Donald Trump did something yesterday in Iowa that no one ever had — win the caucuses with greater than 50% of the vote. His winning 51% on a day with brutally bad weather happened because he’s done something else few others have done — create an unbreakable bond with his supporters.

Democrats would call your mom racist if she espoused anything to the right of Karl Marx. But there’s a special kind of vitriol reserved for the 45th president, and Democrats have strategically extended that hatred to Trump’s “MAGA extremist” base. When you have been called a bigoted white supremacist for eight years simply because you voted for Trump, whom the Democrats are barring from ballots and trying to throw in jail, let’s just say it makes you rather reluctant to switch candidates. Indeed, it creates deep loyalty that means, come hell or high water, you’re sticking with your man.

Yes, there’s still a long way to go in the 2024 Republican primary race. Iowa’s 40 delegates represent just 1% of the 2,429 delegates necessary to win the nomination, and Trump won just 51% of those 40. It’s also true that Iowa rarely picks the GOP nominee. Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz all enjoyed their time in the cornfields, but none proceeded to win the nomination.

Yet at least half of Republican voters seem dead set on Trump. He’s leading everywhere. In some respects, the race was over the moment he became the first candidate to announce his 2024 bid. “This is a movement,” he said in November 2022, and his supporters believe they’re a key part of it.

A great governor with a track record of success and another successful governor with foreign policy chops from Trump’s administration aren’t going to change that. Trump doesn’t have to campaign or debate or even show basic respect for his opponents. He can call them juvenile names, revise history, and upstage every single GOP debate with a simultaneous event of his own, and his supporters love him for it because it’s still his turn and he’s owed the nomination over those lousy ingrates who are just RINOs anyway. Then he can turn around and be conciliatory, saying in his victory speech that “Ron and Nikki” are “very good people” and that it’s time for Republicans to unify, and his supporters love him for that too.

It’s a marvel to behold.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, arguably the GOP’s best governor, has essentially lived in Iowa. He visited each of the state’s 99 counties. He had the endorsement of the state’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, and its kingmaking social conservative, Bob Vander Plaats. He spent nine figures in the state. His 21% was good for second place, and in a normal year it might have been an impressive showing. DeSantis will live to fight another day, but he has to be disappointed with a 30-point loss.

Former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley garnered 19% in Iowa and has a head of steam heading into New Hampshire and her native Palmetto State. But unless DeSantis bows out to make this effectively a two-person race, Haley has little shot to win the nomination.

After winning just 8% in Iowa, Vivek Ramaswamy ended his campaign and endorsed Trump, which seems likely to have been his plan all along.

It seems worth noting that DeSantis, Haley, and Ramaswamy all outperformed their polling, while Trump underperformed his.

But it was a dominant night for Trump. DeSantis visited all 99 Iowa counties, while Trump won 98 of them. Haley won the 99th — Johnson County, home of Iowa City and the University of Iowa, and she won there by a single vote. Until last night, the largest margin of victory ever for a Republican belonged to Bob Dole, who won by 12 points in 1988. (Note: Dole didn’t win the nomination in ‘88.) Trump won by 30 points, and he won almost every demographic group.

Another important number: Republicans spent $100 million in Iowa, while Joe Biden raked in that same amount last quarter and hardly spent any of it.

Beating Biden is — or should be — the GOP’s ultimate objective, so the question is, who can do that? DeSantis and Haley have both argued that Trump can’t win. And as one DeSantis supporter said in Iowa, “Nobody gets the Democrats out to vote more than Trump.” Indeed, there’s a reason why Democrats have strategically indicted Trump four times on 91 charges — they want him to be the nominee.

Yet many polls now show Trump beating Biden, so the electability argument isn’t what it used to be. And Biden is showing no indication of stepping aside. Democrats may deeply regret their strategy soon enough.

Trump has promised to be his supporters’ “retribution.” But he’s also said the opposite. “I’m not going to have time for retribution. We’re going to make this country so successful again, I’m not going to have time for retribution,” he told an Iowa crowd a few days ago. “And remember this, our ultimate retribution is success.”

He shows an uncanny ability to connect with about half of Republican voters with the things he says. He brings in disaffected voters who have been victimized by Democrat economic manipulation and race-baiting bigotry. The fact that he could be a convicted felon in a few months would be perceived by many to be a feather in his cap because of who did the convicting and how.

In Iowa and elsewhere, Trump’s dominance is the story, but there are warning signs. For example, as The Wall Street Journal notes, “32% of GOP caucus-goers said that a conviction would be disqualifying.” When running against a demonstrably dementing, disastrous, and historically unpopular Democrat in Joe Biden, the former president with a stellar record should be leading the GOP field with 90%. And he isn’t.

(Updated)