Iowa Republicans focused on the economy and the border. Trump dominated on both issues.
There were two main concerns from voters that fueled Donald Trump's overwhelming victory in Iowa on Monday: the economy and immigration.
Nearly 3 in 4 Iowa caucus-goers on Monday night named either one of these issues as those that mattered most to them, according to an entrance poll conducted by news organizations.
Those helped cement Trump’s dominant performance in the Hawkeye State, as he ended up on top in 98 of the state’s 99 counties. The Associated Press called the state for Trump just half an hour after the caucuses began.
Trump nodded to the twin concerns in his victory speech. There was an extended discussion of immigration and cracking down on the border while touting, as he frequently does on the campaign trail, being the best candidate for pocketbooks.
"We are going to rescue our economy. We are going to save our economy,” he said in his speech in Des Moines.
All told, 38% of caucus-goers picked the economy as their top issue, with Trump winning 52% of their support. Another 34% picked immigration as their top issue, and Trump was especially dominant there, garnering 64% of those votes.
The two other issues that entrance pollsters asked about — abortion and foreign policy — did reveal some weakness for Trump. Abortion-focused voters largely opted for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and foreign policy-minded Iowans threw much of their support behind former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
But, at least in the Iowa context, there simply weren't enough voters to make a significant dent. Only about 2 in 10 voters picked either of those issues as their primary concern.
The entrance polls were also revealing about Trump’s nearly complete hold on the Republican Party, with two-thirds of respondents saying they don’t think Biden legitimately won in 2020, even with no evidence of widespread voter fraud emerging in the three years since Biden’s decisive win by over 7 million votes.
About two-thirds of GOP poll respondents Monday also said Trump would be fit for the presidency even if he is convicted of a crime. The entrance pollsters spoke with Iowa Republicans and the polls were conducted by Edison Research on behalf of a consortium of news organizations.
Will Trump disrupt the economy in the short term?
With a third Trump GOP nomination now seen as increasingly likely, one question for the months ahead is how the economy as a whole may react to another Trump turn in the national spotlight.
Eurasia Group founder and president Ian Bremmer said in a Yahoo Finance Live Interview that he expects it will be different this time around.
"I think people were hoping it can't really be real," he said of Trump's strength from Davos. He sees Trump's candidacy as having the potential to offer disruptions to the global economy even in the near term. For one, he noted that now "his policy pronouncements, to the extent he makes them, will suddenly have a lot more impact."
One policy area that the former president has been hammering for months is trade. Trump promises a return to trade wars if he is elected with a proposal for a system of "universal baseline tariffs" of at least 10% on most foreign products.
Yahoo Finance recently spoke to an array of trade experts, some of whom also saw a chance of a "pre-election effect" from that part of Trump's platform.
For Trump's part, his victory speech Tuesday night was notable for an attempt to use conciliatory language, even praising his rival to perhaps try and send a signal that the primary is over.
"This is time for our country to come together," Trump said in his speech.
Trump chose not to directly repeat his tariff promises on Monday night but pledged, "We are not going to let China do what they’d like to do," before adding that he gets along great with Chinese President Xi Jinping and praising the autocrat as a "very strong leader."
Among Trump’s rivals, both DeSantis and Haley vowed to fight on in the weeks ahead, while entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy suspended his campaign and immediately endorsed Trump.
But, Trump being Trump, the attempts at conciliatory language only went so far. Moments after saying, "I don't want to be overly rough on the president," when the subject turned to Biden, Trump then immediately called him the worst president ever.
The next balloting with take place in a week’s time on Jan. 23 in New Hampshire. That is a state where Haley is hoping for a better performance and that has seen some polls showing her down there by only single digits.
But it remains to be seen whether her third-place performance in Iowa will change the dynamic.
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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