At 8:31 PM ET, barely half an hour after the doors opened and almost two hours before the last votes were cast, Fox News declared Donald Trump the winner of the Iowa caucus. The Associated Press beat Fox by six minutes. This drew howls from Republican officials who said the early calls were “disappointing and concerning.” Additional whining came from Ron DeSantis’ campaign, which declared the early calls “election interference.”
There are good reasons to be concerned about these early calls. Even more than primaries, caucuses are about not-so-subtle persuasion and last-minute changes of heart. Once the doors are closed speeches are given by candidate proxies, people form groups, and much enticement and finagling ensues. But, as The New York Times reports, people had barely locked the doors on Monday night when news outlets told them the winner—causing phones to begin to buzz in caucus sites and leaving those about to cast their votes confused.
But there’s really only one call that matters. Because there’s only one outlet Republicans hear.
In explaining the early call, the AP noted that it had done the same thing in 2020. That’s when an incumbent Trump took 97% of the vote over former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld. It’s not clear that anyone remembers Weld running against Trump, or that they noticed it at the time. Weld’s campaign doesn’t qualify as quixotic. It was subquixotic. One might even call it Phillipsesque.
It’s pretty safe to say that given all the time in the world, Iowa Republicans caucusing in 2020 were not about to feel the Weld-mentum. But that doesn’t make this a good reason to repeat the practice in 2024.
Defending the idea that the doors closing at the start of a caucus is the same thing as the doors being shut at the end of an election is a pretty silly argument on AP’s part. But then, the whole caucus system is pretty silly. Just witness the extreme measures that Republicans employed to secure the results of this caucus.
This system is acceptable to Republicans because every single person in the room is white.
It’s hard to believe that even if those phones had not started to buzz, there would have been much difference in the outcome on Monday. Not if those phones were just repeating AP. But if they were carrying the news of Trump’s victory from Fox … that’s different.
As a YouGov survey highlighted last year, there are 16 different media outlets that Democrats regard as highly reliable. The Associated Press is in there. So is Reuters, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the BBC.
Republicans only express that level of trust for two sources. And one of them is The Weather Channel.
When it comes to political news for Republicans, it’s Fox or nothing. OAN and Newsmax are in positive territory on the Republican side, but don’t punch at nearly the power of Fox. Many outlets—especially CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times—are so distrusted by Republicans that news of their declaring a winner would probably be met with a sneer.
It’s Fox that counts. This makes it pretty problematic that DeSantis has entered into a minor war with the guy who prints the only digital ink his potential supporters bother to read. In the last week, DeSantis has blasted Fox News, putting them among a “Praetorian Guard” of conservative media that protects Trump from any bad news.
It’s a fairly laughable complaint from DeSantis, who was built up by Fox for years and whom Fox pundits groomed as the heir apparent before it became clear that King Trump wasn’t about to hand down the crown. The same guy now whining about Fox providing someone with undue support appeared on Fox almost every day—113 times—following the 2020 election, until Fox found it convenient to forget about Jan. 6 and return the spotlight to Trump.
While this may make it seem that Fox’s power to deliver Republicans to a candidate is limited, that’s because Fox has a unique position. Its pundits have spent years villainizing journalists and attacking news outlets. It’s a message that harmonizes well with the attacks Trump has made on reporters, outlets, and the mainstream media. But while it gives Fox a powerful position on the right, that position is always in danger of collapse. Fox and Trump may once have been co-dependant, but now the “news” outlet seems more like a parasite.
Democrats don’t just have 16 outlets that they highly trust, they trust all of those outlets more than Republicans trust Fox. So when Trump criticizes Fox for “desperately trying to save DeSanctimonious,” someone at Fox is sure to notice.
That may not be the primary reason why Fox was so eager to hand Trump the win before the grocery bags had started to circulate among Iowa voters … but it probably didn’t hurt.
Campaign Action
There are good reasons to be concerned about these early calls. Even more than primaries, caucuses are about not-so-subtle persuasion and last-minute changes of heart. Once the doors are closed speeches are given by candidate proxies, people form groups, and much enticement and finagling ensues. But, as The New York Times reports, people had barely locked the doors on Monday night when news outlets told them the winner—causing phones to begin to buzz in caucus sites and leaving those about to cast their votes confused.
But there’s really only one call that matters. Because there’s only one outlet Republicans hear.
In explaining the early call, the AP noted that it had done the same thing in 2020. That’s when an incumbent Trump took 97% of the vote over former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld. It’s not clear that anyone remembers Weld running against Trump, or that they noticed it at the time. Weld’s campaign doesn’t qualify as quixotic. It was subquixotic. One might even call it Phillipsesque.
It’s pretty safe to say that given all the time in the world, Iowa Republicans caucusing in 2020 were not about to feel the Weld-mentum. But that doesn’t make this a good reason to repeat the practice in 2024.
Defending the idea that the doors closing at the start of a caucus is the same thing as the doors being shut at the end of an election is a pretty silly argument on AP’s part. But then, the whole caucus system is pretty silly. Just witness the extreme measures that Republicans employed to secure the results of this caucus.
This system is acceptable to Republicans because every single person in the room is white.
It’s hard to believe that even if those phones had not started to buzz, there would have been much difference in the outcome on Monday. Not if those phones were just repeating AP. But if they were carrying the news of Trump’s victory from Fox … that’s different.
As a YouGov survey highlighted last year, there are 16 different media outlets that Democrats regard as highly reliable. The Associated Press is in there. So is Reuters, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the BBC.
Republicans only express that level of trust for two sources. And one of them is The Weather Channel.
When it comes to political news for Republicans, it’s Fox or nothing. OAN and Newsmax are in positive territory on the Republican side, but don’t punch at nearly the power of Fox. Many outlets—especially CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times—are so distrusted by Republicans that news of their declaring a winner would probably be met with a sneer.
It’s Fox that counts. This makes it pretty problematic that DeSantis has entered into a minor war with the guy who prints the only digital ink his potential supporters bother to read. In the last week, DeSantis has blasted Fox News, putting them among a “Praetorian Guard” of conservative media that protects Trump from any bad news.
It’s a fairly laughable complaint from DeSantis, who was built up by Fox for years and whom Fox pundits groomed as the heir apparent before it became clear that King Trump wasn’t about to hand down the crown. The same guy now whining about Fox providing someone with undue support appeared on Fox almost every day—113 times—following the 2020 election, until Fox found it convenient to forget about Jan. 6 and return the spotlight to Trump.
While this may make it seem that Fox’s power to deliver Republicans to a candidate is limited, that’s because Fox has a unique position. Its pundits have spent years villainizing journalists and attacking news outlets. It’s a message that harmonizes well with the attacks Trump has made on reporters, outlets, and the mainstream media. But while it gives Fox a powerful position on the right, that position is always in danger of collapse. Fox and Trump may once have been co-dependant, but now the “news” outlet seems more like a parasite.
Democrats don’t just have 16 outlets that they highly trust, they trust all of those outlets more than Republicans trust Fox. So when Trump criticizes Fox for “desperately trying to save DeSanctimonious,” someone at Fox is sure to notice.
That may not be the primary reason why Fox was so eager to hand Trump the win before the grocery bags had started to circulate among Iowa voters … but it probably didn’t hurt.
Campaign Action