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Strong evangelicals and strong conservatives are more likely to support Carson.

If you look at the internals (link at bottom the results page), you’ll notice that they knowingly increased the percentage of those groups from the sep 11 poll to this poll?

Why, if they know that those groups are more likely to back Carson?

"Why, if they know that those groups are more likely to back Carson?"

Getting a representative cross sample of Likely Republican Caucus Goers cannot be an easy thing to do.

A purely random survey would have to cover at least half the precincts and start with a call list of AT LEAST 5,000.

The question that needs to be answered is...where did you get the list of 574?

I haven't bothered to look at internals because it doesn't really matter. In 2012, 40% of the caucus vote came from self described evangelicals, which is why Santorum won. It is also true that Santorum was in fourth place going into the Iowa caucus, but was number one on vote night.

The strong evangelical vote is why Huckabee won in 2008, so there is a pattern present in the state's voting.

Whoever carries the evangelicals will win in Iowa. So it is believable that he may be ahead as of today. It is also true he has been running millions of dollars of ads in Iowa and Trump has not run one ad.

When Trump starts running ads (he seems to be in no hurry to do so), will he lap the field? Who knows?

Polling for caucus goers is the most risky polls because to do so means the voter gives up a whole evening to listen to speeches and then asked to go in a corner and stay there until someone comes by to count their vote. What if the parents come home and the kids are sick? It's likely they won't make the caucus that night.

No one knows who will show up, which is why Santorum was in 4th place and walked away the winner. Perhaps if the vote was a standard election, Santorum would have come in fourth, but his supporters showed up and the others not as much. We shall see.