Eight years after losing the Iowa caucuses, former President Donald Trump won the Hawkeye State by a record margin of nearly 30 percentage points, winning an outright majority of the state and blowing the polls out of the water. The former president did so despite spending more time in Manhattan courtrooms than in Iowa and being outspent 4-to-1 by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in ad buys in the state.

While the sheer magnitude of Trump’s victory provided proof of his raw hold over the party, the entrance and exit polling also indicated that Trump is winning as much because President Joe Biden is losing.

The overwhelming majority of Iowans surveyed by Edison Research’s entrance poll said that they prioritized a candidate who shared their values or fights for people like them, with just 11% prioritizing the ability to beat Biden. According to Edison Research, Trump supporters made up 81% of those who prioritize their candidate fighting for people like them and 41% of those who prioritize their candidate sharing their values. By contrast, Trump virtually tied with Haley at 39% versus 38%, respectively, in the category of voters who prioritize electability over Biden.

In a way, this logic makes sense. So what if Biden already beat Trump fair and square in 2020? Two-thirds of Iowans polled by Edison at the caucuses believe the lie that Biden didn’t legitimately win, and even those that don’t can see just how weakened the now 81-year-old Biden has become as he heads into 2024. And it’s borne out in the polling, if not common sense.

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In the RealClearPolitics polling average of the various GOP survivors versus Biden, Trump has a lead of 1.1 points, Haley has a 0.4-point lead, and DeSantis straight up loses. Sure, Haley has a bevy of head-to-head polling with double-digit leads over Biden, and the various legal trials against Trump could very well progress to convictions before the general election. But at this moment, Biden, besieged by conflagrations in the Middle East and an economy on tenterhooks, is terribly weak, leading the Republicans to throw caution to the wind in favor of pure pathos.

If Biden were a slightly stronger candidate, Haley’s hard appeal to electability could have carried a bit more weight. But when the opponent is seen as so senile, Republicans can’t help but go back to Trump.