country, who knows?

But it's Hallie Jackson country tonight. So Hallie, talk to us. What can you tell us tonight? Can you tell us anything from the vote you've seen so far that doesn't break any rules obviously, but anything you can characterize what you're seeing on the ground there?

There's an interesting nugget I'm going to tell you about actually. I think I get your questions on. Before I do, I just want to explain people where I am. I've obviously stepped in the hallway here as more was just talking about.

Listen, we don't want to be obtrusive, we don't want to mess with what's happening in that room. So I'm going to step outside because right now what you're seeing is in the precinct business happening. So the four people who are standing here now, this is where the speeches were. They are the precinct captains and precinct secretaries.

So they're going to be conducting the business of what's about to go here. And they're explaining to people right now how they're gonna get ready to cast those ballots, meaning put those pieces of paper right into those orange and white buckets that you see now I don't know if you had a chance to see, but we've already had here at this particular location the speeches given by representatives of each of the campus. You saw that happen, I'll note there was a non representative here speaking on behalf of Ace Asheson, but there was for Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Montis, etc and at the end of that we had our precinct captain, Jake, who's speaking now, he's the one with the purple shirt at the agency. He said how many of you are first time caucus goers?

And we saw a fair number of people raise their hands and his reaction was holy cow, basically. So it's interesting to see we saw the voter registration table earlier as well, people coming in and signing up for the first time to come in caucus to basically register here in the Republican caucus. So listen, we want to be careful. We're just one, we are one caucus location.

These are two precincts out of 1600 across the state. So this is purely anecdotal but it is a glimpse into how this process works. Not as I say, the milestones. We have been watching this happen.

It's been Interesting to see, of course, the candidates come to this caucus location. That is some star power, if you will, to see them speaking on behalf of themselves, of these caucus sites. But you know what's also kind of amazing is watching regular people, citizens, neighbors, community members coming up and delivering speeches on behalf of these candidates. I mean, this really is what we say.

But it's true. This is the democratic process that's happening here. And we know what the stakes are for the Republican Party here. Does Donald Trump, depending on these results, have a grip on the Republican Party that is insurmountable for a non Trump alternative?

We don't know who's going to take that race for second place. Nikki Alia Ronan, sentence we don't know. You're starting to see some movement here. I'm going to step back a little bit closer here.

The raising organic. That's what being told by our producer. So you know when you're, when you're analog and old school like for the ballots and you're Halle, I interrupt you. We have a major election alert from our decision desk.

We want to scam live for breaking news. I think we have a call and we do. NBC News can now project that Donald Trump has won the Iowa caucus. The first votes just coming in with Trump leading Haley and DeSantis by double digits.

You can see right there Donald Trump, 14 delegates already awarded at a 40. It's unclear the margin victory right now is still unclear who's in second place. But it's still very early. But now with the first contest so far, the first votes underway, Donald Trump, a former president running away with victory.

Now, this is no surprise, but still it's a notch in the belt before former President Trump and gives him the big momentum as he gets New Hampshire the contest next week. Again, no big surprise here, but still a very decisive, very big win for Donald Trump. It also shows where a lot of voters heads are right on the Republican Party. I want to go over Gary Hake.

He's been a main reporter covering Trump throughout this election. Gary, you're at the victory party right now. Emmy seems has projected a victory. I don't know if I can hear the celebrating behind you yet.

Are they aware that they've just won the cot? They expect this, Tom. They've long expected this. And Donald Trump himself likely still on his way back here from speaking at a caucus site in one of the western suburbs a little distance from here.

And islands are going to still be in their caucus sites, most likely even here around the Des Moines area where some of these bigger sites are a little bit larger, take a little bit longer to get through their process here. But as you said in this moment, not a surprise for Donald Trump to be projected to be the winner of this caucus. He's led from wire to wire in every poll, most recently in our poll coming out overnight over the weekend having him abruptly the support of half of likely caucus goers. We'll see where this final total lands.

But if you step back a little bit further, Tom, is a bigger moment. Remember, Donald Trump lost this caucus in 2016. Since he last appeared on a ballot anywhere in this country. He's been impeached, indicted in four different jurisdictions.

He's faced civil trials. He's lost one civil trial already in New York. I mean, the amount of incoming that Donald Trump has faced from the legal system and from voters from the UN States House in the impeachment following January 6, to be in a position now to win by an even larger margin than any significant priority won in 2016, it looks like what we're looking at here now. I think it's a very telling moment about the way in which he is still likely the leader of this party and the nature of the sort of pseudo incumbency that he brings to this race.

I mean, to have a call this quickly to be in this moment is like having an incumbent present running in this race. And I think that's probably what we're see tonight as we get a little bit further into this. And certainly what the Trump team expected. I mean, throughout this, they were not in any doubt about the outcome of this.

They've been trying to lower it expectations about what the total will be here. The number to Watch is around 13 percentage points. That's the previous record for a contested Republican primary here. If Donald Trump's able to beat that, they will be satisfied.

The margin which is able to beat that, I think will be one of the big things we're talking about tomorrow in the interviewing week before New Hampshire gets their sick. That's 836 on the East Coast, 736 in Iowa. Already be able to project Donald Trump a winner. It shows his popularity in the state and sort of the amount that he's probably going to win by the size of this victory here.

What do we know about the former president's schedule tonight? Are we going to hear from him? I can remember back in 2016 when it was a very close race. It was a very hot night inside the campaign hall in Iowa.

It took a while to speak. Would we expect him to talk tonight. We do. Tom is every indication he's going to speak tonight.

The stage is set behind me with a prompter already loaded, I suspect of the victory speech that spends some time in the making here tonight. And you know, for the Trump campaign, I think I see this as kind of two tasks and I think you'll see this in the speech tonight. First, they feel like very confident that they have probably put Ron DeSantis in their rearview mirror. Donald Trump has been very focused on Nikki Haley and making sure she does not, you know, become the momentum candidate out of whatever happens today that, you know, despite a victory for Trump here, the story is not whoever comes in second place, especially if it's Haley going into New Hampshire.

And then I think the other goal that we'll see the Trump campaign try to hit tonight in Donald Trump when he speaks tonight is to create this air of inevitability that he wants to see around him as a nominee to try to focus on Joe Biden and try to convince the remaining holdouts within the Republican Party, both Republican elected officials and Trump skeptical voters all around the country that the time is now to get behind him once again to take on Joe Biden. I mean, if you think about it, at the beginning of this race, the concern about Donald Trump was electability was not that the Republican base voters didn't love him, but the idea that he would be a weaker candidate against Joe Biden. The polls have not borne that out. When we sort of project these general elections matchups, I know we're a long way from the general election, but I suspect we will see Donald Trump stand on the stage behind me tonight and make the point that is now voters who are trying to put that argument to bed and that it's time to unite behind the message he's given.

By the way, every time he skipped a debate or otherwise refuses to participate in kind of the traditional open primary process that we usually use to select a nominee. Gary Hayford at the Trump victory party no longer watch party because they have victory tonight as far as MC News is projecting. Gary, we appreciate give us a heads up when the former president starts to speak. If you're just reading in, NBC News has just rejected that Donald Trump has won the Iowa caucuses.

It is so early in the night. I want to get right over to Chuck. Chuck, it's 8:38 people at home. I really want you to explain this for our viewers.

It's 8:38. There's 1% of the voting people. Wait, how can MCCU call this Explain how people call this. We have these entrance polls.

We have an idea, we have sample presents and we're able to do certain things. We also know what the electorate looks like, right? We know college educated versus non college educated. We know how well he's winning that.

I want to show some splits here so that you can get an idea of just how dominant it was. So why we called Donald Trump, I told you nearly half the electorate over 65. Okay, let me show you how Donald Trump did with those over 65. He had over 55%, right.

Haley a distant second, sitting at 24%. So he did it because this electorate is Trump's electorate. It's older, it's very conservative, as I told you before. And they sort of buy everything he says.

We've got a couple of questions here that I think folks are going to be really interested in. Did Biden legitimately win the 2020 election? We've seen a lot of this Republican result is just like every Republican resulting. It's about two to one.

Two thirds don't believe in one legitimately and about a third believe Biden one legitimately. Let me show you the breakouts of this. Among those that I don't think that Biden won legitimately. As you can see here, Haley Leeds, she is the candidate of those Republicans who believe Joe Biden won the election in 2020.

Jump us back and go back to the other day and show you among among those. Looks like we flip that for let's forth here. We did and we have that as an error here. Let's see if it has the other way there.

This it should have been the other way around. Trump wins those 70%. Obviously, of those who do not believe Biden won legitimately. The other big headline group we're waiting for who came in second place right in the Iowa caucuses.

That may be something that you and I may be off here by the time we know who second place is, because even in our third waves of polling, it's really, really tight. Look, Haley's going to do best in Des Moines and around there. Desantis should do well in more parts of the state. So this is something to watch for us, you know, meaning like he'll do well and he'll do second place in some of these royal counties where Haley may not register at all.

All right, Chuck, we appreciate you and appreciate all that now for more on now by David Washman. He's the senior editor and elections analyst for the Cook Political Report and anseller, the pollster behind the Warren Register NBC News Media Comp Poll. Thanks so much for joining us tonight, guys. I really do appreciate it.

And I want to start with you. Your poll was obviously the bull standard in Iowa. We'll see how the race goes so far. But right now, with 1%, NBC News can project that former President Trump is the winner.

Talk to me not only about what your poll found with why Iowa voters chose Donald Trump, but I know you had a lot of focus groups, too, and things sort of stood out to you in those focus groups over the year of why I was still very much behind Donald Trump. Well, I hate to correct you right off, but I have not done any focus groups here in Iowa, so I don't have anything to share about it. I've observed some, but I heard you speak, an interview you were talking about. That's how you observe the.

Right. Right. And, and I think what your projection calls is not surprising at all. It's been a very consistent, strong front position for Donald Trump.

And I think the drama, the contest here is between Monte Santos and Nikki Haley. And I'm very interested. I may stay up the whole time to see how that comes out. What do you think it was about former President Trump's campaign?

Do you think it was more about what he was saying on the campaign trail, or do you think it was outside factors like we talked about tonight, both the indictments, President Biden's poll numbers going lower and lower throughout the year, the economy, what's happening overseas. I think it was a combination of all that. I think you have to understand that Donald Trump began this contest with a giant head start. He had competed in an Iowa caucus before, and whatever organization, structure was there, he could begin with where Ron DeSantis has never run for anything in Iowa.

Nikki Haley has never run for anything in Iowa. Add to that the Donald Trump won the general election here twice. So he already had a base of support here in Iowa to build on and then to, to execute a caucus plan. And apparently with a team that learned from 2016 that it matters what happens in the caucus room on caucus night.

And I would, I expected him to do well. We'll see how well that turns out to be. I think the question for Donald Trump is exactly what you said before. What is the margin?

Dave, you're somebody who watches polls or somebody who can call races sometimes earlier than others when you see enough data. When did you see this race over? Was it over even before the voting started? Pretty much.

And I think realistically, Republicans had one opportunity to stop Donald Trump from becoming the nominee that was all the way back in the second conviction vote in the Senate in 2021 where he was acquitted. But look, I'll be watching to see what the margins are because, because the kinds of voters that Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis needed to be competitive in this primary, a lot of those voters have left the Republican Party in the era of Trump and in the last four years as well. And I'm gonna be drilling in on the five counties that Marco Rubio won in 2016 to see if Haley or DeSantis are beating Trump there, but also to see whether Haley has a pulse outside of those highly college educated places in Iowa to see whether she can carry some momentum if she does play second into New Hampshire. And those are the kinds of voters that Trump is going to need in a general election, even if they're not going to be determinative of these Republican primaries.

It's a great point. And talk to me also about the change you saw in this Iowa caucus. I heard you talk about, quote, invisible campaign, how you didn't see as many yard signs as years passed and how you think the game has changed, especially media, with social. Social media.

Well, I think in the olden days, there was a lot that was visible to the public. Just driving around the streets that the campaign headquarters tended to be highly visible. You could drive by and see if there was activity, was a parking lot full of volunteers coming into phone bank. And they're just ways that you could literally almost get a pulse of what was happening.

And certainly in the days leading up to the caucus, you could kind of feel a vibration in the air as something was going to happen. And all the cards were in. Everything was, was rigged for caucus night to explode for each of those candidates. And now I drove through Des Moines and I saw six, seven yard signs.

One was for Ron DeSantis and six were in front of Vivek Ramaswamy's headquarters. So you just can't see things happening like we used to. And you know, I know when you were sampling the Santorum race against Romney and you were seeing the days leading up to the Iowa caucus, seen Santorum go from single digits to slowly pick up day by day, getting bigger and bigger. Did you see any momentum with Trump here in this race?

Anybody move at all or was it sort of stagnant this last week? You know, one of the things we do because of Rick Santorum is that we check the rolling averages on a day by day basis. And as I said to my clients, I said, this is the most boring cross tab I've ever seen. There was virtually no movement that was consistent in one direction or another.

And dramatically contrast with Ron Paul, who had been leading up to that final hold, sort of dropping off a cliff. And here comes Rick Santorum, who'd only gotten, if he got 6%, that would have been his high water mark. And to see him rise and rise and rise till he was approaching Mitt Romney, who had held fairly steady throughout. All right, we appreciate.

Yeah, David, before we go, anything we can draw, I know completely different, like different race, but anything we can draw from this race that would take us to New Hampshire, at least about people who came out, the people who supported former President Trump. Obviously this could be a much more conservative, much more evangelical crowd than the one that shows up in New Hampshire. And Democrats, independents have an easier time crossing over and voting in New Hampshire. So it's important.

Keep in mind that this electorate is going to look a lot more like the Republican electorate as a whole than New Hampshire does. You know, we have a key election. I actually want you to stay with us because I want to ask Anna about this. Apparently, from what we're hearing from the Iowa Republican Party, right, the Iowa gop, there's going to be a somewhat low turnout for this caucus.

They're sort of projecting 130,000. And what does that, what does that mean to you when you hear that number? I know we had a bigger number, I believe in 2016. Not as big.

I think 2012 was around that number, 122,000, Chuck, showing in 2012 versus 186,000. Look, it's the coldest night ever for the caucus. Right. It's pretty good to get 130.

You know, when I hear people make predictions about things like turnout, I write it down in my calendar that I carry with me at all times. And the only forecast that I heard was it would be record breaking. It would be over 200,000. So you see 187,000 last time.

So a bump up from that. And I'm not terribly surprised. We didn't ask any questions that gave us any insight into the wind chill index. What would it have to be for you to stay home?

That would have been a great question to ask. And you think it was the weather? Do you think it was people just knowing or thinking that maybe trouble is inevitable? Well, I think the weather has a lot to do with it.

The roads are still slick, the parking lots are still icy. So I think that has a lot to do with it. But, you know, if you're, if you're looking at Haley, you're looking at DeSantis and you're seeing in our poll a large margin for Trump. You're not feeling that enthusiasm.

You might say, might say, why bother? Why bother? And Seltzer Dave, we appreciate it, guys. Thank you so much for your respecting the back over.

Can we punch up the turnout? You just had it sort of doing it via my hand and written here so folks can get an idea. Here's what look, this was a record breaking turnout. Trump's first one, 2012, 2008, when Democrats were over 200, we're estimating, and I should say it's us in our entrance poll combined with our own reporting.

But we got it somewhere there. So we got somewhere closer to a 2012 turnout. Look, I think this is one of those cases where Trump was in a position that high turnout helped him and low turnout helped him. I do think super high turnout might have been helpful to Haley because then maybe you would have had some extra independence or nontraditional voters here.

But this looks like a very. And here's the thing, this also sort of follows a pattern that, you know, I talked about how Trump created peak turnout. We've actually been seeing over the last six months. We saw a little bit in the, in the off year elections in November where turnouts are starting to settle back into more norms.

I tell you, turnouts like this, if they're just sitting there, we just sort of have average, above average Republican turnouts. That's not how Donald Trump loses. That's how Donald Trump wins. You know, it speaks to his strength because reporting earlier, we're talking about how a low turnout could lead to surprises.

They're so far, I mean, waiting for, so waiting. Low turnout here, you know, was away. And that's not how people surprise more evangelical voters. Right.

And he was a truly evangelical candidate. One thing I want to point out here, and I'd love for the panel to back me up on this, I'm not, I'm not a churchgoer, but one thing I noticed about Ron DeSantis is he didn't, unlike Mike Hockey, unlike Rick St. Forum, Ron Santis didn't talk about his faith a lot. This is not who he is.

He's not, he really sort of reminds me of the Nephthys that doesn't want to talk about it. But he didn't. And I wonder how much that might have hurt him with evangelicalism. It's just a theory of the Chuck.

We appreciate when we go back to my Friend, Hallie Jackson, she was at that caucus site in Dallas County. And Hallie has Olivier shot there in places. What did you do, Hallie? What did you do?

They packed up the buckets, Tom. The buckets are packed. I mean, this is that quick, right? I mean that's how the process goes.

As now you see some of the folks with the procedure stuff, I'm gonna keep that a little bit because there's some paperwork we want to let them deal with here. But that's it. I mean, look, the bleachers were pretty full when he came to us last time. Everybody you know, cast those ballots, drop those votes and then headed on out here.

I'll tell you what the results were here in Waukee 83 and 4. Donald Trump won both of these. Both of these precincts, remember two precincts here at one caucus location, purely obviously anecdotech totals you're not projecting. The core city has won the Iowa caucuses overall, but this is it.

I mean there are still some big in your chart talking about still some big Al skan questions here. I'll tell you what struck me as we were listening to the speeches and then talking to folks on the way out. The arguments that you heard from some of these caucus goers felt very similar to the arguments that you heard from these candidates and that you're hearing from these candidates on the campaign trail. So for example, the woman who spoke on behalf of Nikki Haley talked about her electability, the ability for Nick Haley do well in a general election.

Nikki Haley talks about that all the time on the trail. I just spoke with a woman who brought her two kids here a first time and a second time caucus go for the kids just to observe. And she said she was for Ron DeSantis because of the way that he handled COVID lockdowns in Florida and the pandemic in Florida. Ron DeSantis also talks about that in his stumps as a regular part of his campaign.

And of course you have Donald Trump supporters here who have told me over the course of our time here in Iowa, they want to give him a shot to finish the job, but they want to see him back in the Oval Office, back in the White House. And so I think you, you are seeing people particularly eyes are very engaged. They get a chance to see these candidates close up firsthand and they are listening to the messages that these candidates give. And what really is this, this period of closing arguments and IY's.

We now turn the page, turn the corner into answer with some big questions to outstanding what was the margin for Donald Trump? Was that gonna be the second place discussion that you and shock are having with the rest of our teams here? As you know, this is it a quick, fairly quick night, I think, and an empty gym for the next little bit. How I'm curious because.

Right. The voting is officially still underway down your caucus side, but in other parts of the state. Do the caucus goers know that news organizations like MTC News have projected Donald Trump that already won while they were still in that room? I can only speak for us and we did not do any live shots while that was happening.