http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/01/25/don_t_be_so_sure_about_the_iowa_poll_numbersDon't Be So Sure About the Iowa Poll Numbers
January 25, 2016
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RUSH: Ben Shapiro, recent interviewee, Limbaugh Letter, young, brilliant conservative, located many places. Has a piece on the Daily Wire here: "Three Reasons the Iowa Polls Might Not Predict a Trump Win."
Now, there a lot of people, I had somebody say to me last night, "Rush, I don't believe these Iowa polls." Iowa's different. You gotta show up and caucus. It's just not vote. You've gotta actually go there. And this person cited what is in the Drive-By Media. You know, Trump doesn't have the ground game. He really doesn't have the ground game. It's a big different thing in Iowa. You can't just fly in there and make speeches and fly out. You gotta have an organization.
So there are a lot of people, I myself used to be one of these guys, "Ah, the polls can't," I've been forced to bite the bullet every time I thought the polls weren't right. Been maybe one or two occasions. But I wanted to share this with you anyway from Ben Shapiro.
"Over the weekend, Donald Trump took commanding leads in a bevy of polls out of the first primary state, Iowa. According to Fox News, he now leads Ted Cruz by 11 points; according to CBS News/YouGov, he leads by 5 points; according to CNN/ORC, he’s up by 11 points as well. The only poll in which Cruz holds a lead is the KBUR poll, in which Cruz leads by 2 points. That’s a significant swing in Trump’s favor just in the past few days. Part of that is surely driven by Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Trump."
If that's true, folks, you do not know -- well, maybe you do know -- the manifest frustration with Sarah Palin among many conservatives and some Republicans. And the fact that Trump's doing well is bad enough. If Palin is helping him, that's, you know, keep-away-from-sharp-objects time. That's called the little men in white coats. That'll drive 'em over the edge, that Palin would be effective. Oh, no. They would be of the mind that Palin would hurt Trump, 'cause they think Palin hurt them. They don't think it was McCain that was the problem.
But, anyway, Shapiro says there are three reasons that the Iowa polls might be all wet, greatly exaggerated, predicting a Trump win. The first is that polls in Iowa are historically bad. For example: "At this point, Rick Santorum, the eventual Iowa winner was polling in the RealClearPolitics poll average at 7.7 percent," when he won it back in '08 or '12? The last two winners of the Iowa caucus on the Republican side were Santorum and before that it was somebody that also didn't go anywhere. But, anyway, his point is that Santorum, who won it, was at seven points one week out. He was sixth in the field after Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann. He eventually ended up winning the caucuses with 24% of the vote. Okay, it was Huckabee in '08.
"In 2008, with one week to go, Mike Huckabee was leading by three and ended up winning by nearly 10 points. In 2008, the RealClearPolitics poll average placed Barack Obama at 31 percent, Hillary Clinton at 29 percent, and John Edwards at 26 percent; they ended up at 38 percent, 30 percent for Edwards, and 29 percent for Clinton." Meaning there's a lot of variability. So that's one bit of evidence. The second reason that Shapiro cites why the polls in Iowa might be wrong is that they are quite broad.
"After 2012’s poll-doubting debacle, I’ve vowed not to doubt polling data as a general rule. But I’m not the one doing the doubting. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, probably America’s leading polling guru, says, 'A lot of differences in these polls are based on how tightly polls are screening voters.'"
And then the third reason to doubt the polls is that in Iowa endorsements matter.
"Because Iowa is a caucus state, which means that candidates’ representatives lobby voters before those voters raise their hands, endorsements matter an awful lot. On-the-ground organization matters an awful lot. That’s why Silver’s site still has Cruz with a 48 percent chance of winning the Iowa caucuses, with Trump at 41 percent."
So we'll see. Nate Silver is the guru. The left loved Nate Silver 'til he left the Times and went to ESPN and then they thought he was a sellout. But the FiveThirtyEight site gives Cruz a 48% chance of winning Iowa and Trump 41%. And yet here's a Fox News poll with Trump up to an 11-point lead.
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