Iowa evangelicals could play an unfamiliar role in 2016: Putting down an insurgent Republican candidacy rather than boosting one. This is a crucial demographic in the country’s first nominating contest. According to the 2012 entrance polls, 57 percent of last time’s caucus-goers were evangelicals or born-again Christians.

Typically, these Iowa voters have helped insurgencies. In 1988, Pat Robertson ran ahead of George H.W. Bush in all 99 counties. Pat Buchanan barely lost the state to Bob Dole in 1996, setting him up for victory in New Hampshire. In 2008 and 2012, Iowa evangelicals launched Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum from low single digits to top-tier status.

The one exception is when these socially conservative Iowans delivered the caucuses to George W. Bush in 2000, a marriage of the Christian right and the Republican establishment that proved crucial to his winning candidacy. Even then, perennial candidate Alan Keyes finished a surprisingly strong third with 14 percent of the vote, much of it coming from evangelicals.

Republicans complain the caucuses tend to advance conservative candidates with little appeal to non-evangelicals and who lack the fundraising ability or campaign infrastructure to really go the distance against establishment candidates. Could things be different this time?