hno: Idiot Fruit. Nate gives %'s of likelihood on stuff like this. He doesn't declare a non entity like Fred Thompson or Duncan Hunter a sure winner.
)Plenty of eggs in Iowa but Nate just laid a few of his own...
NATE SILVER: Here's who's favored to win the Iowa caucuses
By Andy Kiersz12 hours ago
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
The polling gurus at Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight have been tracking the odds of different candidates winning in the early primary and caucus races.FiveThirtyEight provides two projections for each race: A "polls-only" model that is based solely on public polling within a particular state, and a "polls-plus" model that additionally factors in national polling and endorsements from sitting governors and members of Congress.
Looking at the Monday-night Iowa caucuses, the two models are more or less in agreement about each party's favorites: businessman Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In the Republican race, the polls-plus model gives Trump a 46% chance of winning, compared with 39% for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas,
14% for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and 1% for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
The polls-only model has the same order for the top four candidates but with slightly better odds for the front-runner: Trump is forecast to have a 54% chance of winning, compared with 33% for Cruz,11% for Rubio, and 1% for Carson.
Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, the polls-plus model gives Clinton a 67% chance of winning. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is projected to have a 33% chance,
ointer::Carcajada::missingteand former Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland has a less than 1% chance.
Things look even better for Clinton in the polls-only model, with a 72% chance of victory, compared with 28% for Sandersointer::Carcajada:azzkick(&^and a still less than 1% chance for O'Malley.
The Republican and Democratic candidates have been brawling ahead of the first-in-the-nation caucuses. Trump has become the overwhelming favorite there and in New Hampshire, which hosts the first primary February 9. Trump also has sizable leads nationally.
Clinton, meanwhile, has been staving off a fierce challenge from Sanders, who has surged in recent polls nationally and of the early states.
We'll find out who wins Iowa, for real, on Monday night.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nate-silver-heres-whos-favored-182940459.html
NATE SILVER: Here's who's favored to win the Iowa caucuses
By Andy Kiersz12 hours ago(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
The polling gurus at Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight have been tracking the odds of different candidates winning in the early primary and caucus races.FiveThirtyEight provides two projections for each race: A "polls-only" model that is based solely on public polling within a particular state, and a "polls-plus" model that additionally factors in national polling and endorsements from sitting governors and members of Congress.
Looking at the Monday-night Iowa caucuses, the two models are more or less in agreement about each party's favorites: businessman Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In the Republican race, the polls-plus model gives Trump a 46% chance of winning, compared with 39% for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas,
14% for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and 1% for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.The polls-only model has the same order for the top four candidates but with slightly better odds for the front-runner: Trump is forecast to have a 54% chance of winning, compared with 33% for Cruz,
11% for Rubio, and 1% for Carson.Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, the polls-plus model gives Clinton a 67% chance of winning. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is projected to have a 33% chance,
ointer::Carcajada::missingteand former Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland has a less than 1% chance.Things look even better for Clinton in the polls-only model, with a 72% chance of victory, compared with 28% for Sanders
ointer::Carcajada:azzkick(&^and a still less than 1% chance for O'Malley.The Republican and Democratic candidates have been brawling ahead of the first-in-the-nation caucuses. Trump has become the overwhelming favorite there and in New Hampshire, which hosts the first primary February 9. Trump also has sizable leads nationally.
Clinton, meanwhile, has been staving off a fierce challenge from Sanders, who has surged in recent polls nationally and of the early states.
We'll find out who wins Iowa, for real, on Monday night.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nate-silver-heres-whos-favored-182940459.html
"67% and 72% for Clinton"
"Polls plus"
Imagine a poster laying double-digit chalk, his "can't miss" favorite barely squeaks out a nail-biter in OT (or extra innings) and then he has the nerve to crow about his "prediction skills" after the fact.
Silver's "polls only" model also had him laying at least a touchdown on Trump. OOPS!
Yep, mathematical genius extraordinaire!
LMFAO!
"Polls plus"
Imagine a poster laying double-digit chalk, his "can't miss" favorite barely squeaks out a nail-biter in OT (or extra innings) and then he has the nerve to crow about his "prediction skills" after the fact.
Silver's "polls only" model also had him laying at least a touchdown on Trump. OOPS!
Yep, mathematical genius extraordinaire!
LMFAO!
My boy's finished 1st and 3rd, not so bad. Although I like Cruz most in the political arena and think Rubio has the best chance of winning a national election, I mostly like Trump.
So it appears the GOP should have a representative I like for the first time in 12 years.
I'm still not sure how McCain won, while Romney was a smart man with a great resume but not the campaigner that was needed and he didn't excite the base the way he should have. Hence he fell short. A little larger turnout of taxpayers, he wins.
Trump may be more electable than Cruz, but I'm not sure he doesn't have a glass jaw and I don't know how his persona plays out on the national stage. One of the many things I despise about Obama is his love for being a celebrity, always in front of the cameras and talking out his ass. I think Trump will be even worse in that regard. I want the POTUS to govern with a firm hand and quite dignity.
Policy and character, of course, are always at the top of my list, and I mostly like Trump on policy.
So it appears the GOP should have a representative I like for the first time in 12 years.
I'm still not sure how McCain won, while Romney was a smart man with a great resume but not the campaigner that was needed and he didn't excite the base the way he should have. Hence he fell short. A little larger turnout of taxpayers, he wins.
Trump may be more electable than Cruz, but I'm not sure he doesn't have a glass jaw and I don't know how his persona plays out on the national stage. One of the many things I despise about Obama is his love for being a celebrity, always in front of the cameras and talking out his ass. I think Trump will be even worse in that regard. I want the POTUS to govern with a firm hand and quite dignity.
Policy and character, of course, are always at the top of my list, and I mostly like Trump on policy.
I find it amusing the anointed one is having trouble with a 74 year old unknown socialist with a fraction of the backing, too damn funny
Time to cry bitch, you worked soooooo hard for this, you fucking lying scumbag
Hillary's character may be the worst of any presidential candidate in the history of our country, her soul rots, there's a bad stench in every room she occupies.
Time to cry bitch, you worked soooooo hard for this, you fucking lying scumbag
Hillary's character may be the worst of any presidential candidate in the history of our country, her soul rots, there's a bad stench in every room she occupies.
[h=1]Donald Trump Comes Out Of Iowa Looking Like Pat Buchanan[/h] By Nate Silver
Donald Trump after speaking at a caucus site Monday in Iowa.
Jae C. Hong / AP
On Monday, Iowa voters did something that Republican “party elites” had failed to do for more than seven months: They rejected Donald Trump.
Trump received 24 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, placing him closer to the third-place candidate, Marco Rubio (23 percent), than to the winner, Ted Cruz (28 percent). Trump underperformed his polls, which had him winning Iowa with 29 percent of the vote, while Cruz and Rubio outperformed theirs.
It’s not uncommon for the polls to be off in Iowa and other early-voting states, but the manner in which Trump underachieved is revealing. It turns out that few late-deciding voters went for him. According to entrance polls in Iowa, Trump won 39 percent of the vote among Iowans who decided on their candidate more than a month ago. But he took just 13 percent of voters who had decided in the last few days, with Rubio instead winning the plurality of those voters.
Source: Iowa Republican Entrance Poll
Could this have been a reaction to Trump’s failure to show up for last week’s GOP debate? It’s plausible. Trump, who seemed uncharacteristically chastened in his brief concession speech on Monday, might think twice before skipping a debate again. But there was no decline in his polls in New Hampshire or nationally after the missed debate, which suggests that something else might have been at work in Iowa.
Could it have been his lack of a ground game in Iowa? That’s possible, too. If so, it has interesting implications for the rest of Trump’s campaign. On the one hand, it’s hard to build a field operation on short notice, so if Trump had a poor one in Iowa he may face similar challenges in the remaining 49 states. On the other hand, a field operation potentially matters less in primary states than in caucus states like Iowa.
But there’s good reason to think that the ground game wasn’t the only reason for Trump’s defeat. Republican turnout in Iowa was extremely high by historical standards and beat most projections. Furthermore, Trump won the plurality of first-time caucus-goers.
There may have been a more basic reason for Trump’s loss: The dude just ain’t all that popular. Even among Republicans.
The final Des Moines Register poll before Monday’s vote showed Trump with a favorability rating of only 50 percent favorable against an unfavorable rating of 47 percent among Republican voters. (By contrast, Cruz had a favorable rating of 65 percent, and Rubio was at 70 percent.) It’s almost unprecedented for a candidate to win a caucus or a primary when he has break-even favorables within his own party.
Still, Trump had seemed poised to do it, in part because of the intensity of his support. He’s highly differentiated from the rest of the field — a strategic advantage in such a crowded race — and the voters who like Trump like him an awful lot. The disproportionate media coverage of Trump played a large role too, though. Most Republican voters like several candidates. How does a Republican voter who likes (for example) Trump, Cruz and Chris Christie choose among them? The answer seems to have a lot to do with which candidate is getting the most news coverage.
In Iowa, however, the media environment wasn’t as lopsided in Trump’s favor. Voters were blanketed with ads from all the candidates. And they sought out information on their own before settling on their vote. There was a late spike in Google searches for Cruz and Rubio in the state Monday, bringing them almost even with Trump, even as Trump continued to dominate in search traffic nationally.
What about those national polls showing Trump with support in the mid- to high 30s? They might also be a mirage, reflecting a combination of the Trump base (24 percent is nothing to sneeze at, but also well short of a winning coalition), plus a few other bandwagon-jumpers who come along for the ride but who may peel off as they research the candidates more deeply.
I wrote in August about “Donald Trump’s Six Stages Of Doom” and noted that this might be a problem for Trump. Several past factional candidates, including Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson and Ron Paul,[SUP]1[/SUP] received somewhere around 25 percent of the vote in Iowa. Under some circumstances, 25 percent can be good enough to win an early state. But it leaves you well short of the majority you need to win a nomination.
What might Pat Buchanan plus obsessive, round-the-clock media coverage look like? Well, possibly a lot like Donald Trump. Iowa voters made Trump appear to be much more of a factional candidate along the lines of Buchanan, who received 23 percent of Iowa’s vote in 1996, than the juggernaut he’s been billed as. We’ll know a lot more after New Hampshire weighs in next week.
Jae C. Hong / AP
On Monday, Iowa voters did something that Republican “party elites” had failed to do for more than seven months: They rejected Donald Trump.
Trump received 24 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, placing him closer to the third-place candidate, Marco Rubio (23 percent), than to the winner, Ted Cruz (28 percent). Trump underperformed his polls, which had him winning Iowa with 29 percent of the vote, while Cruz and Rubio outperformed theirs.
It’s not uncommon for the polls to be off in Iowa and other early-voting states, but the manner in which Trump underachieved is revealing. It turns out that few late-deciding voters went for him. According to entrance polls in Iowa, Trump won 39 percent of the vote among Iowans who decided on their candidate more than a month ago. But he took just 13 percent of voters who had decided in the last few days, with Rubio instead winning the plurality of those voters.
| WHEN DECISION TO SUPPORT WAS MADE | TRUMP | CRUZ | RUBIO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just today | 15% | 22% | 28% |
| In the last few days | 13 | 27 | 31 |
| Sometime last week | 13 | 36 | 27 |
| In the last month | 23 | 32 | 27 |
| Before that | 39 | 26 | 13 |
Could this have been a reaction to Trump’s failure to show up for last week’s GOP debate? It’s plausible. Trump, who seemed uncharacteristically chastened in his brief concession speech on Monday, might think twice before skipping a debate again. But there was no decline in his polls in New Hampshire or nationally after the missed debate, which suggests that something else might have been at work in Iowa.
Could it have been his lack of a ground game in Iowa? That’s possible, too. If so, it has interesting implications for the rest of Trump’s campaign. On the one hand, it’s hard to build a field operation on short notice, so if Trump had a poor one in Iowa he may face similar challenges in the remaining 49 states. On the other hand, a field operation potentially matters less in primary states than in caucus states like Iowa.
But there’s good reason to think that the ground game wasn’t the only reason for Trump’s defeat. Republican turnout in Iowa was extremely high by historical standards and beat most projections. Furthermore, Trump won the plurality of first-time caucus-goers.
There may have been a more basic reason for Trump’s loss: The dude just ain’t all that popular. Even among Republicans.
The final Des Moines Register poll before Monday’s vote showed Trump with a favorability rating of only 50 percent favorable against an unfavorable rating of 47 percent among Republican voters. (By contrast, Cruz had a favorable rating of 65 percent, and Rubio was at 70 percent.) It’s almost unprecedented for a candidate to win a caucus or a primary when he has break-even favorables within his own party.
Still, Trump had seemed poised to do it, in part because of the intensity of his support. He’s highly differentiated from the rest of the field — a strategic advantage in such a crowded race — and the voters who like Trump like him an awful lot. The disproportionate media coverage of Trump played a large role too, though. Most Republican voters like several candidates. How does a Republican voter who likes (for example) Trump, Cruz and Chris Christie choose among them? The answer seems to have a lot to do with which candidate is getting the most news coverage.
In Iowa, however, the media environment wasn’t as lopsided in Trump’s favor. Voters were blanketed with ads from all the candidates. And they sought out information on their own before settling on their vote. There was a late spike in Google searches for Cruz and Rubio in the state Monday, bringing them almost even with Trump, even as Trump continued to dominate in search traffic nationally.
What about those national polls showing Trump with support in the mid- to high 30s? They might also be a mirage, reflecting a combination of the Trump base (24 percent is nothing to sneeze at, but also well short of a winning coalition), plus a few other bandwagon-jumpers who come along for the ride but who may peel off as they research the candidates more deeply.
I wrote in August about “Donald Trump’s Six Stages Of Doom” and noted that this might be a problem for Trump. Several past factional candidates, including Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson and Ron Paul,[SUP]1[/SUP] received somewhere around 25 percent of the vote in Iowa. Under some circumstances, 25 percent can be good enough to win an early state. But it leaves you well short of the majority you need to win a nomination.
What might Pat Buchanan plus obsessive, round-the-clock media coverage look like? Well, possibly a lot like Donald Trump. Iowa voters made Trump appear to be much more of a factional candidate along the lines of Buchanan, who received 23 percent of Iowa’s vote in 1996, than the juggernaut he’s been billed as. We’ll know a lot more after New Hampshire weighs in next week.
[h=1]Bernie Sanders Needs More Than The Tie He Got In Iowa[/h] By Harry Enten
Bernie Sanders addresses the crowd at his caucus night rally in Des Moines, Iowa.
J. David Ake / AP
Sometimes votes have clear outcomes and sometimes they don’t. Monday’s Iowa Democratic caucuses are an example of the latter. Hillary Clinton seems to have barely beaten Bernie Sanders in the closest Iowa Democratic caucus ever after holding a small lead in most Iowa polls before the caucuses. That means Iowa probably hasn’t reshaped the Democratic race for president and Clinton remains the favorite.
But neither Clinton nor Sanders did so well as to make me think either candidate will gain momentum heading into the New Hampshire primary next week. Sanders is likely to win in the Granite State — he has either an 89 percent chance or a 96 percent chance of winning there, depending on whether you look at FiveThirtyEight’s polls-plus forecast or polls-only forecast. Still, the results in Iowa suggest that polls in New Hampshire may tighten. That’s because the states look similar demographically. Even taking into account that Sanders lives next door in Vermont, Clinton probably shouldn’t be behind by 17 percentage points in the New Hampshire polling average right now.
Assuming Sanders holds on to win in New Hampshire, would that be bad news for Clinton? Although I’m not sure that anyone wants to lose a primary, how she frames a loss in New Hampshire will matter a lot. If she is seen as doing better than expected, she could get a bump (something she is now unlikely to get coming out of Iowa). If, however, Sanders gets good press, he may improve his chances despite the demographic challenges facing him in other states.
We’ve said for months that Iowa and New Hampshire are two of the best states for Sanders demographically. You can see why in the entrance poll taken in Iowa. Sanders won very liberal voters over Clinton by 19 percentage points, but he lost self-identified somewhat liberals and moderates to Clinton by 6 percentage points and 23 percentage points, respectively. That’s bad for Sanders because even though 68 percent of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers identified as liberal this year, only 47 percent of Democratic primary voters nationwide did so in 2008. We’ll need to see if Sanders can do better in a state that is more moderate than Iowa before thinking he can win the nomination.
Iowa and New Hampshire also lack nonwhite voters, who form a huge part of the Democratic base. Can Sanders win over some of these voters? Clinton has held a lead among nonwhites of nearly 40 percentage points in national polls. In Nevada, which votes after the New Hampshire primary, the electorate for the Democratic caucuses in 2008 was 15 percent Hispanic and 15 percent black. After Nevada comes South Carolina, where a majority of Democratic voters will be black. Our polls-only forecast in South Carolina gives Clinton a 94 percent chance to win, and our polls-plus forecast gives her a 96 percent chance to win.
Clinton will continue to be a favorite for the Democratic nomination if she continues to hold a large lead among nonwhite voters and basically breaks even with white voters, as she did in Iowa. Sanders, meanwhile, needs to cut into Clinton’s lead among nonwhites and expand his support among white voters beyond what he won in Iowa. If he does that, he’ll put himself in contention to win the nomination. If he doesn’t, he’ll continue to be an underdog.
J. David Ake / AP
Sometimes votes have clear outcomes and sometimes they don’t. Monday’s Iowa Democratic caucuses are an example of the latter. Hillary Clinton seems to have barely beaten Bernie Sanders in the closest Iowa Democratic caucus ever after holding a small lead in most Iowa polls before the caucuses. That means Iowa probably hasn’t reshaped the Democratic race for president and Clinton remains the favorite.
But neither Clinton nor Sanders did so well as to make me think either candidate will gain momentum heading into the New Hampshire primary next week. Sanders is likely to win in the Granite State — he has either an 89 percent chance or a 96 percent chance of winning there, depending on whether you look at FiveThirtyEight’s polls-plus forecast or polls-only forecast. Still, the results in Iowa suggest that polls in New Hampshire may tighten. That’s because the states look similar demographically. Even taking into account that Sanders lives next door in Vermont, Clinton probably shouldn’t be behind by 17 percentage points in the New Hampshire polling average right now.
Assuming Sanders holds on to win in New Hampshire, would that be bad news for Clinton? Although I’m not sure that anyone wants to lose a primary, how she frames a loss in New Hampshire will matter a lot. If she is seen as doing better than expected, she could get a bump (something she is now unlikely to get coming out of Iowa). If, however, Sanders gets good press, he may improve his chances despite the demographic challenges facing him in other states.
We’ve said for months that Iowa and New Hampshire are two of the best states for Sanders demographically. You can see why in the entrance poll taken in Iowa. Sanders won very liberal voters over Clinton by 19 percentage points, but he lost self-identified somewhat liberals and moderates to Clinton by 6 percentage points and 23 percentage points, respectively. That’s bad for Sanders because even though 68 percent of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers identified as liberal this year, only 47 percent of Democratic primary voters nationwide did so in 2008. We’ll need to see if Sanders can do better in a state that is more moderate than Iowa before thinking he can win the nomination.
Iowa and New Hampshire also lack nonwhite voters, who form a huge part of the Democratic base. Can Sanders win over some of these voters? Clinton has held a lead among nonwhites of nearly 40 percentage points in national polls. In Nevada, which votes after the New Hampshire primary, the electorate for the Democratic caucuses in 2008 was 15 percent Hispanic and 15 percent black. After Nevada comes South Carolina, where a majority of Democratic voters will be black. Our polls-only forecast in South Carolina gives Clinton a 94 percent chance to win, and our polls-plus forecast gives her a 96 percent chance to win.
Clinton will continue to be a favorite for the Democratic nomination if she continues to hold a large lead among nonwhite voters and basically breaks even with white voters, as she did in Iowa. Sanders, meanwhile, needs to cut into Clinton’s lead among nonwhites and expand his support among white voters beyond what he won in Iowa. If he does that, he’ll put himself in contention to win the nomination. If he doesn’t, he’ll continue to be an underdog.
Four Roads Out Of Iowa For Republicans
How Trump, Cruz and Rubio finish will set the terms of the campaign.
By NATE SILVER
An elephant statue sits outside a campaign event for Scott Walker at Modern Woodman Park in July 2015 in Davenport, Iowa.
SCOTT OLSON / GETTY IMAGES
Yes, I know: There’s an incredibly handsome orange-haired man from Queens sitting atop the polls. Donald Trump has a serious chance of winning the Republican nomination — not words I’d have expected myself to be writing six months ago.[SUP]1[/SUP] Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, however, still have a shot to knock Trump off his pedestal. Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Chris Christie might have a chance too, although they’ll need a lot of things to break right for them.
The dominoes will begin falling after the Iowa caucuses Monday night. It seems to me there are four basic narratives that could emerge from the state. (By “narratives,” I mean how the media, Republican party elites and the other candidates will interpret the results. Be warned: How the media responds is sometimes way more predictable than how voters do.) They depend, respectively, on whether Trump beats Cruz and on how well Rubio does.
About Rubio: What it means to perform “well” is obviously a little subjective, but how a candidate does relative to his polls is usually a pretty good guide to the spin that eventually emerges. Recent Iowa polls have Rubio in third place, with a vote share in the mid-teens. If Rubio finishes in the low teens or worse, his performance is likely to be regarded as disappointing (he’ll also be at risk of falling behind Ben Carson or another candidate into fourth place). If he’s in the high teens or better, he’ll probably be regarded as having momentum, especially if he slips into second place. Our models also think there’s an outside chance — 7 percent to 10 percent, depending on which version you look at — for Rubio to win Iowa. That’s mostly out of an abundance of caution: Iowa polls aresometimes wildly off the mark.[SUP]2[/SUP] The scenarios below contemplate Rubio finishing in second or a strong third place, but not winning. Of course, there could be even crazier outcomes still — our models give Carson around a 1-in-100 chance of winning Iowa, for example — but the four cases we describe below are the ones we take to be most likely.
Road No. 1: Trump beats Cruz, and Rubio does well
This seems to be the result the cognoscenti are expecting. Betting marketsgive Trump a 2-in-3 chance to win Iowa; our models now have him favored too, although not by as clear a margin as the markets. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of talk, with some justification, that Rubio has “momentum” going into the caucuses.
No matter what happens, the first headlines that emerge from Iowa are likely to be about Trump. Depending on exactly how well Rubio does, however, the conventional wisdom could congeal into anticipating a two-man race between Trump and Rubio. Perhaps that’s the matchup Republicans deserve. Rubio and Trump offer the two clearest visions for what the Republican Party’s future might look like: a forward-looking but emphatically conservative party in Rubio’s case, a populist-leaning andperhaps radically changed one in Trump’s.
It’s also the matchup that Republican “party elites” seem to want. Bymounting an anti-Cruz campaign in Iowa, they were necessarily helping Trump, perhaps on the theory that another candidate could emerge to defeat Trump later on. If Rubio performed well in Iowa, he’d look like that candidate, giving party elites as good an outcome as they had any right to expect.
The big caveat is that this was possibly an idiotic strategy to begin with; it’s nearly impossible to control either Trump or the media narrative surrounding him, and it might be even harder after a big win in Iowa. We’d want to look for active signs of party leaders moving toward Rubio — in the form of endorsements and explicit pressure on candidates like Bush to drop out of the race. If Republican bigwigs just sit passively golf-clapping the result instead, the Trump whirlwind could sweep the news about Rubio’s vaguely good finish off the front pages.
Road No. 2: Trump beats Cruz, and Rubio does poorly
Get your Drudge Sirens ready. If Trump not only wins but blows out the competition, with both Cruz and “savior” Rubio flopping, Monday will be one of the most famous days in American political history.[SUP]3[/SUP] Although there might be some hope of anointing a new savior in New Hampshire — Bush, Kasich or Christie — other party elites might begin to capitulate toward Trump, as is already happening to some degree.
Could Trump get off to an extremely strong start, winning the first several states along with most of those in the “SEC Primary” on March 1, only to fail later on? Well, perhaps. The GOP calendar backloads a lot of winner-take-all or winner-take-most primaries in blue and purple states into April and beyond, so Trump could emerge with huge amounts of momentum but not be anywhere close to mathematically clinching the nomination. To some extent, we’d be in uncharted territory, since a Trump-like candidate has never gotten off to such a strong start before. But for Trump to lose, someone would have to beat him, and if both Cruz and Rubio blew their chances, it’s hard to know which candidate that would be. In my view, it would be safe to say that Trump had become the odds-on favorite to win the nomination, but where he’d fall on the spectrum between 51 percent and 99 percent I’m not sure.
You might notice I’ve pulled a little trick there, however, presuming a “blowout win” for Trump when that wouldn’t necessarily be the case. Suppose Rubio did badly, but Trump only narrowly beat Cruz. Would that make a difference? My guess is that it wouldn’t make a lot of difference — a Trump win is a Trump win — unless the vote were so close that (as in 2012) the outcome was uncertain well after midnight.
But this is one of the trickier cases. Cruz’s campaign would point toward how it had beaten expectations despite “the establishment” having stacked the deck against it. Which would be a pretty reasonable argument! But that doesn’t mean that Republican elites, having registered their discomfort with Cruz, would be receptive to it.
Road No. 3: Cruz beats Trump, and Rubio does poorly
If Cruz beats Trump, however, Cruz will look Teflon, and the Republican elites who tried to stop him will seem feckless. Also, since the conventional wisdom no longer anticipates a Cruz win in Iowa, it will be more surprising and possibly produce a bigger Cruz bounce. Furthermore, suppose that Rubio has a poor night. This is the nightmare case for Republicans who were hoping to stop Cruz.
It would also make New Hampshire really interesting. Trump begins with a fairly large lead there, and Cruz is not a good fit for the state. So even a fairly large bounce for Cruz (and an erosion in Trump’s support) could leave both candidates stuck in the high teens or low 20s, not necessarily enough to win. It’s possible that someone like Kasich or Bush could emerge under those circumstances.
We’d also want to look for signs of whether Cruz’s win in Iowa was an indication of Cruz’s strength or Trump’s weakness. If it seemed to be a result of Trump’s failed ground game, maybe that wouldn’t be as much of a problem for Trump in New Hampshire and other primary states, where the barriers to participation are less than in a caucus. Nonetheless, Trump would be — for the first time all campaign — a loser. To the extent his support is partly based on a bandwagon effect, it would be seriously tested.
Road No. 4: Cruz beats Trump, and Rubio does well
If both Cruz and Rubio have strong nights in Iowa, however, the meaning is clearer: Trump didn’t live up to the hype. There would be questions about whether Trump’s support in polls was a mirage to begin with, whether it had collapsed at the last minute because of voter dissatisfaction with his having skipped the Republican debate, or whether his lack of a turnout operation had foiled him. Those questions would be important for determining whether Trump had a chance to recover in New Hampshire. But in terms of the media narrative, they’d all be variations on the theme that Trump had gone bust.
In some ways, the Republican primary might even start to look fairly conventional. An “outsider” candidate with evangelical support would have won Iowa. A couple of “insider” candidates would be looking to emerge out of New Hampshire, with Rubio having a leg up because of his strong Iowa showing. Trump wouldn’t necessarily disappear — the media will keep writing him into the plot so long as he is willing — but it might be as more of a Newt Gingrich-esque sideshow, a candidate who wins a few states here and there but has little chance of commanding a majority. If we enter Iowa in a Trumpnado and exit it with what seems to be a fairly normal Republican race, that might be the biggest surprise of all.
Read more:
Four Roads Out Of Iowa For Republicans
What Happens If Bernie Sanders Wins Iowa
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Footnotes
- Although, the record will show that we weren’t especially skeptical about Trump getting to this point, with a chance to win the Iowa caucuses. It was what came after Iowa that we thought would be the hard part, making Trump unlikely to win the GOP nomination. For a variety of reasons, however, but mostly because of how Republican “party elites” are behaving, Trump’s post-Iowa path doesn’t look as foreboding now. We think he has a real shot. ^
- With that said, it’s not that impossible to imagine how a Rubio win comes together. Cruz has had a rough couple of weeks, so maybe he underperforms his polls Monday and slips behind Rubio. But suppose also that Trump’s supporters don’t turn out because of his campaign’s lack of a traditional field operation. It’s unlikely that both these things would happen, but not impossible. Rubio would have a shot at first under those circumstances. ^
- Doubly so if Bernie Sanders also beats Hillary Clinton. ^
Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight. @natesilver538
looks like road #4
[h=1]Where Does Ted Cruz Go From Here?[/h]A FIVETHIRTYEIGHT CHAT
For this week’s 2016 Slack chat, the FiveThirtyEight politics team talks about what rewards Ted Cruz can expect to reap from his victory in the Iowa caucuses on Monday.
micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Hopefully you all got some sleep after a late night, because we’ve got the future to consider! Ted Cruz’s future, in particular. Cruz outperformed his polls and won the Iowa caucuses somewhat comfortably, with Donald Trump finishing second and Marco Rubio a strong third (just 1 percentage point behind Trump). So how does Cruz’s Iowa win affect his chances of winning the GOP nomination? Let’s start with what the Iowa results mean in New Hampshire, which votes less than a week from now, and then we’ll talk about Cruz’s path more broadly.
Any thoughts on how New Hampshire Republicans will react to Cruz’s win in Iowa?
harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): According to our New Hampshire forecasts, Cruz is basically in a multi-way tie for second place in polling average at 12 percent. I expect him to grow from that based off his victory, but make no mistake: New Hampshire is a different state than Iowa. If Cruz wins the same percentage of very conservatives, conservatives and moderates/liberals in New Hampshire as he did in Iowa, he would probably get only about 20 percent of the vote.
natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): It’s fair to assume that Cruz has a fairly low ceiling in New Hampshire. At least I think — until we see what the polls look like in 48 hours, I’m not that sure of anything. But it seems plausible to me that you could have three or even four candidates piled up in the high teens to mid-20s.
clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Yeah, so I think based on nothing but my gut of guts, and belief in the balance of the universe, that Cruz doesn’t win or come in second place in New Hampshire — he finishes third to Trump (eh, maybe?) and Rubio, who had a very fruitful night last night. I think Cruz’s people are … elsewhere on the primary map, and he’s smart and knows that.
micah: I get why Cruz may have limited upside in New Hampshire. In a lot of ways he’s the typical “peaks in Iowa” candidate, like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum: strong appeal to religious conservatives. But doesn’t Cruz also have some tea party bona fides? Couldn’t those help him in New Hampshire?
clare.malone: Sure, that’s true. I think if I were Cruz, I would start playing up my constitutional lawyer thing in New Hampshire. He’s a true originalist, and he’s pretty radical and sincere in his beliefs about states rights, liberty, etc. etc., which I think could play well with the New England crowd. He’s got a nice little résumé there.
natesilver: Is New Hampshire really a tea party state? Is “tea party” a useful label anymore?
micah: Well, Cruz seems more of a limited government conservative than either Santorum or Huckabee. And that could work in the “live free or die” state.
harry: I mean Cruz did win 27 percent in Iowa among those voters who said government spending was most important. But he did worst on economy/jobs in the Iowa entrance poll. There are going to be a TON of those voters in New Hampshire.
clare.malone: Nate, do you think the tea party has seeped into the party bloodstream so much that it’s not a faction anymore, is that what you mean?
natesilver: Narrowly speaking, the tea party is more concentrated in the South and the Mountain West more than in New England. Whereas New Hampshire has more of a libertarian streak.
clare.malone: Paul! Paul! Paul!
harry: I mean Cruz won 9 percent among moderates and liberals last night. You know how many of those voters there are in New Hampshire? They made up 47 percent of voters in the last GOP New Hampshire primary in 2012. And a lot of those voters (26 percent) went for Ron Paul, who you might think of as that libertarian candidate Nate and Clare mentioned.
natesilver: Yeah. Occam’s razor is that New Hampshire is moderate, and Cruz isn’t.
In fact, Rubio might also be a little bit too far to the right for New Hampshire.
micah: But the vote will be pretty split, right? Couldn’t someone win with a vote share in the mid-20s? Even low 20s?
clare.malone: Maybe Trump slips thanks to the face-fall last night and someone like John Kasich picks up votes over a Rubio/Cruz?
natesilver: Trump 22 percent, Rubio 21, Kasich 18, Cruz 17 or something in that vicinity is an entirely plausible outcome
harry: One thing we don’t know is how undeclared voters in New Hampshire, who can vote in either party’s primary (but just one), will react to the Democratic and Republican results last night. The more of those undeclared voters who vote in the Republican primary, the better it is for Kasich.
clare.malone: FYI, as we type this, Scott Brown will reportedly endorseTrump tonight.
natesilver: Another guy who hasn’t won an election in five years.
micah: GAME-CHANGER!!!
clare.malone: Do we think he could influence New Hampshire voters just as he did thousands of teenage girls in his early work in Cosmo?
harry: What state is Scott Brown from again?
micah: I guess a lot depends on what happens to Trump’s numbers?
clare.malone: I think they slide.
micah: All right, let’s say Trump’s support slides — where do those voters go?
natesilver: Maybe they were never there to begin with.
micah: Are you on mushrooms, Nate?
clare.malone: Yeah, there’s that, what Nate said. In Iowa, those who were Trump supporters generally said Cruz was the other person on their list, but I’m not sure how that’ll square up with New Hampshirites (is that how you say it?).
harry: Nate is on 10 cans of Red Bull plus a Coke.
natesilver: I’ll try not to get too pedantic here, but the polls overestimated Trump’s support in Iowa. Which is, not unimportantly, the only state to have voted so far. So people citing Trump’s polls in future states as proof of how resilient he is aren’t making any sense at all.
clare.malone: There is half a bottle of Coke and a chocolate on his desk. The man is just on fire today, (semi) au naturel.
natesilver: With all that said, it’s entirely plausible for Trump to win New Hampshire.
Having not seen any data yet, I’d probably still call him the plurality favorite, although I’d take the field against him.
harry: I’m really in a wait-and-see mode on the polls. Before then, I’ll say Trump has a shot, but I remain skeptical.
clare.malone: Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I have no idea where the seeping-away Trump votes go … maybe they don’t vote?
And then the people voting in the more elite lane of the party fill up the space.
natesilver: FWIW, I like Kasich’s chances a little better than Jeb Bush’s or Chris Christie’s in New Hampshire because he’s running explicitly as a moderate, instead of as a (failing) full-spectrum consensus candidate.
harry: Kasich also has a real chance to “expand the electorate,” Nate.
clare.malone: I’m actually excited to see Kasich campaign in New Hampshire, to see how he’s working the room…I’m guessing it’s going to be similar to what we saw with Jeb in Iowa, except Jeb is a dead man walking, and Kasich is on the rise. (Saying you’re excited to see a moderate campaign is like saying you’re excited to eat plain spaghetti with butter, I realize, but whatever. It’s out there.)
natesilver: Jeb’s main virtue in the race may be making Kasich and Christie look good by comparison. Christie actually had a really bad month in New Hampshire, having fallen from about 11 percent to 7 percent in our polling average.
micah: Back to Cruz … Our colleague Carl Bialik noted (pivoting off a pieceby GOP pollster and friend of the site Kristen Soltis Anderson) one other thing to watch as we see how much of a bump Cruz gets: Iowa has gone some ways toward leveling the public’s interest — as measured by Google searches — in Trump vs. Cruz vs. Rubio. Trump typically swamps the other two, and he still leads, but …
micah: And that’s BEFORE Cruz won the state!
natesilver: The theory that the ballot test reflects a combination of favorable ratings and media coverage looks really good after last night.
harry: I mean the question here is very simple: How can Trump win when he just lost with more media attention than I imagine would be given to a sex scandal involving the Kardashians and The Situation?
clare.malone: Harry, you know who the Kardashians are??
natesilver: And Iowa suggests that even if the national media coverage is still extremely Trump intensive, voters will consume a more even allocation of news before they actually go out and vote.
We keep getting into these loops and eddies about Trump and Rubio and everyone except Cruz, who won Iowa last night, and who’s a clear second innational polls (and could be in first nationally by tomorrow for all we know). Betting markets have Cruz’s nomination chances at just 13 percent, which seems way low.
micah: OK, so let’s talk about Cruz’s path more generally: He would seem to have a favorable electorate in South Carolina, which vote after New Hampshire, with Republicans voting on Feb. 20.
natesilver: I think so, yes, although South Carolina is not as conservative as you might think.
harry: I think what we want to see from Cruz is the ability to win in a state that isn’t as religious as Iowa. New Hampshire won’t be the final test for that; South Carolina isn’t a great one either, but winning there keeps the ball rolling.
clare.malone: If you look at just where he’s spent his time, Cruz has been hanging out in Iowa the most, and South Carolina second. So, his feet are doing the talking.
micah: If Cruz does end up relying mostly on religious conservatives, though, are there enough of them in the GOP primary electorate for him to win the nomination?
natesilver: So the basic case for Cruz is that he gets the Huckabee/Santorum evangelical coalition, plus a few movement conservative types, plus he has a lot of money, and he’s a really good tactician, and has a good ground game. That’s … something. We know that the Santobee coalition isn’t enough to win the nomination on its own. But combined with Cruz’s various other advantages, it’s interesting.
harry: So to give you an idea, 36 percent of voters in the 2012 South Carolina Republican primary identified as “very conservative.” In Iowa last night, it was 40 percent. The key difference? Moderates/liberals were 32 percent in 2012 in South Carolina, while they were just 15 percent in Iowa last night.
natesilver: One thing about South Carolina and certain other southern states is that the moderate voters in them tend to identify as Republican rather than Democratic. And some of them vote in the Republican primaries too.
harry: Yes, remember John McCain won South Carolina in 2008, and he got over 40 percent of the vote in 2000. But it’s still overwhelmingly religious. It was 65 percent born-again/evangelical Christian in 2012. That’s pretty much what Iowa was last night.
natesilver: South Carolina’s not the worst approximation for the GOP electorate overall, which is part of what makes it interesting. Prior to last night, the polls there were a pretty good match for the national numbers.
clare.malone: So, the fact that Cruz has the, what was it, Santobee momentum (?) is certainly interesting, and yes, he’s smart, but doesn’t he also have this fundamental element of unlikability that’s going to hurt him in more and more places as the calendar year goes by? I guess I see his campaign as a savvy one, but does he alienate all the moderates while turning out a base?
harry: Cruz came in third place among “somewhat conservatives” last night, so it wasn’t just moderates. He’s got to do better among mainstream conservatives.
natesilver: I’ll admit to finding Cruz’s delivery a little grating personally. But his favorability ratings are reasonably good with GOP voters.
clare.malone: But part of me wonders if that’s just because he’s being compared to Trump, and looks better for it.
natesilver: Here’s the thing, though. Cruz will probably never be a consensus candidate. A lot of GOP elites vehemently oppose him (although some factions support him). He’s not going to make a lot of friends along the way. But he’s a guy who might get 50 percent + 1 of the delegates.
clare.malone: What if Trump media attention eases off and people start getting more familiar with the Cruz that everyone in the Senate knows and hates?
harry: To me, Cruz needs this to be a three-way race for as long as possible. Once it’s a two-way race the heat will be on Cruz.
natesilver: Cruz reminds me of Gary Hart 1984 in a lot of ways. Another guy who had a reputation for tactical brilliance, and not getting along all that well with his colleagues. Unlike Hart, Cruz doesn’t get a lot of mainstream media adoration, although maybe that’s not a terrible thing with GOP primary voters.
micah: Yeah, to what extent do we think Cruz’s chances of winning the nomination are out of his hands? Who does he want to do well and who does he want to disappear? Who does he want in that three-way race, Harry?
harry: I mean he wants Trump in there. It’s tough to come off as obnoxious with Trump still in it.
clare.malone: I think he really loves having Jeb in the race because Jeb has such a Rubio fixation that Cruz doesn’t have to worry all that much about attacking Rubio hard. And yeah, Cruz likes drafting off Trump in the sense that I think Trump makes Cruz look very reasonable to the average GOP voter.
natesilver: I’m not so sure Cruz wants Trump in the race. Cruz’s best chance might be to win lots of delegates in the South, overperform in caucus states and just get to 50 percent + 1 against Rubio. I’m sure Cruz already has an elaborate strategy for how to win a contested convention. But that’s usually not what you’re aiming for. And that really could be a possibility if all three of Cruz, Trump and Rubio stay strong.
harry: As soon as it’s a two-way against Rubio, Cruz will have almost all the national party actors turn against him. He’ll also become the “very conservative” candidate. Rubio is more conservative than 50 percent of the party, but the moderates/mainstream conservatives will rally to him because he’s more moderate than Cruz. Trump, however, was able to win over some of those moderate voters.
What Cruz needs in my mind is for this to remain a three-way race when we get to the winner-take-all states. If he gets into a one-on-one with Rubio in the North, Rubio is going to start pulling massive delegate totals. That’s especially the case because a lot of these northern states are winner-take-all.
natesilver: Hmm, maybe this is trickier for Cruz than I thought once you start to game it out. I’d still stand by the conclusion, though, that forest-for-the-trees, assigning him only a 13 percent chance of the nomination is way too low.
harry: That I agree with.
For this week’s 2016 Slack chat, the FiveThirtyEight politics team talks about what rewards Ted Cruz can expect to reap from his victory in the Iowa caucuses on Monday.
Any thoughts on how New Hampshire Republicans will react to Cruz’s win in Iowa?
harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): According to our New Hampshire forecasts, Cruz is basically in a multi-way tie for second place in polling average at 12 percent. I expect him to grow from that based off his victory, but make no mistake: New Hampshire is a different state than Iowa. If Cruz wins the same percentage of very conservatives, conservatives and moderates/liberals in New Hampshire as he did in Iowa, he would probably get only about 20 percent of the vote.
natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): It’s fair to assume that Cruz has a fairly low ceiling in New Hampshire. At least I think — until we see what the polls look like in 48 hours, I’m not that sure of anything. But it seems plausible to me that you could have three or even four candidates piled up in the high teens to mid-20s.
clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Yeah, so I think based on nothing but my gut of guts, and belief in the balance of the universe, that Cruz doesn’t win or come in second place in New Hampshire — he finishes third to Trump (eh, maybe?) and Rubio, who had a very fruitful night last night. I think Cruz’s people are … elsewhere on the primary map, and he’s smart and knows that.
micah: I get why Cruz may have limited upside in New Hampshire. In a lot of ways he’s the typical “peaks in Iowa” candidate, like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum: strong appeal to religious conservatives. But doesn’t Cruz also have some tea party bona fides? Couldn’t those help him in New Hampshire?
clare.malone: Sure, that’s true. I think if I were Cruz, I would start playing up my constitutional lawyer thing in New Hampshire. He’s a true originalist, and he’s pretty radical and sincere in his beliefs about states rights, liberty, etc. etc., which I think could play well with the New England crowd. He’s got a nice little résumé there.
natesilver: Is New Hampshire really a tea party state? Is “tea party” a useful label anymore?
micah: Well, Cruz seems more of a limited government conservative than either Santorum or Huckabee. And that could work in the “live free or die” state.
harry: I mean Cruz did win 27 percent in Iowa among those voters who said government spending was most important. But he did worst on economy/jobs in the Iowa entrance poll. There are going to be a TON of those voters in New Hampshire.
clare.malone: Nate, do you think the tea party has seeped into the party bloodstream so much that it’s not a faction anymore, is that what you mean?
natesilver: Narrowly speaking, the tea party is more concentrated in the South and the Mountain West more than in New England. Whereas New Hampshire has more of a libertarian streak.
clare.malone: Paul! Paul! Paul!
harry: I mean Cruz won 9 percent among moderates and liberals last night. You know how many of those voters there are in New Hampshire? They made up 47 percent of voters in the last GOP New Hampshire primary in 2012. And a lot of those voters (26 percent) went for Ron Paul, who you might think of as that libertarian candidate Nate and Clare mentioned.
natesilver: Yeah. Occam’s razor is that New Hampshire is moderate, and Cruz isn’t.
In fact, Rubio might also be a little bit too far to the right for New Hampshire.
micah: But the vote will be pretty split, right? Couldn’t someone win with a vote share in the mid-20s? Even low 20s?
clare.malone: Maybe Trump slips thanks to the face-fall last night and someone like John Kasich picks up votes over a Rubio/Cruz?
natesilver: Trump 22 percent, Rubio 21, Kasich 18, Cruz 17 or something in that vicinity is an entirely plausible outcome
harry: One thing we don’t know is how undeclared voters in New Hampshire, who can vote in either party’s primary (but just one), will react to the Democratic and Republican results last night. The more of those undeclared voters who vote in the Republican primary, the better it is for Kasich.
clare.malone: FYI, as we type this, Scott Brown will reportedly endorseTrump tonight.
natesilver: Another guy who hasn’t won an election in five years.
micah: GAME-CHANGER!!!
clare.malone: Do we think he could influence New Hampshire voters just as he did thousands of teenage girls in his early work in Cosmo?
harry: What state is Scott Brown from again?
micah: I guess a lot depends on what happens to Trump’s numbers?
clare.malone: I think they slide.
micah: All right, let’s say Trump’s support slides — where do those voters go?
natesilver: Maybe they were never there to begin with.
micah: Are you on mushrooms, Nate?
clare.malone: Yeah, there’s that, what Nate said. In Iowa, those who were Trump supporters generally said Cruz was the other person on their list, but I’m not sure how that’ll square up with New Hampshirites (is that how you say it?).
harry: Nate is on 10 cans of Red Bull plus a Coke.
natesilver: I’ll try not to get too pedantic here, but the polls overestimated Trump’s support in Iowa. Which is, not unimportantly, the only state to have voted so far. So people citing Trump’s polls in future states as proof of how resilient he is aren’t making any sense at all.
clare.malone: There is half a bottle of Coke and a chocolate on his desk. The man is just on fire today, (semi) au naturel.
natesilver: With all that said, it’s entirely plausible for Trump to win New Hampshire.
Having not seen any data yet, I’d probably still call him the plurality favorite, although I’d take the field against him.
harry: I’m really in a wait-and-see mode on the polls. Before then, I’ll say Trump has a shot, but I remain skeptical.
clare.malone: Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I have no idea where the seeping-away Trump votes go … maybe they don’t vote?
And then the people voting in the more elite lane of the party fill up the space.
natesilver: FWIW, I like Kasich’s chances a little better than Jeb Bush’s or Chris Christie’s in New Hampshire because he’s running explicitly as a moderate, instead of as a (failing) full-spectrum consensus candidate.
harry: Kasich also has a real chance to “expand the electorate,” Nate.
clare.malone: I’m actually excited to see Kasich campaign in New Hampshire, to see how he’s working the room…I’m guessing it’s going to be similar to what we saw with Jeb in Iowa, except Jeb is a dead man walking, and Kasich is on the rise. (Saying you’re excited to see a moderate campaign is like saying you’re excited to eat plain spaghetti with butter, I realize, but whatever. It’s out there.)
natesilver: Jeb’s main virtue in the race may be making Kasich and Christie look good by comparison. Christie actually had a really bad month in New Hampshire, having fallen from about 11 percent to 7 percent in our polling average.
micah: Back to Cruz … Our colleague Carl Bialik noted (pivoting off a pieceby GOP pollster and friend of the site Kristen Soltis Anderson) one other thing to watch as we see how much of a bump Cruz gets: Iowa has gone some ways toward leveling the public’s interest — as measured by Google searches — in Trump vs. Cruz vs. Rubio. Trump typically swamps the other two, and he still leads, but …
natesilver: The theory that the ballot test reflects a combination of favorable ratings and media coverage looks really good after last night.
harry: I mean the question here is very simple: How can Trump win when he just lost with more media attention than I imagine would be given to a sex scandal involving the Kardashians and The Situation?
clare.malone: Harry, you know who the Kardashians are??
natesilver: And Iowa suggests that even if the national media coverage is still extremely Trump intensive, voters will consume a more even allocation of news before they actually go out and vote.
We keep getting into these loops and eddies about Trump and Rubio and everyone except Cruz, who won Iowa last night, and who’s a clear second innational polls (and could be in first nationally by tomorrow for all we know). Betting markets have Cruz’s nomination chances at just 13 percent, which seems way low.
micah: OK, so let’s talk about Cruz’s path more generally: He would seem to have a favorable electorate in South Carolina, which vote after New Hampshire, with Republicans voting on Feb. 20.
natesilver: I think so, yes, although South Carolina is not as conservative as you might think.
harry: I think what we want to see from Cruz is the ability to win in a state that isn’t as religious as Iowa. New Hampshire won’t be the final test for that; South Carolina isn’t a great one either, but winning there keeps the ball rolling.
clare.malone: If you look at just where he’s spent his time, Cruz has been hanging out in Iowa the most, and South Carolina second. So, his feet are doing the talking.
micah: If Cruz does end up relying mostly on religious conservatives, though, are there enough of them in the GOP primary electorate for him to win the nomination?
natesilver: So the basic case for Cruz is that he gets the Huckabee/Santorum evangelical coalition, plus a few movement conservative types, plus he has a lot of money, and he’s a really good tactician, and has a good ground game. That’s … something. We know that the Santobee coalition isn’t enough to win the nomination on its own. But combined with Cruz’s various other advantages, it’s interesting.
harry: So to give you an idea, 36 percent of voters in the 2012 South Carolina Republican primary identified as “very conservative.” In Iowa last night, it was 40 percent. The key difference? Moderates/liberals were 32 percent in 2012 in South Carolina, while they were just 15 percent in Iowa last night.
natesilver: One thing about South Carolina and certain other southern states is that the moderate voters in them tend to identify as Republican rather than Democratic. And some of them vote in the Republican primaries too.
harry: Yes, remember John McCain won South Carolina in 2008, and he got over 40 percent of the vote in 2000. But it’s still overwhelmingly religious. It was 65 percent born-again/evangelical Christian in 2012. That’s pretty much what Iowa was last night.
natesilver: South Carolina’s not the worst approximation for the GOP electorate overall, which is part of what makes it interesting. Prior to last night, the polls there were a pretty good match for the national numbers.
clare.malone: So, the fact that Cruz has the, what was it, Santobee momentum (?) is certainly interesting, and yes, he’s smart, but doesn’t he also have this fundamental element of unlikability that’s going to hurt him in more and more places as the calendar year goes by? I guess I see his campaign as a savvy one, but does he alienate all the moderates while turning out a base?
harry: Cruz came in third place among “somewhat conservatives” last night, so it wasn’t just moderates. He’s got to do better among mainstream conservatives.
natesilver: I’ll admit to finding Cruz’s delivery a little grating personally. But his favorability ratings are reasonably good with GOP voters.
clare.malone: But part of me wonders if that’s just because he’s being compared to Trump, and looks better for it.
natesilver: Here’s the thing, though. Cruz will probably never be a consensus candidate. A lot of GOP elites vehemently oppose him (although some factions support him). He’s not going to make a lot of friends along the way. But he’s a guy who might get 50 percent + 1 of the delegates.
clare.malone: What if Trump media attention eases off and people start getting more familiar with the Cruz that everyone in the Senate knows and hates?
harry: To me, Cruz needs this to be a three-way race for as long as possible. Once it’s a two-way race the heat will be on Cruz.
natesilver: Cruz reminds me of Gary Hart 1984 in a lot of ways. Another guy who had a reputation for tactical brilliance, and not getting along all that well with his colleagues. Unlike Hart, Cruz doesn’t get a lot of mainstream media adoration, although maybe that’s not a terrible thing with GOP primary voters.
micah: Yeah, to what extent do we think Cruz’s chances of winning the nomination are out of his hands? Who does he want to do well and who does he want to disappear? Who does he want in that three-way race, Harry?
harry: I mean he wants Trump in there. It’s tough to come off as obnoxious with Trump still in it.
clare.malone: I think he really loves having Jeb in the race because Jeb has such a Rubio fixation that Cruz doesn’t have to worry all that much about attacking Rubio hard. And yeah, Cruz likes drafting off Trump in the sense that I think Trump makes Cruz look very reasonable to the average GOP voter.
natesilver: I’m not so sure Cruz wants Trump in the race. Cruz’s best chance might be to win lots of delegates in the South, overperform in caucus states and just get to 50 percent + 1 against Rubio. I’m sure Cruz already has an elaborate strategy for how to win a contested convention. But that’s usually not what you’re aiming for. And that really could be a possibility if all three of Cruz, Trump and Rubio stay strong.
harry: As soon as it’s a two-way against Rubio, Cruz will have almost all the national party actors turn against him. He’ll also become the “very conservative” candidate. Rubio is more conservative than 50 percent of the party, but the moderates/mainstream conservatives will rally to him because he’s more moderate than Cruz. Trump, however, was able to win over some of those moderate voters.
What Cruz needs in my mind is for this to remain a three-way race when we get to the winner-take-all states. If he gets into a one-on-one with Rubio in the North, Rubio is going to start pulling massive delegate totals. That’s especially the case because a lot of these northern states are winner-take-all.
natesilver: Hmm, maybe this is trickier for Cruz than I thought once you start to game it out. I’d still stand by the conclusion, though, that forest-for-the-trees, assigning him only a 13 percent chance of the nomination is way too low.
harry: That I agree with.
if you take enough positions, you're bound to get one right, eh?
Iowa Teaches Pollsters To Poll Until The End
By CARL BIALIK
People sign in as they arrive at a Democratic Party caucus at Jackson Township Fire Station on Monday in Keokuk, Iowa.
MICHAEL B. THOMAS / AFP / GETTY IMAGES
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 for the 2020 caucuses?
One of the biggest lessons was a simple one: Keep on contacting voters as late as possible.
“Stay in the field until the night before the event, if possible,” said Christine Matthews of the Republican consulting firm Burning Glass Consulting. Matthews was one of eight pollsters who were active in Iowa and who responded to a small poll of pollsters we conducted the day after the caucuses to ask how they thought the polls did, and what lessons they learned. (You can find the questionnaire in this PDF, and a list of the pollsters who responded in the footnotes.[SUP]1[/SUP])[SUP]2[/SUP]
“Look for the trend at the end,” said Doug Kaplan, managing partner ofGravis Marketing.
That sounds like a wise approach because of the success by two pollsters whose final Iowa polls started at a later date than anyone else: last Friday, January 29. The two pollsters, Emerson College and Opinion Savvy, both showed Donald Trump leading Ted Cruz by just one percentage point, with Marco Rubio either close behind or tied. Most other polls started before the last debate and many finished before it, too. They generally showed Trump with a bigger lead and Rubio trailing him by more than 10 percentage points. Cruz finished with 28 percent of the vote, Trump with 24 percent and Rubio with 23 percent. (In our poll, pollsters from both Emerson and Opinion Savvy named their own polling organization as among those who did the best job in Iowa.)
Then again, polling late, after the last debate, is difficult. “I guess if there’s a lesson, it’s to keep on polling through the night before the election,” said Tom Jensen, director of the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling. “But polling’s never been more expensive so I don’t know how many organizations really have the resources to do more than they already are.”
New Hampshire poses a specific, daunting problem for anyone who wants to poll late. The next Republican debate is on Saturday night, and one of the two days between the debate and next Tuesday’s primary in the state is Super Bowl Sunday. “So it’s basically impossible to poll in New Hampshire after the debates at a time when you will reasonably be able to reach people,” Jensen said. “We are leaning toward skipping polling New Hampshire for that reason.”
Also, in the Democratic caucus, polling late wasn’t as much of a clear advantage. Emerson’s late poll showed Hillary Clinton leading Bernie Sanders by 8 percentage points. The two finished in a virtual tie, which was closer to the results found by other pollsters who’d started earlier than Emerson did. So another lesson from Iowa ought to be one that usually applies when drawing conclusions about quadrennial events: Don’t extrapolate too much from a small number of events.
While many polls greatly underestimated Trump’s support, several polling watchers — including my boss — emphasized that the polls didn’t have such a bad night.
Most pollsters who responded to us seemed glad it was over. Just one of eight said polls had a good night, three said they didn’t and four were unsure.
“It wasn’t a total disaster, but most of the polls failed to capture some of the basic trends,” according to one of the three “no” votes, Matthew Towery, founder of Opinion Savvy. “I don’t know if it was simply that some were in the field too early, or if their screening, turnout, and weighting models were just off. Nevertheless, this will likely go down in history as the worst round of modern polling for the Iowa caucus to date.”
Two pollsters said Selzer & Co. did the worst job in capturing the horse-race numbers. Clare Malone’s profile for this site last week called the company’s founder and president Ann Selzer “the best pollster in politics,” but Selzer hasn’t been immune to the challenges of polling Iowa. For the third straightRepublican presidential caucus, her final Iowa poll for The Des Moines Register underestimated the support of the eventual winner, who each time was the favorite choice of evangelical voters. “They continue to undercount the evangelicals in the GOP side,” said Spencer Kimball, advisor to the Emerson College Polling Society. But Jensen defended Selzer’s work: “Her poll was probably correct at the time she did it. It’s unreasonable to think that everything is going to stay in amber as soon as her field period ends.” (Another pollster named Selzer as the pollster who did the best job for catching general trends and coming close on the levels of support of candidates below the top three.)
Selzer was one of 18 Iowa pollsters who didn’t respond to our poll, but she did respond to an email about her work. “We modeled higher evangelical turnout,” Selzer said. “Who would have expected 64%?[SUP]3[/SUP] Especially with that community, things happen the Sunday before the caucus that end up in no one’s data. I’m feeling good today. Caucuses are hard to poll — that’s no secret to pollsters or my clients.”
We also asked pollsters for their predictions for New Hampshire and beyond. Though FiveThirtyEight’s polls-only forecast projects Trump to win New Hampshire by nearly 20 percentage points as of Tuesday, no one thought Trump would win by such a big margin. Two pollsters said he’d win by between 10 and 19 points, four said he’d win by a single-digit margin and one said he’d finish second for the second straight contest. Just one of seven pollsters predicted Trump would be the Republican nominee; the rest picked Rubio.
All seven pollsters who predicted the Democratic nominee, meanwhile, said it would be Clinton.
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Quick reaction to the Iowa results from our elections podcast team. Listen above, or subscribe on iTunes.
Footnotes
Carl Bialik is FiveThirtyEight’s lead writer for news. @carlbialik
By CARL BIALIK
MICHAEL B. THOMAS / AFP / GETTY IMAGES
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 for the 2020 caucuses?
One of the biggest lessons was a simple one: Keep on contacting voters as late as possible.
“Stay in the field until the night before the event, if possible,” said Christine Matthews of the Republican consulting firm Burning Glass Consulting. Matthews was one of eight pollsters who were active in Iowa and who responded to a small poll of pollsters we conducted the day after the caucuses to ask how they thought the polls did, and what lessons they learned. (You can find the questionnaire in this PDF, and a list of the pollsters who responded in the footnotes.[SUP]1[/SUP])[SUP]2[/SUP]
“Look for the trend at the end,” said Doug Kaplan, managing partner ofGravis Marketing.
That sounds like a wise approach because of the success by two pollsters whose final Iowa polls started at a later date than anyone else: last Friday, January 29. The two pollsters, Emerson College and Opinion Savvy, both showed Donald Trump leading Ted Cruz by just one percentage point, with Marco Rubio either close behind or tied. Most other polls started before the last debate and many finished before it, too. They generally showed Trump with a bigger lead and Rubio trailing him by more than 10 percentage points. Cruz finished with 28 percent of the vote, Trump with 24 percent and Rubio with 23 percent. (In our poll, pollsters from both Emerson and Opinion Savvy named their own polling organization as among those who did the best job in Iowa.)
Then again, polling late, after the last debate, is difficult. “I guess if there’s a lesson, it’s to keep on polling through the night before the election,” said Tom Jensen, director of the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling. “But polling’s never been more expensive so I don’t know how many organizations really have the resources to do more than they already are.”
New Hampshire poses a specific, daunting problem for anyone who wants to poll late. The next Republican debate is on Saturday night, and one of the two days between the debate and next Tuesday’s primary in the state is Super Bowl Sunday. “So it’s basically impossible to poll in New Hampshire after the debates at a time when you will reasonably be able to reach people,” Jensen said. “We are leaning toward skipping polling New Hampshire for that reason.”
Also, in the Democratic caucus, polling late wasn’t as much of a clear advantage. Emerson’s late poll showed Hillary Clinton leading Bernie Sanders by 8 percentage points. The two finished in a virtual tie, which was closer to the results found by other pollsters who’d started earlier than Emerson did. So another lesson from Iowa ought to be one that usually applies when drawing conclusions about quadrennial events: Don’t extrapolate too much from a small number of events.
While many polls greatly underestimated Trump’s support, several polling watchers — including my boss — emphasized that the polls didn’t have such a bad night.
Most pollsters who responded to us seemed glad it was over. Just one of eight said polls had a good night, three said they didn’t and four were unsure.
“It wasn’t a total disaster, but most of the polls failed to capture some of the basic trends,” according to one of the three “no” votes, Matthew Towery, founder of Opinion Savvy. “I don’t know if it was simply that some were in the field too early, or if their screening, turnout, and weighting models were just off. Nevertheless, this will likely go down in history as the worst round of modern polling for the Iowa caucus to date.”
Two pollsters said Selzer & Co. did the worst job in capturing the horse-race numbers. Clare Malone’s profile for this site last week called the company’s founder and president Ann Selzer “the best pollster in politics,” but Selzer hasn’t been immune to the challenges of polling Iowa. For the third straightRepublican presidential caucus, her final Iowa poll for The Des Moines Register underestimated the support of the eventual winner, who each time was the favorite choice of evangelical voters. “They continue to undercount the evangelicals in the GOP side,” said Spencer Kimball, advisor to the Emerson College Polling Society. But Jensen defended Selzer’s work: “Her poll was probably correct at the time she did it. It’s unreasonable to think that everything is going to stay in amber as soon as her field period ends.” (Another pollster named Selzer as the pollster who did the best job for catching general trends and coming close on the levels of support of candidates below the top three.)
Selzer was one of 18 Iowa pollsters who didn’t respond to our poll, but she did respond to an email about her work. “We modeled higher evangelical turnout,” Selzer said. “Who would have expected 64%?[SUP]3[/SUP] Especially with that community, things happen the Sunday before the caucus that end up in no one’s data. I’m feeling good today. Caucuses are hard to poll — that’s no secret to pollsters or my clients.”
We also asked pollsters for their predictions for New Hampshire and beyond. Though FiveThirtyEight’s polls-only forecast projects Trump to win New Hampshire by nearly 20 percentage points as of Tuesday, no one thought Trump would win by such a big margin. Two pollsters said he’d win by between 10 and 19 points, four said he’d win by a single-digit margin and one said he’d finish second for the second straight contest. Just one of seven pollsters predicted Trump would be the Republican nominee; the rest picked Rubio.
All seven pollsters who predicted the Democratic nominee, meanwhile, said it would be Clinton.
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Quick reaction to the Iowa results from our elections podcast team. Listen above, or subscribe on iTunes.
Footnotes
^RESPONDENT NAME POLLING ORGANIZATION Christine Matthews Burning Glass Consulting Spencer Kimball Emerson College Doug Kaplan Gravis Marketing Brock McCleary Harper Polling Mack Shelley Iowa State University Christopher Budzisz Loras College Matthew Towery Opinion Savvy Tom Jensen Public Policy Polling
- We first polled pollsters several times last year around the midterm elections, then again last December. We tried to poll each of the pollsters who’d been active in Iowa. We got eight pollsters to respond through our SurveyMonkey form by the Tuesday afternoon deadline, though some skipped questions. We also granted anonymity to anyone who requested it for any question. Respondents include commercial and academic pollsters. Some poll online, some by phone, some both. ^
- According to entrance polls, evangelical Christians made up 62 percent of Republican caucus goers, up from 57 percent in 2012 and 60 percent in 2008. ^
Carl Bialik is FiveThirtyEight’s lead writer for news. @carlbialik
