http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/iowa-caucus-pollsters-2016-218605 How pollsters got Iowa wrong
They were close on the Democratic race, but all of them missed Ted Cruz's win.
By Steven Shepard
02/02/16 04:04 AM EST
Donald Trump led almost all of the polls leading up to Monday night’s Iowa caucuses – just ask him.
He was in first place in the nine most recently conducted live-interviewer surveys of Republicans, going back three weeks. And a surge in turnout was supposed to propel the real-estate tycoon to victory. It happened, but Trump didn’t win.
Instead it was Ted Cruz, who had surrendered his polling lead shortly after the new year began, in first place when the first votes of the 2016 presidential nominating process were counted on Monday night.
In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton entered the caucuses with a slight lead in the polling averages – though results hinted at the possibility of the neck-and-neck race that persisted into the early-morning hours on Tuesday.
The GOP results, however, stand out as another failure of the public polls – especially because it was believed that a big jump in turnout would benefit Trump.
More than 185,000 votes were cast at Republican caucuses Monday night, easily shattering past totals. But it was Cruz, not Trump, who won among infrequent voters.
So why did the public polls – including the gold-standard Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll – miss Cruz’s victory? There are some clues buried in the election results and the entrance poll conducted immediately prior to the caucuses.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/iowa-caucus-pollsters-2016-218605#ixzz3z3OkN9tN
