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Iowa Predictions: For the Record
I just want it on the record.
I think Trump is going to get creamed. He has no ground game in Iowa. His lead poll captain thinks 9/11 was an inside job. He is too cheap to give said poll captain $500 to rent a hall. Iowa is a ground game state that requires an infrastructure. Trump doesn’t think he needs an infrastructure! He can win on sheer guts alone!
Oh, the polls say he’s in the lead, eh? These, the same polls that said Mitt Romney was neck-and-neck with Obama? The same polls that said that the Georgia governor was so unpopular in 2014 that he was going to sink the sitting senator with him? How did that turn out? The same polls that said McConnell was going to lose in Kentucky? He carried that state by 17 points!
I’m no expert in polling. My father is, though. Taught it in university for twenty years. A good, solid poll needs at least a thousand respondents. Most polls have half that, and +/- 3.5 is a 7-point swing. With fewer than 300, polls start getting +/- ratios of 5. That’s a ten-point swing!
My gut feeling is that come Tuesday morning, we’re going to have a bunch of pundits standing around talking about his dramatic loss and how no one could have seen it coming.
But I saw it coming, so nyah.
And if he wins? Well, I’m sure I’ll come up with something appropriate.
What’s everyone else’s prediction?
Published in Elections, General, Politics
The GOP Iowa Caucus:
My guess at the Top 5:
The Democratic Caucus:
The 2012 elections put paid to the whole “unskewed polls” stuff. The polls are usually accurate. Trump by around 7 or so in IA.
So Iowa caucus polling is actually notoriously terrible. The problem is you are looking at 20% turnout for a single party. Finding that 10% of voters who will show up is incredibly difficult.
National polling tends to be extremely accurate. State polling in large elections tends to be very accurate. Primary polling is a crap shoot.
Remember two men: Howard Dean and Rick Santorum.
Howard Dean was expected to win. Eventually, the pressure to make a mature decision got to the Dems and they went with Kerry. (Kerry’s closing message to Deaniacs was “Don’t send a message. Send a President.”)
Santorum surged dramatically in the final week, knocking off Mitt Romney (although we didn’t realize he came in first until a couple of days later). Obviously, not the same “angry voter” dynamic at work here, but it shows that things move quickly.
Perhaps the odd nature of caucuses creates a lot of uncertainty in the polls. I’m hoping that the sober-minded people who were favorably disposed to Trump get some peer pressure and don’t take a risk with this buffoon.
“The 2012 elections put paid to the whole “unskewed polls” stuff. The polls are usually accurate. Trump by around 7 or so in IA.”
Except for all the 2014 polls some of which I cited earlier. Kansas (earlier cited Georgia mea culpa) where the Dem was going to win and Brownback won by 20 points. Or McConnell who was neck and neck, only to carry Kentucky by 17 points.
We have a lot of polls these days, and most of them are lousy. Unless they have a 1000 respondents we should take them with a grain of salt.
All this to garner some percentage of the 30 Iowa delegates…
Very fair point, the media “momentum” story is the bigger deal (for as long as that will last) than delegate count. Party bigwigs need to keep calm & keep their powder dry; this is going to be a long slog.
I predict Trump comes out on top – not that I want that – then Rubio, and close behind him, Cruz. I think Cruz’s ethanol stand really stung.
Prediction market data for those interested.
I’ve had The Music Man in mind all day, Brian :) Only 20% of Iowa’s Repubicans caucus. The ones who show up are serious people, not naive marks for a con man. So, that is another reason I think Trump won’t win.
In VA in 2014 the polls were literally 9 points off. We were a few votes away from a major upset. Just saying…
Indeed, that and who is out. Iowa and New Hampshire are more about who in the race is getting eliminated, what we should be asking is who suspends their campaign and how quickly.
That’s my reaction, too. Furthermore, 3 of those 30 delegates belong to RNC, so this great commotion will probably earn the winner about a dozen delegates, just a few more than the second place finisher.
As for momentum…barring a major surprise there will be no real impact. All the players will retain their current roles for NH (the role of Santorum, Huckabee, and Carson being to drop out).
That said, I’ll play along and guess: Cruz 13, Trump 8, Rubio 6.
It wasn’t so very long ago that Ben Carson (very briefly) overtook Trump in the national polls. Now we (very reasonably) are talking about when he gets out. Things will really change when we see actual voters casting actual votes; the rest is sound & fury, signifying very little.
Speaking of Nate Silver, here’s 538’s page on Iowa polls.
My prediction is Cruz wins IA, places at least 3rd in NH, and wins SC and then the majority of states in the next round.
I’ve lived in Iowa for the past 10 years. This will be my 3rd caucus and 3rd different caucus site. Caucusing is hard. First you have to be smart enough to even find it. Keep in mind that it is not like a regular primary like they had in my previous states, where it takes 20 minutes, tops. The caucus takes a good 3 hrs, and believe me–it’s painful. It’s a lot of standing around (literally–there’s never enough seating because it’s always in school gym or the bank or a designated room in the library or something) listening to people’s speeches and waiting for the precinct leads to get organized before you ever cast a vote. I’m not expecting a lot of Democratic crossover because the Democratic caucus is held at the same time and there’s a lot of contention on that side, too. It’s easy to tell someone on the phone you’ll be there; it’s hard to actually show up and do it. I know a handful of Trump supporters and there’s no way they will put forth the effort of attending.
I’m not going to guess at the numbers, but I will call first, second, and third.
It’s going to be
I think it’ll be Cruz by a respectable margin – and Trump will come in third. Fiorina will make a better showing than expected. Second could be any number of candidates, but it won’t be an establishment guy. Probably Rubio.
For the Dems, I think Bernie will be close enough to scare Hillary, if he doesn’t flat out win.
There is optimism, and then there is hoping against hope.
What do I get if I’m right, Frank?
A prayer answered?
I am. And I agree. And I have a funny story about the editors trying to update the dates in this post and realizing that we ourselves didn’t understand this. We couldn’t agree how many days it was until Super Tuesday, couldn’t agree how many states would have finished deciding before then, couldn’t even agree what day Super Tuesday would be. It took us about two hours and 15 Google searches to be sure we had it right.
It was really embarrassing.
But it also made me think, “If this is so complicated that the editors of Ricochet can’t figure it out, maybe people who don’t, you know, follow this for a living might find it a bit confusing?”
I predict that I will get angrier and angrier at the fact that the people of Iowa and New Hampshire will pick the nominee for the people of the other 48 states.
I’m with you; and now that you’ve taken my words let me try to come up with a few of my own…Ted Cruz will never be president of the United States of America. Because I said so. He talks like he was raised by two cable channel evangelist dads; and I like cable channel evangelist dads but Americans are just not going to put up with Cruz’ odd speech voicings and cadences that knock your spine out of whack…Kasich makes me feel like a Human Resources interviewer: I got him at minute one and now it’s minute five and he’s making me uncomfortable…Christie…I can’t get the image of Obama being engulfed in his all-enfolding grab; I think Obama might still be in there trying to get out…Rubio…he’ll have a better shot after he turns 16…Ben Carson…confirms everything I’ve thought about the human brain for years…Rand Paul…we’ve never yet elected a toupee for president…Speaking of Trump…his absence showed how flat and journalistic the phrase great Republican bench…back at you ToryWarWriter…
This election cycle has proven impervious to logic and everything I thought I knew about politics. So take this with a big grain of salt.
The Donald doesn’t have a ground game so he places a distant third. Cruz and Rubio come in first and second but are very close; too close for me to say who gets which spot.