What we can and can’t learn from the Iowa caucuses

If the Iowa caucus results were findings from a political poll, most people would see that they told us little about how the political winds were blowing. This is not just because Iowa caucus goers are unlikely to reflect the views of citizens nation-wide; there is a good chance that […] Read more »

Why Iowa Changed Rubio’s And Trump’s Nomination Odds So Much

Marco Rubio finished in third in Iowa — a “strong third” in which he outperformed his polls, but third nevertheless. And yet, his chances of winning the Republican nomination nearly doubled according to the bookmaker Betfair, from about 30 percent before the Iowa caucuses to 55 percent now. Meanwhile, Donald […] Read more »

The Iowa fallout

Last weekend, a leading conservative intellectual promised me Donald Trump would not win Iowa. “How can you be so sure?” I asked. “God,” he replied, “looks out for children, drunkards and the United States of America.” I’m not sure whether divine intervention prevented a national embarrassment, but as I watch […] Read more »

Tuesday morning quarterbacking the Iowa Poll

Monday night was a thriller, no doubt about it. Of course, the outcome of the Republican caucuses was not identical to the final Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll published Saturday night. We had the top four candidates identified, all right. But we had Donald Trump with the win over […] 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 »