The Early Projection of Trump’s Win in Iowa Was Irresponsible
CNN, Fox News, the Associated Press, ABC News, MSNBC and others all called the Iowa Republican Caucuses for Donald Trump shortly after 8:30 P.M. on Monday, just over a half hour after the contest began and before many had even cast a ballot. Cable news upstart NewsNation showed the most restraint, waiting an additional 15 minutes before pronouncing Trump the winner.
At the time CNN made its projection, the network could report that only 238 votes had been cast for the former president. For reference, over 186,000 Iowans participated in the last contested caucus in 2016.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign was outraged by the early call. “Absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote,” argued DeSantis spokesman Andrew Romeo on X. “The media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example yet.”
Theirs is righteous indignation. Trump is almost certainly headed for a comfortable victory in Iowa — every poll for months has indicated as much — but it was still irresponsible to call the race for Trump before a remotely representative sample of votes had been counted.
Why? Because the call could potentially nudge the final results in Trump’s favor. The caucuses are unique, fluid events that bear little resemblance to the primaries most Americans participate in. Voters don’t just show up, close the shade on a machine, and fill out their ballots privately. Speeches are given by supporters of the various candidates before so there’s plenty of opportunity for movement onsite.
This is significant because if participants were to receive word that the race had been called, it might cause them to ride the wave of the winner, or even walk out.
The Associated Press recognized this danger in its official policies.
“AP does not make projections or name apparent or likely winners. If our race callers cannot definitively say a candidate has won, we do not engage in speculation,” reads its page dedicated to explaining its methods. It goes on to explicitly insist that it “will not call the winner of a race before all the polls in a jurisdiction are scheduled to close.”
And yet that’s exactly what it did on Monday night, as Semafor’s Dave Weigel and the Washington Post‘s Michael Scherer pointed out on X.
The very very early results show Trump winning big, but the early network call is a little questionable. People are still at caucus sites, and they have phones – how many people see the call and bail?
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) January 16, 2024
AP has a policy not to call “the winner of a race before all the polls in a jurisdiction are scheduled to close.” Tonight AP/CNN/Etc. called the race after the caucus doors closed, but BEFORE all votes were cast. People could see on their phones that Trump won before voting.
— Michael Scherer (@michaelscherer) January 16, 2024
CNN appears to have used to hold the same policy. A 2008 article outlining its processes explained that “CNN editorial policy strictly prohibits reporting winners or characterizing the outcome of a statewide contest in any state before all the polls are scheduled to close in every precinct in that state.”
The eagerness to deem Monday an enormously impressive victory for Trump was reflected in other, smaller moments shortly after the polls opened.
“This is more and more Trump’s party, especially if he is doing well in urban and close in suburban areas,” submitted CNN’s John King shortly after the network made its call and right before showing the results in a county matching that description where Trump was winning big with 76.9% of the vote. He had accrued 10 total votes there at the time.
In another instance, with just 38% of the votes counted, Jake Tapper declared that it would be a “historic” victory for Trump if he won with the slim majority he had in that moment.
Historic in what way? And is it actually impressive that a former president could only barely cobble together a majority in Iowa, even with a divided field of challengers seemingly more focused on tearing down each other than overtaking the frontrunner?
At the end of the day, Republican voters are the ones driving Trump’s victory. Overwhelmingly, they appear to be ready, extremely willing, and able to send the man who who sicced a mob on Congress in a desperate attempt to hold onto power only three years ago. It is they who own that choice.
But in their predictable rush to be the first to make a projection and bizarre propensity for overstating Trump’s electoral strength, the media has bolstered the former president’s already strong standing in the GOP primary.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
