The caucuses will begin at 8 p.m. ET and are expected to end by 11 p.m. ET, though there is not a set end time.
Caucus results will be tallied here for the Republicans and here for the Democrats as they are reported.
The Huffington Post also has a pretty good page compiling results.
FiveThirtyEight gives Donald Trump a 46% chance of winning in Iowa and Hillary Clinton a 67% chance.
PredictWise gives Trump a 68% chance and Clinton a 73% chance.
Bing Predicts also picks Trump and Clinton.
Make your own predictions in the comments.
“Maybe he’s been hanging out in a corn field too long huffing ethanol.”
— Sarah Palin, quoted by TPM, in response to Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) allegation that Donald Trump bought her endorsement.
Donald Trump said media pundits had advised him to play it safe and lower expectations by not predicting victory but the billionaire businessman said he had no interest in playing it safe, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “We’re going to have a tremendous victory.”
A new Chicago Tribune poll found that 83% of Chicagoans don’t believe Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) is telling them the truth about what he knew about the Laquan McDonald shooting.
In addition, 59% of city residents say Emanuel is not honest and trustworthy and a record 63% disapprove of the job he’s doing as mayor.
Vice News: “The flyer, which was tweeted out by staffers for a rival campaign and super PAC on Monday, offers cash for individuals who show up to — and sit through — a Bush rally at an Embassy Suites in Des Moines, which began at noon Monday. Bush’s campaign quickly denied on Twitter any connection to the flyer or the offer for cash.”
New York Times: “First, Rubio’s strategists believe that the conventional wisdom about this being a two-man race is wrong. That’s because those two men, Trump and Cruz, remain unacceptable candidates to the G.O.P.’s establishment donor class. Rubio’s people believe that even if the two anti-establishment candidates win the first four contests (in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada), neither of them will be able to coax the party’s benefactors into coalescing around them as Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney were able to do after their early victories.”
“Because of this, the Rubio campaign argues that as long as their candidate can dominate the establishment field in the early primaries, Republican donors will soon pressure the others occupying that space — chiefly Bush, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio — to leave the race. Until that happens, Rubio’s advisers assert, Rubio can stay even with Trump and Cruz in the overall delegate count simply by winning Florida and Ohio on March 15 while placing third in the 33 other contests up to that point. Once the party does anoint Rubio as the last, best hope to defeat Trump and Cruz, money will pour in and delegate-rich states like New York, Pennsylvania and California will follow.”
Washington Post: “Donald Trump has been looking for ways to reach out to evangelical voters before the GOP primaries. On Sunday, the businessman and his wife attended church services at the nondenominational First Christian Church, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. But when the Communion plates were passed, Trump mistook the silver plates for the offertory, digging out several bills from his pocket.”
Said Trump later: “I thought it was for offering.”
“I don’t know whether Cruz or Trump are going to carry the state, but below those two there’ll probably be three or four that will be within four or five points of each other so I assume we’re gonna have four or five people go away here as victors, at least in their own minds.”
— Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), quoted by Politico, on tonight’s Iowa caucuses.
“If campaign-finance reports are any indication, the fights for the 2016 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations could extend far beyond Iowa’s first votes Monday night,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“As the first nominating contest in an unpredictable race looms, candidates increasingly will be drawing on their bank accounts and counting on super PACs to keep them on television and on the campaign trail. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio have the most cash to finance a potentially protracted battle for the Republican nomination against their front-running rival, New York businessman Donald Trump.”
“In the Democratic race, both of the leading candidates previously announced flush campaign accounts: Hillary Clinton with $38 million as of the end of the year and Sen. Bernie Sanders with $28 million.”
New York Times: “So, to recap. A fact-indifferent, vulgarity-spouting, tie-hawking, Democratic-donating former reality-TV star is positioned to win the Iowa caucuses, crashing a party to which Republican leaders (and perhaps as many as half the voters) wish he had never been invited.”
“His hard-line competitor, a Texan with a Princeton class ring — who has for years united a divided Washington in hatred of him — is emerging as a measured alternative, drawing a second look from a despairing establishment that he has derided as an emblem of cronyism.”
According to Ken Vogel, Donald Trump spents $450,000 last quarter on his iconic hats bearing the campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
“That’s more money than the campaign paid its data vendor L2 (which received $235,000 for “research consulting”) or than it spent on strategy consulting ($281,000). It’s almost as much as the campaign spent on field consulting ($551,000) or payroll ($518,000). Trump’s campaign did spend $793,000 on expenses related to the mega-rallies that have become his campaign’s hallmarks, as well as $459,000 on expenses related to having his name appear on primary election ballots.”
First Read: “If the polling is correct and Trump does win Iowa, the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel is probably right: Trump will be a HUGE story, especially internationally. It will be a 7.5 on the political Richter scale. Again, winning Iowa isn’t winning the nomination. But we can’t emphasize enough how big of a story it will be if/when Trump and his family are celebrating on that stage tonight – in a state where evangelicals make up more than 50% of caucus-goers. It will be the biggest story in the world.”
For members: Three surprise outcomes for Republicans in Iowa
“Unless I win, I will consider this a big, fat, beautiful — and, by the way, very expensive — waste of time.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by the Washington Post.
The final Quinnipiac poll in Iowa finds Donald Trump jumping to a solid lead over Ted Cruz, 31% to 24%, followed by Marco Rubio at 17% and Ben Carson at 8%. No other candidate gets more than 4%.
In the Democratic race, Bernie Sanders holds a slight lead over Hillary Clinton, 49% to 46%.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “The size of the turnout tonight will likely be the key factor, especially on the Democratic side. High turnouts with lots of new caucus participants likely would mean a good night for Sen. Bernie Sanders, and for Donald Trump.”
Politico reports how Donald Trump started planning his presidential run more than two years ago.
“In this meeting, Trump showed his cards, laying out the route he would take to tonight’s Iowa caucuses. Notoriously frugal, Trump insisted he wouldn’t need to spend much money on paid advertising, drawing disbelief from the professionals gathered around his table.”
Said Trump: “I’m going to get in and all the polls are going to go crazy. I’m going to suck all the oxygen out of the room. I know how to work the media in a way that they will never take the lights off of me.”
USA Today: Is Trump for real? Iowa is final test.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.