These are not the words of Slim Chance but the words of David Malinsky
Now that the first actual votes of the 2016 US Presidential Election cycle have been counted it really is “game on”, and it will be quite a game. There was a foundation laid here back on December 10, US Election 2016, and the Perils of Polls and in breaking down the Iowa results there is enough food for thought to fill a soup cauldron.
The gist of the earlier column, and last Wednesday’s follow-up that put a Ted Cruz ticket “In the Sights…” was that modern polling is an entirely different ballgame, the diminishing use of land-lines drastically changing the modeling, and with a genuine scramble going on across the organizations in terms of how to get it right. Major elections in Israel and Great Britain in recent years fell significantly from what the final polls were projecting, and I believe that may be the case throughout this cycle in the United States. As such, the final polls from the Republican side of the Iowa scrum now become a serious box score. These are sorted by date, those at the top being the freshest, but all of them within 12 days of the voting -
Cruz Trump Rubio
Selzer & Co. 23 28 15
Quinnipiac U. 24 31 17
Emerson College 26 27 22
Opinion Savvy 19 20 19
Public Policy Polling 23 31 14
Gravis Marketing 27 31 13
Marist College 25 32 18
Monmouth U. 23 30 16
American Research 26 33 11
CBS/YouGov 34 39 13
Fox News 23 34 12
NBC/WSJ/Marist 25 32 18
CNN 26 37 14
Final 28 24 23
Only two of the 13 were even within the margin of error in terms of the Cruz/Trump comparison, and only two within that margin on Trump/Rubio. There are a couple of key takeaways.
First, forgive the pollsters a little because the unusual mode of the Iowa caucus format has confounded them in the past, and it was made even more challenging because of Donald Trump entering the race, which brought a unique element into play. What they were being asked to do was rather difficult. But even with that…
Second, be extremely wary of those being driven by what I will call the “For-Profit Media”. I grouped those four at the bottom for best comparison. The networks have been having a field day with this so far, getting much higher ratings than usual for the pre-primary cycles, and as such there was a rather discomforting self-interest in play – the more that they could add fuel to the fires, the more that warmth would benefit their own bottom lines. The final polls from CBS, Fox, NBC and CNN were absurdly off the mark, enough so that you must be extremely careful with them, as long as Trump remains in the race.
As for the next wave anticipate a major market shift to Rubio, who will become a better than even-money favorite to win the Republican nomination. He did not need to win last night, merely be competitive, while also showing that there may not be a populist tsunami flooding the electorate, a story that was being presented over past months that may turn out to have largely been a media invention. In other words, at some point this may again become Politics as Usual.
