Most Iowa polls showed Donald Trump winning the state’s Republican caucuses. He didn’t. Some Iowa polls showed Hillary Clinton winning Iowa easily. She didn’t. It’s notoriously hard to poll Iowa, but what can pollsters learn from Monday night’s results to improve their work over the next few months — and […] Read more »
How Ted Cruz Engineered His Iowa Triumph
… As he staffed the campaign, [campaign manager Jeff] Roe made the unusual decision to make Cruz’s director of analytics and his pollster the same person. … Roe has granted [Chris] Wilson the most expansive brief of any pollster in either party’s 2016 field: his surveys not only guide Cruz’s […] Read more »
After polling shock, Ann Selzer happy to be the ‘silver standard’ in Iowa
The 2016 Iowa caucuses were more polled, more frequently, than any previous contest. Starting in November, there were multiple weekly looks at the Iowa electorate, many of them earning bright red chyrons on cable news. But there was only one Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll — and only one Ann […] Read more »
So how badly did the Iowa polls do?
Donald Trump loves to talk about them, most candidates pretend to ignore them, and lots of voters get sick of them, but polls have a ubiquitous role in American politics. How’d they do in Iowa? On the Democratic side, not bad. On the GOP side, worse. CONT. David Lauter, Los […] Read more »
Making Sense of Iowa
If you predicted that Ted Cruz would beat Donald Trump by a larger margin than Hillary Clinton would beat Bernie Sanders, you deserve a special pundit medal of honor. But, the topsy-turvy results of the Iowa Caucuses actually make some sense when you dig into the reasons behind them. CONT. […] Read more »
Polls Were Way Off on Donald Trump. Here’s What It Means.
Donald Trump was at the top of each of the last 10 polls in Iowa, but his lead failed to hold up on caucus night Monday. In the end, his seven-point lead in polling averages amounted to a three-point loss to Ted Cruz. That 10-point swing was enough to make […] Read more »