Thread: Trump's Impact on Caucus Turnout Could Be Yuuuuuge

Trump's Impact on Caucus Turnout Could Be Yuuuuuge

Craig Robinson Oct 22 2015

Donald Trump touched down in Burlington on Wednesday evening, bringing his campaign to the southeast corner of the state for the first time. The Burlington Memorial Auditorium has hosted plenty of political events before, but they are mostly confined to the main floor. On Wednesday, Trump packed all three levels of the building, which is the largest venue in town.

As the crowd awaited Trump’s arrival, the candidate’s Iowa staff passed out supporter cards, promising t-shirts to anyone who signs up to help organize their local precinct caucus. Iowan Tana Goertz, a former contestant on The Apprentice, is one of Trump’s state chairs. She took to the microphone 90 minutes before Trump arrived to encourage people to sign up and even had people from Illinois raise their hands to identify themselves so that they could sign petitions to get Trump on the ballot there.

Following the flow of a Donald Trump campaign speech can be difficult to say the least. One second he’s talking about how he loves Christmas, and in the next breath, he is talking about the perspiration levels of Marco Rubio. Before giving the audience an update on his standing in the polls, Trump felt compelled to comment on Vice President Joe Biden’s decision not to run for president.

Trump said that he thought Biden made the right decision because he didn’t think the Vice President would win. Then Trump admitted that he really preferred to run against Hillary Clinton because, with her record, there is no way that he would lose. Trump also found an opportunity to ding some of his GOP rivals, including Bush, Rubio, Kasich, Christie, Fiorina, Graham, and even George Pataki.

One of the loudest cheers of the event came when Trump mentioned that he was going to be hosting Saturday Night Live next week. Trump has hosted SNL before, but it will be interesting to see if his opening monologue will be similar in structure to his campaign speeches. Still, if you listen closely, there are ample moments in his remarks were Trump is addressing serious issues like trade, the economy, Obamacare, illegal immigration, and problems within the Veterans Administration.

One interesting moment came when Trump talked about his previous support of John McCain’s and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns. That wasn’t anything new, but he then admitted, “Sometimes you just need to do something yourself.” It might not have been the main point of his speech, but it that sort of attitude that makes Trump so appealing to so many voters.

Trump’s message about getting tough with companies like Ford and Nabisco who are closing facilities in the U.S. and opening plants in Mexico went over big in Burlington, which is a hard working, blue-collar community that still has an unemployment rate around five percent, which is much higher than the statewide average.

So, how impressive was Trump’s Burlington audience on Wednesday? In 2012, 1,350 people caucused in Des Moines County. The estimated crowd size for Trump last night was over 3,000. Rick Santorum won the county with 29 percent of the vote by getting 388 people to caucus for him. Des Moines County was a pretty good bellwether four years ago as the candidates finished in the same order there as they finished statewide – Santorum, Romney, Paul, Gingrich, Perry, and Bachmann.

If the rowdy and enthusiastic crowd that showed up to see Trump on Wednesday evening is motivated to caucus for him on February 1st, it could shatter turnout models statewide much in the same way that Obama did for the Democrats in 2008. In 2012, 3,000 votes would have accounted for ten percent of Rick Santorum’s statewide turnout.

When you look at Trump’s crowds across the state, it’s not inconceivable that he could turn out 60,000 people to caucus for him, which would be twice as much as Santorum got in 2012, and 20,000 more votes than Huckabee received in 2008. Many in the media have tried to predict the demise of Trump’s campaign, but it may be time to start estimating how much support he can turn out in a state like Iowa.

http://theiowarepublican.com/2015/tr...ld-be-yuuuuge/

The Trump and Sanders campaigns are the only two campaigns for President showing a high degree of energy at this point.

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