And you are not addressing all the other supporting evidence of the crap Cruz and his team pulled on caucaus night - actually at the caucuses!
Posted on 02/02/2016 6:14:48 AM PST by justlittleoleme
The final days of Iowa polling had a cohesive set of predictions. Donald Trump was supposed to win. Marco Rubio was supposed to come in a distant third. And Bernie Sanders, despite a last-minute challenge to Hillary Clinton, was expected to narrowly lose.
Now we know the polls got it wrong, particularly on the Republican side. Trump lost to Ted Cruz and barely eked out a second-place showing over Rubio. Sanders and Clinton are still locked in virtual tie for first.
The Iowa caucuses are notoriously difficult to predict. But even the final Des Moines Register poll, which has a good record, missed Rubio's rise and Trump's fall. Here are three factors that help explain why the polls got it wrong this time around.
A bigger turnout was supposed to help Trump, but it didn't
Republicans turned out to vote in huge numbers: 185,000 people went to the caucuses, up 5.4 percent from 2012, according to the Washington Post. According to conventional wisdom going into the vote, a big turnout should have helped Trump by proving he could motivate the infrequent voters who were among his strongest supporters.
But it wasn't enough. While about 45 percent of Republican caucus-goers were caucusing for the first time, only about 30 percent of those new voters supported Trump, according to exit polls. So the new voter turnout wasn't a groundswell in his favor.
Observers had been warning that Trump's ground game — the network of volunteers and organizers doing the crucial, down-to-earth work of making sure supporters show up to the polls — was disorganized or nonexistent. On January 13, the New York Times' Trip Gabriel called the campaign's Iowa operation "amateurish and halting":
As temperatures plunged to single digits over the weekend, canvassers for Hillary Clinton posted photographs of themselves on social media going door to door in the snow. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s volunteers in Davenport, a city where the campaign appears to be better organized than elsewhere, decided it was too cold to go out.
Seven volunteers worked the phones at the Iowa headquarters of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida in a Des Moines suburb one night last week. At the state headquarters of Mr. Cruz, there were 24 volunteers in a room beneath a sign proclaiming a daily goal of making 6,000 calls. The Trump state headquarters in West Des Moines were largely deserted.
Trump ended up losing Davenport, too, to Rubio.
Evangelical Christians turned out to vote for Cruz
The Des Moines Register poll estimated that 47 percent of caucus attendees would be evangelical Christians. When the pollster changed the model for bigger evangelical attendance, it found Cruz would pull even with Trump if 60 percent of voters were evangelical.
Even that turned out to be an underestimate: 62 percent of caucusgoers described themselves as evangelical or born-again, according to exit polls. And the plurality of their votes went to Cruz. Less religious voters supported Trump.
In the end, according to exit polls, it was most important to caucus-goers that their candidate share their values. And among those voters, Cruz won. Trump won voters who wanted a candidate who "tells it like it is" and "can bring needed change." Rubio won voters who thought electability was most important.
The best poll suggested Cruz had hidden support
The Des Moines Register poll has a better track record than most. It predicted Howard Dean's loss in 2004 and Obama's victory in 2008. But this year, pollster Ann Selzer still found a Trump victory was likely. And the poll got it wrong in other ways: it found Cruz's support was falling and that Trump's was solid.
Still, buried in the details of the poll was enthusiasm for Cruz and Rubio.
Iowa Republicans said they were more enthusiastic about both candidates than they were about Trump, and that Cruz had more knowledge and experience than Trump. A last-minute switch would benefit Cruz, the poll found. And Republicans polled said they'd pick Trump over Cruz in a head-to-head matchup.
To some observers, that boded well for Cruz. They turned out to be right.
I think one of the reasons the hyper-partisan rancor built to such toxic levels is that there was no endpoint, no real feedback, until now. Only polls. And polls, subjective as they are, fed the polarization.
Now that an actual measurement has been taken, I think it’ll actually help tamp down the bitter contention.
In fact, I think we’re already seeing that here on FR. Less nastiness (IMO) from both sides and more rational discussion AFTER Iowa, compared to just before.
Pray that trend continues. Wouldn’t it be cool if Cruz and Trump could work together. Or at least not poison each other.
I don’t want Rubio either.
I would have read Carson’s statement as “looks like he is dropping out,” too. Candidates usually “take time off” just before dropping out.
Good thing Carson and his wife were around to correct his idiotic statement that misled so many, but I can’t blame these folks for reading the obvious conclusion into Carson’s statement.
Yes, Jim supports both candidates. So maybe you shouldn’t be so eager to promote lies about his preferred candidate.
Defend status quo politics using lies to win. Cool.
A Christian is a Christian, whatever description they use.
They may not consider themselves Evangelicals, but they are all in the same brotherhood in the body of Christ..or the truth is not in them, can't escape that.
You are blind. It’s beyond obvious that that is a Photoshop hoax. And you can’t see it. Wow.
I receive updates from Ted Cruz’s campaign. The fonts are all the same size, and there are no photoshopped white boxes on any of the emails I receive.
Interpretation of the news is not a lie. Claiming they lied *is* a lie.
I agree with everything in your post. And it is certain that Rubio is going to be the default establishment candidate unless there is a Jeb Miracle around the corner. My personal belief is that it is going to be Trump-Cruz-Rubio at least well into March and then it will be down to two. Could be Cruz-Trump. Could be Trump-Rubio. Could be Cruz-Rubio.
One other thing: I'm seeing a lot of Trump -> Rubio transitions among my less than Freeper-Level conservative acquaintances. The Debate No-Show and the general level of negative campaigning in Iowa has turned off a few Trump fans. Of course a sample of 10 is hardly definitive. ;)
Interesting times, as they say.
Carson said he was taking time off “to get some clothes”. When the guy in fourth place says he is going home for a lame reason like “clothes”, at the very beginning of the actual primary run, and only one candidate has ever won the nomination after getting less than 19 pct (GOPE guy McCain 13... Carson got 9), it is reasonable to assume that a withdrawal is near. And... Cruz never once said Carson is “dropping out”, nor did CNN... they said “stop campaigning”, which he is doing “to get some clothes”... but the anti-Cruz folks sure are working hard to make it seem like he declared something that he didn’t.
Are we going to see this post on every thread? Just asking so I can skip over it.
It's mildly amusing to read the sputtering outrage.
I know Cruz supporters would love to skip over it. Shows they are willing for the same old status quo political crap.
I can't wait to see if Donald Trump is going to campaign on having the EPA increase regulations and force a higher blend of Ethanol on the public in New Hampshire as he did in Iowa.
Will Trump wave his Bible that his mother gave him around in NH also or was it just a one off thing for Iowa?
** Now that an actual measurement has been taken, I think it’ll actually help tamp down the bitter contention. In fact, I think we’re already seeing that here on FR. Less nastiness (IMO) from both sides and more rational discussion AFTER Iowa, compared to just before. **
I wish I could make that interpretation, but all I see is a well-deserved 24-hour vacay for a bunch of overworked cyber trolls who are exhausted from instigating nuclear levels of mayhem and emotion. ;-)
Yes, I will continue praying for a truce, because judging from the high testosterone levels of Cruz and Trump, it WILL take a miracle for either one of them to calm down and think rationally.
You say “testosterone” like it’s a bad thing. ;-)
It’s fair to question it from all sides.
But to me, it is particularly bad when you play the TV preacher to gain votes.
If you are unable to see that that image is a completely manufactured phony Photoshop hoax, then you are being willfully blind. It has *ALL* the evidence of being a hoax — JPG artifacts, mis-sized fonts, white blocks, and so on. Your apparent hatred of Jim Robinson’s favorite candidate is clouding your judgment.
Re:”Ok!.....We will see who is stupid. “
The self incriminating evidence you laid out there is pretty damning and leaves little doubt.
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