Is Donald Trump finished?

[Maxwell]

Like I've mentioned before, Romney also shockingly lost Iowa and still won. Trump still has a great chance of winning.

For the immediate two weeks or so after Iowa it looked like Romney had won - there is no mistaking that Trump lost.

[Torie]

Likely yes, but given this season, watch him get 45% in NH.  Nothing would surprise me anymore.  Regarding your 2nd point, it looks like it Trump's unlikely voters did show up to caucus for him, but there was also a last minute surge of stop Trump at all costs turnout.  Look at what happened to Le Pen's party in the runoff round of French provincial elections.  They were shut out by a late surge of anti-racist turnout.

You may be on to something here.  It may not be quite as straightforward as "stop Trump at all costs", but you're right that you can't simply explain this as "Trump's voters didn't show up", because then how do you explain the high turnout?  A lot more voters than expected in absolute numbers and not just percentage terms showed up for Cruz and Rubio than we would have predicted before caucus day.  It may in fact be that the fact that Trump consistently leads not just the "who would you vote for" polling question but the "who would you never vote for" question means that his presence in the race encourages the supporters of other candidates to show up at the polls.

Maybe, but I really think a fair number of Trump supporters bailed on him at the last moment.

As to what I guess might happen to Trump, Trump in certain places can still win some delegates, like in NY and the Northeast in general, and Ohio and Michigan. So the decision for him is whether he wants to keep going to be a player at the Convention, but without much hope of getting the nomination. He probably will ponder what all this does to "his brand."  I also expect at the end, that the bulk of his delegates would go to Rubio rather than Cruz, but that is just a guess. I don't think Trump has much use for Cruz now at all. And their bases of support are very, very different.

As I posted elsewhere, I do still expect Trump to win NH. NH does not care who wins Iowa, and Rubio wearing God on his sleeve so hard in Iowa to appeal in Evangelicals, will slow down his effort to clear out the establishment lane in NH. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Jeb vote in NH however. My guess, is that Kasich will cut into some of it. My guess in fact is that Kasich will come in second in NH, so he will be around for awhile.

[Illiniwek]

Watch Kasich, Christie, and Bush's support drop and move over to Rubio.

Watch Donald Trump's poll numbers drop as the pollsters adjust after their Iowa fail.

Watch Trump beat Rubio in NH by only a few points.

Watch Rubio and Cruz beat Trump in SC.

And then it is over.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

We'll see. He remains the frontrunner, but with far less of an advantage than before. He remains the prohibitive favorite in New Hampshire, much depends on the margin. Beyond that, he was leading in (almost) every state heading into the caucuses, the question is whether that starts to change, hopefully we get lots of new polls soon.

[Brittain33]

We had umpteen "X is finished" stories in the 2008 and 2012 primaries and things always changed.

[President Johnson]

No, it's a little of a setback. But he has to win New Hampshire now. But I'm confidant he will make it. And he's gonna end up as the nominee.

[The Mikado]

2) Disappearing voters: Nobody knows exactly what happened tonight. Most likely is that a lot of Trump voters who said they were going to turn out actually didn't. Another possibility is that these people never supported him to begin with, and were either doing so "ironically" or just as a placeholder protest vote until they seriously considered their other options. This means his dominance everywhere could be just a facade.

Just to comment on this one...

Donald Trump had 45,000 votes last night. In 2012, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum both got 30,000 votes. In 2008, Mike Huckabee set the record for Iowa Caucus voting at 41,000 votes. All of the exit polling showed that Trump won first time voters. Trump's folks turned out.

The thing is, they're not the only ones who turned out. Mike Huckabee's 41,000 in 2008 was good for 34% of the vote, while Trump's 45,000 last night was only good for 24% of the vote. Ted Cruz smashed it with a shocking 51,000 votes.

In 2012 120,000 voted in the GOP Iowa caucus, in 2016 it was 180,000. A great segment of that increase was Trump fans, but people bound and determined to stop Trump must have made an even larger segment.

Basically, it's not poor turnout by Trump's people, it's mind-blowingly good turnout by Cruz's people.

[tallguy23]

If he loses NH (or Rubio comes close to overtaking him) then I think he's done. Anything but a decisive win in NH would not look good.

[Fuzzy Stands With His Friend, Chairman Sanchez]

The idea that Trump is finished is silly.  Indeed, this 2nd place finish makes him look a little more sympathetic in some quarters.

The sheer number of people that came out for Trump has already been pointed out.  Iowa holds its caucus in the dead of winter, and I don't know what the weather was like on previous caucus days, but Trump's vote total was still impressive. 

Trump's ground game has always been the part of his game that lags behind (or so people say).  In that vein, Trump was a close second in a state where religious conservatives have a strong advantage and have (arguably) been undercounted in polls.  Cruz's surge was very much a surge of religious conservatives; he sucked ALL of the oxygen from the Huckabee and Santorum bubbles.  Despite this, Cruz led Trump by only 3-4 points.  Then, too, it was a caucus.  Whatever flaws in Trump's ground game, he still got people out not just to vote, but to participate in the caucus.  New Hampshire is just an ordinary primary, where folks can just go in and vote.  And primaries have early voting.  There is no early voting in NH, but SC and GA early voting begins next week.  Amongst the Super Tuesday states where Trump is strong, TN, and AR all have early voting.  FL and NC will have early voting for their primaries as well. 

The issues that have driven Trump's candidacy aren't going away.  He's still the lead dog on immigration.  He's still the only GOP candidate challenging free trade, and there's a slew of Republicans with him on this (as Rubio and the Establishment are finding out). 

What happened last night was that the race crystallized.  The guys who got caught with their pants down were the guys who skipped Iowa.  Kasich and Christie could not afford to skip Iowa, but they did, and they're NOT going to get it back in NH.  Rubio's the establishment guy now.  But the race has also crystallized in such a way that reflects a 2 to 1 deficit for Establishment Republicans.  There are a lot of folks right now who want to endorse Marco Rubio, but one commentator pointed out that if there's a rush of endorsements, Marco will then get the "Establishment" tag turned into a tattoo. 

What I do predict is that Jeb, Kasich, and Christie will be gone after New Hampshire.  Everyone else will be dead folks walking.  It's Cruz, Trump, and Rubio now.  No one else counts. 

[wolfsblood07]

The idea that Trump is finished is silly.  Indeed, this 2nd place finish makes him look a little more sympathetic in some quarters.

The sheer number of people that came out for Trump has already been pointed out.  Iowa holds its caucus in the dead of winter, and I don't know what the weather was like on previous caucus days, but Trump's vote total was still impressive. 

Trump's ground game has always been the part of his game that lags behind (or so people say).  In that vein, Trump was a close second in a state where religious conservatives have a strong advantage and have (arguably) been undercounted in polls.  Cruz's surge was very much a surge of religious conservatives; he sucked ALL of the oxygen from the Huckabee and Santorum bubbles.  Despite this, Cruz led Trump by only 3-4 points.  Then, too, it was a caucus.  Whatever flaws in Trump's ground game, he still got people out not just to vote, but to participate in the caucus.  New Hampshire is just an ordinary primary, where folks can just go in and vote.  And primaries have early voting.  There is no early voting in NH, but SC and GA early voting begins next week.  Amongst the Super Tuesday states where Trump is strong, TN, and AR all have early voting.  FL and NC will have early voting for their primaries as well. 

The issues that have driven Trump's candidacy aren't going away.  He's still the lead dog on immigration.  He's still the only GOP candidate challenging free trade, and there's a slew of Republicans with him on this (as Rubio and the Establishment are finding out). 

What happened last night was that the race crystallized.  The guys who got caught with their pants down were the guys who skipped Iowa.  Kasich and Christie could not afford to skip Iowa, but they did, and they're NOT going to get it back in NH.  Rubio's the establishment guy now.  But the race has also crystallized in such a way that reflects a 2 to 1 deficit for Establishment Republicans.  There are a lot of folks right now who want to endorse Marco Rubio, but one commentator pointed out that if there's a rush of endorsements, Marco will then get the "Establishment" tag turned into a tattoo. 

What I do predict is that Jeb, Kasich, and Christie will be gone after New Hampshire.  Everyone else will be dead folks walking.  It's Cruz, Trump, and Rubio now.  No one else counts. 

Agree.
The more I think about it, Trump is in a much better position now than I would have thought possible last summer.  I said Trump can't win the nomination, and I still think it's unlikely.  But Trump beat all the establishment guys in Iowa.  The race is up for grabs now.  If Rubio starts winning states, then things sort themselves out.  But if Trump and Cruz keep winning, we may be looking at a brokered convention.

[The Mikado]

Rubio has finally set a measure to judge him by: his 3-2-1 strategy. If he falls short of 2nd in NH or 1st in SC, all the sudden he's the one who is not meeting expectations.

[Ogre Mage]

Iowa with its large number of Christian conservatives in the GOP base was never the best fit for a blowhard like Trump.  Cruz comes much closer to fitting the profile of past winners (Huckabee, Santorum).  Independent-minded, more secular and less polite N.H. is a much better fit for Trump.  If he cannot win on the more favorable political terrain of the Granite State then I would agree he is finished.

[Zanas]

New Hampshire is just an ordinary primary, where folks can just go in and vote.  And primaries have early voting.  There is no early voting in NH, but SC and GA early voting begins next week.  Amongst the Super Tuesday states where Trump is strong, TN, and AR all have early voting.  FL and NC will have early voting for their primaries as well.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere on this board that there was actually early voting (or maybe absentee ballot ?) already going on in NH, making up to 2 or 3 % of the electorate.

[Figueira]

Possibly, in the sense that if Trump loses the nomination, Iowa will be seen as the "beginning of the end" for his campaign. He hasn't lost yet though.

[wolfsblood07]

Possibly, in the sense that if Trump loses the nomination, Iowa will be seen as the "beginning of the end" for his campaign. He hasn't lost yet though.

This.