News Outlets Declared Trump the Winner as Iowans Still Caucused

A mere half-hour of Monday’s Iowa caucuses had elapsed when CNN projected former President Donald J. Trump as the night’s winner. The Associated Press declared Mr. Trump the victor one minute later, and soon every major network had followed suit.

Although many caucuses had not concluded, news organizations said that surveys of voters taken before their arrival at the caucuses — the Iowa equivalent of exit polls, which are conducted after voters cast ballots — had provided enough data for their election experts to confidently declare a winner.

The early call infuriated allies of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who accused the news media of biasing caucusgoers who had yet to cast their votes. “Are you kidding me?” Representative Chip Roy of Texas told reporters at a DeSantis event in West Des Moines. “They haven’t even started voting yet and heard all the speeches and A.P. calls it?”

For its part, The A.P. said that its race call, which The New York Times relied upon in reporting its own results, was based on “an analysis of early returns as well as results of A.P. VoteCast,” its proprietary voter survey system that the outlet said “showed Trump with an insurmountable lead.”

That survey included more than 1,500 voters who said they planned to participate in a caucus, and was conducted over the past several days. According to The A.P., the survey showed Mr. Trump enjoying a hefty advantage among men and women, and across every age group and geographic region of Iowa.

The A.P. said that its decision desk had also analyzed early results from eight Iowa counties that were received within the first half-hour after caucusing began, which showed that Mr. Trump had received “far more than half of the total votes counted.”

CNN’s projection relied in part on a so-called “entrance poll” conducted by Edison Research on behalf of several major television networks. On air, the anchor Jake Tapper told viewers that Mr. Trump’s expected victory was “based on his overwhelming lead in our entrance poll of Iowa caucusgoers and some initial votes that are coming in.”

One CNN executive said that the network had enough data to announce a race call at 8 p.m., the official start time of the evening’s caucuses, but that the network had chosen to hold off until it believed all voters were required to be inside their caucus sites.

ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC also projected Mr. Trump as the winner.

Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.