Agree, there’s several thousands of registered voters that don’t attend caucuses but
vote on election day. So Trump’s objective is to motivate them to caucus for him.
Will it work? We won’t know until about 9pm Monday night.
Oh yeah. Trump could win for sure. But his support will have to come in a much more conventional way than might have been the case.
Here are some numbers:
Total Iowa Registered Republicans as of 1/4/16 = 612,112
- per Iowa Secretary of State website
(The 2012 total Republican caucus vote was 121,255).
These are the possible turnout scenarios for 2016:
If 120,000 turn out, that = 19.6% turnout
If 140,000 turn out, that = 22.8%
If 160,000 turn out, that = 26.1%
It is entirely possible that closer to 160,000 could turn out this year, just a one-third increase over 2012 and little more than just a quarter of total registered Republicans.
Add to that the number of party-switchers who will re-register on the spot at the caucuses Monday evening and the results could well be YUGE!