Iowans are mad as hell, and they know who to turn to — Donald Trump.

Outsider candidates have a history of gaining traction among Hawkeye State GOP caucus-goers fed up with Washington and establishment candidates more broadly. The Iowa agitation was loud and clear in the CNN/ORC poll released on Wednesday showing Donald Trump soaring with voters, despite a slew of highly controversial remarks made in the past few weeks, with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, another political outsider, coming in second.


“It is ridiculously early, but there’s no question that Mr. Trump and Dr. Carson, they’ve struck a nerve with Iowans who are unhappy with what they have seen coming out of Washington in recent years,” said Matt Strawn, the former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party. “Whether they are momentarily voicing their frustrations through nontraditional candidates or will ultimately caucus for them are two very different things, and the answer to that will come down the road.”

The Trump boom is playing out across the country as the bombastic businessman and slayer of political correctness continues to lead national polls. For many conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere, there’s the sense that even after electing a Republican Senate last cycle, giving the GOP control of both chambers of Congress, little has changed — and some are venting by aligning with Trump, who has no compunctions about railing against Washington and the political establishment, and to a lesser extent with Carson, who has never worked in politics.

In Iowa, the anger Trump is channeling starts at the local level and goes all the way to the top, said Sam Clovis, a prominent conservative Iowa college professor who is chairing Rick Perry’s Iowa effort, but stressed he was speaking as an academic. He said that the state has taken a more populist turn amid national debates over the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank and trade bills — which “smack of crony capitalism” to the base, he said — and noted that some are still smarting from a vote some Republicans in the statehouse took earlier this year to back a gasoline tax.

“There’s an anger that gets generated, a disaffection [that results in voters] running to look at candidates other than mainstream candidates,” Clovis said. “This is why I think Trump, [Carly] Fiorina and Carson are doing as well as they are.”

Fiorina has generated buzz among activists, but came in at 7 percent in the CNN poll — a bump for her over previous polling — while Trump took in 22 percent and Carson pulled in 14 percent. Scott Walker, who had previously been leading in Iowa, fell to third place with 9 percent, while Ted Cruz, a senator who often clashes with GOP leadership, was at 8 percent.

Trump is “tapping in to a full-out frustration with Washington and the establishment and politics as usual,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent social conservative leader in Iowa. “That’s why you’re seeing Trump with the numbers Trump has, Carson with the number Carson has, Cruz with the numbers Cruz has. They are viewed as outsiders. And we’re still in August, not December. As I remind people all the time, polls mean nothing [right now].”

He sounded a familiar theme: All of the Republicans interviewed warned against paying too much attention to the polls at this juncture. In August of 2011, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry were leading the polls in Iowa, they note; in 2007 it was Rudy Giuliani, none of whom went on to win the caucuses.

But there’s another applicable historical precedent: traditionally, outsider candidates who have lasted until the caucuses have sewn up 20 percent to 30 percent of the caucus vote in non-Republican incumbent presidential years. In 1988, the hard-line social conservative Pat Robertson took in about a quarter of the vote. In 1996, Pat Buchanan, a neo-isolationist populist with a record of highly inflammatory statements, took in 23 percent of the vote. And in 2000, Steve Forbes, a businessman who ran as an outsider, received 30 percent of the vote. In 2012, libertarian icon Ron Paul took in 21.5 percent.

“They’ve always been there,” said Karen Fesler, a conservative Iowa activist who is aiding Perry, of protest voters. Trump and Carson “are running against Washington, which isn’t a bad thing, OK? Let’s just see where it all shakes out. At some point … people are going to start listening with a critical ear.”

A senior Iowa Republican who is advising another campaign added, “There’s not a single issue people ever point to as the reason they’re supporting Trump. They believe he’ll just blow it up, blow up the system, that somebody needs to blow up the system. Just remember, it was the same thing with [third-party candidate] Ross Perot [in 1992]. It starts to wear thin after awhile. People start looking for more. That’s what we’re counting on. I’m not one who says [Trump’s] going to completely melt down. I think he’s going to be competitive, but I don’t think he’ll win it.”

Perot, of course, took a toll on George H.W. Bush, who lost reelection that year, and Trump has not ruled out a third-party run, either. But some Iowans questioned whether the people who say they are supporting him now are actually the ones who will turn out on caucus night, noting that he enjoys high name identification.

“I have run into very few Iowans who told me they are definitively going to caucus for Trump,” Strawn said. “However, they like the fact that he’s sticking a finger in the eye of the political and media class.”

Jeff Kaufmann, the chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, said that brash talk is an animating force for those currently supporting Trump, even more so than his anti-Washington posture.

“Some people are reading this surge as anti-establishment, anti-Washington,” he said. “I definitely think there’s some of that, that’s not to deny that there’s a certain populist bent to many voters. They also like his bluntness. They may not like [everything he says], but they like the fact that he’s not afraid to say it. Donald Trump is taking that to a new level.”

That’s energizing some in the party, which is a good thing, Kaufmann said — but he warned that it can go too far.

“You’ve got to be careful,” he said. “Because there are limits to what people will tolerate that’s on your mind.”