Anyone who reads the news regularly already knows which candidates were victorious in the first two states to vote in the 2016 primary season. In the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton were the winners of the Republican and Democratic caucuses, respectively. New Hampshire produced two other winners in Donald Trump and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, both of whom cruised to victory by about twenty points over their nearest competitors. However, the first-place finisher in each race was not necessarily the ultimate winner of the contest. The winners and losers of the expectations game in Iowa and New Hampshire are just as critical to understanding the true state of the Republican and Democratic nominating processes.

Playing the game of expectations well is both one of the most important and one of the trickiest jobs of any political campaign.

For those unfamiliar with the term, the expectations game refers to the delicate balancing act of making sure your candidate looks viable enough for people to vote for him or her while not setting expectations too high. If a campaign acknowledges that it doesn’t expect its candidate to do well in a given race, the candidate will lose votes, because people want to vote for someone with a chance. If the campaign sets its expectations too high, on the other hand, it will generate negative press attention as well as a sense of failure when the candidate fails to deliver on the unrealistically high expectations. This is the dilemma every campaign operation must grapple with in the days preceding voting day- how high or low to set expectations.

In the lead-up to Iowa caucus day, no campaign managed expectations more masterfully than that of Marco Rubio. The freshman senator’s advisors created a narrative that any third-place finish for their contender would constitute a victory, pointing to earlier polls that had shown him well behind several of the other candidates. T

his point of view was for the most part adopted by the media, making it generally accepted that finishing ahead of Ben Carson for third place would be enough to give Rubio momentum heading into New Hampshire’s primary the following week.

On caucus night, Rubio shocked pollsters by pulling in more than 23% of the vote and finishing just one point behind Donald Trump and 4.5 behind Cruz. Rubio gained the most from Iowa, as a number of New Hampshire polls would show over the next few days.

The other big winner in Iowa’s GOP primary was the actual winner, Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Although his victory was not entirely surprising and was predicted by many, he did outperform the polls and thereby undermine Donald Trump. Because he had been leading in Iowa polling as recently as mid-January, there was little path forward for Cruz without a first-place showing in the first caucus state. He beat expectations and trumped Trump, providing the right with another viable candidate- in addition to Rubio- who is actually a solid conservative (as opposed to Trump, whose record is messy and mostly liberal). Thus, Ted Cruz was the other winner of Iowa.

So who lost Iowa? Donald Trump did, as did the billionaire business mogul’s favorite punching bag, Jeb Bush. Bush lost not because he was expected to perform well, but because of the fact that he and his super PAC outspent every other campaign in Iowa by millions of dollars, only to finish in sixth place with 2.8% of the vote and a single delegate. Trump, however, was an even bigger loser in the state. After talking up his Iowa poll numbers for months and proclaiming that anything short of a first-place showing in the state would constitute a failure, Trump barely managed to hold onto second place in the face of Rubio’s surge and Cruz’s strong showing. Polls showed that voters who had made up their minds at the last minute overwhelmingly abandoned Trump, and the businessman’s underwhelming showing demonstrated a lack of enthusiasm among his supporters.

On the Democratic side of the caucuses, there was cause for optimism in both the Clinton and Sanders camps. Hillary defeated the insurgent Sanders by three-tenths of one percentage point, allowing her to breathe “a sigh of relief,” as she said in her victory speech that night. Another factor to consider is that she prevailed despite the high turnout, which presumably gave Sanders a boost. But the Sanders campaign certainly was not holding back the champagne on caucus night either, citing the nail-biter as proof that Bernie presents a very real challenge to the Democratic frontrunner. Though neither candidate truly won Iowa, Sanders did benefit from the optics of running so close to the former secretary of state.

A lot changed in the week between Iowa and New Hampshire, however. Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum all dropped out of the race after poor showings in Iowa. More importantly, there was plenty of upheaval in the top tier as well. Donald Trump notably stopped talking about his poll numbers at rallies and campaign stops, realizing how badly he had misplayed the expectations game in Iowa by talking up a first-place finish. Ted Cruz’s campaign came under fire for spreading false rumors on caucus night that Ben Carson was dropping out, prompting Trump to make a ridiculous call for new caucuses. And probably most game-changing of all, Marcomentum was utterly stalled when Rubio crashed and burned in last Saturday night’s debate with a robotic and repetitive performance. In the meantime, the Democratic primary turned into an all-out brawl as Sanders and Clinton ditched whatever civility had been in place before, going after each other with teeth bared.

On Tuesday night, it quickly became evident how much Rubio’s poor debate had hurt him. He was the big loser of the night, slipping into fifth place behind Trump, Ohio Governor John Kasich, Cruz, and Bush. Although he was separated from Bush by less than half a percentage point and from Cruz by barely a point, the Florida senator’s fifth-place finish fell far short of expectations. Most polls in the days following Iowa showed him sitting comfortably in second place, and finishing behind mainstream rivals Kasich and Bush was a major blow to his campaign. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie finished in sixth place with 7% of the tally, and he suspended his campaign the next day. By failing to exceed expectations in the state where he had based his operation, he had signed his campaign’s death warrant.

The big winner of the New Hampshire GOP primary was obviously Donald Trump. After his disappointing second-place showing in Iowa eight days earlier, the billionaire managed to turn out his voters and convert others at the voting booth. He blew out his nearest competition by nearly twenty points, scooping up 35.3% of the vote. He also claimed ten of the 23 delegates up for grabs. Kasich and Bush were kind of winners too. Although neither of them has much chance of being nominated, finishing ahead of Rubio gives them license to continue on to South Carolina. Cruz also did quite well, especially considering that he had hardly invested any time or resources in the Granite State. But Trump was far and away the real winner there.

Likewise, Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire anointed a clear victor. Bernie Sanders thoroughly demolished Hillary Clinton in the state, cruising to a 22-point victory. Although this resounding triumph had been predicted by the polls and therefore wasn’t very surprising, it reinforced the idea that Hillary is vulnerable and likely prompted some of her supporters to give her socialist competitor a second look. That being the case, Bernie Sanders was the big winner in New Hampshire and Hillary was the big loser.

So where does the race stand now? On the Republican side, Donald Trump is once again the frontrunner following his success in New Hampshire. He has big leads in South Carolina polls as well as in many other states. The real question is whether the field of GOP candidates will thin out soon enough for one candidate to consolidate enough anti-Trump support to win. Right now, the most likely options on that front are Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, with roughly equal chances of winning the nomination. While Cruz currently has more support than Rubio, the Floridian stands to gain more than anyone else as other candidates drop out of the race. For Rubio, it is crucial that Jeb Bush and John Kasich, neither of whom will be the nominee, drop out sooner rather than later. Anyone still in the race besides for the top three candidates is simply window dressing- or a spoiler. Barring an underdog surge of historic proportions, the GOP nominee this year will be Trump, Rubio or Cruz.

Despite its competitive appearance, the Democratic primary is not really close. Hillary Clinton has a massive advantage in the southern states, where African-Americans are more heavily concentrated. Even in whiter states where Sanders polls better, he is likely to struggle to compete with Hillary, as he did in uber-white Iowa. And in the event of a close delegate count, Hillary can count on the super delegates in the Democratic Party’s rigged nominating system to push her over the top. That’s not to say that a Sanders nomination is impossible, but it does remain an extremely unlikely outcome. In all likelihood, Hillary will be running against Trump, Rubio or Cruz in the fall. And if the polls are to be believed, Rubio is the only one of the trio who would be likely to defeat her.