With 24 percent of Iowa precincts reporting, Karl Rove and the other "campaign cowboys" at Fox News "are somewhat happier campers, because they've got some numbers to look at and to analyze now," Chris Wallace said on Fox News Monday night. The vote is incomplete, and the big vote centers haven't reported yet, Wallace warned, but Rove didn't seem deterred from weighing in. His first prediction is that this will be a record turnout for Republicans in Iowa, easily topping the 2012 record of 122,000 caucus-goers with at least 138,000, maybe even 150,000. But Rove also saw some other trends.
Marco Rubio is doing better than expected in rural, conservative western Iowa, he said, while Trump is outperforming in eastern Iowa and Ted Cruz in populous central Iowa — both Mitt Romney strongholds in 2012. "We've got a very confusing pattern here," largely, Rove said, "because we're having a lot of new people show up." The theory going into the caucuses was that a high turnout favored Trump, but Rove doesn't think that's necessarily true. "It favors whoever gets them to turn out," Rove said, and right now "it looks like everyone's getting their share." Watch below. Peter Weber
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