- Full story: Democratic race off to disastrous start
- Iowa caucuses results – live updates
- What is the smartphone app at centre of Iowa debacle?
- Analysis: Trump campaign jubilant as Dems’ big night implodes
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As the words disaster, chaos and fakakta blare across social media to describe the Iowa caucus, so has a reminder that it’s not the first time those words have been linked to the first-in-the-nation caucus.
Mitt Romney was declared the winner for the Republicans in the 2012 Iowa caucus, but two weeks later, the state’s Republican party said a recount of the votes showed the winner was actually Rick Santorum.
It took two weeks for the GOP results to come out from Iowa in 2012. https://t.co/yOLKLvy3fv
More bad news for Democrats.
Donald Trump’s approval rating is the highest it’s been in three years, per Gallup.
The Democrat Party in Iowa really messed up, but the Republican Party did not. I had the largest re-election vote in the history of that great state, by far, beating President Obama’s previous record by a lot. Also, 97% Plus of the vote! Thank you Iowa!
Whether the rise in Trump’s approval rating and the Republican Party’s image is being driven by a backlash against impeachment, the strong economy or other factors may become clearer in the near future. If it is mostly impeachment-based, his approval rating may revert quickly back to pre-impeachment levels, as it did for Clinton. Within two months of his acquittal in February 1999, Clinton’s approval rating returned to where it was before he was impeached, as did the Democratic Party’s advantage in party identification and leaning.
If Trump’s higher approval rating is being driven by Americans giving him credit for improvements in the economy, his support may increase over the course of the year, as it did for Ronald Reagan in 1984, Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2012. All of those recent presidents held office during periods of sustained economic improvement and were re-elected with job approval ratings of better than 50%.
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Source: Elections - theguardian.com
