Posted on 03/09/2016 5:52:47 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
BOISE -- Tuesday marked one of the biggest surprises of the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Available polling suggested Donald Trump had a double-digit lead over Ted Cruz in Idaho, but Cruz won.
And Cruz didn't just beat Trump in Idaho. He trounced Trump. He beat him by more than 17 percentage points, when available polls projected an 11-point Trump victory. It's one of the biggest upsets that's happened in the race so far.
Cruz captured a greater percentage of the vote in Idaho than he did in his home state of Texas. There are only two other states, Maine and Kansas, in which he beat Trump by a larger margin.
So what gives with the polls? Why did they consistently show Trump as the safe winner for months, including two weeks before the Idaho primary, only to have Cruz steal the show?
There are at least two possibilities:
• Maybe the polls are no good.
The polls were certainly way off when it comes to predicting the winner. But that isn't likely to be the whole story.
The Dan Jones and Associates poll asked 601 Idahoans between Feb. 17 and Feb 26 who they would vote for. Given that Idaho's population is 1.6 million, that doesn't sound like a lot. But the laws of statistics dictate that you can be 95 percent sure that the poll reflects the actual attitudes of Idahoans within 4 percentage points.
That assumes that the group Dan Jones surveyed was a representative sample of Idahoans. That's a complex problem that pollsters spend a lot of time trying to solve. How good is Dan Jones at solving that problem?
Groups that evaluate the accuracy of pollsters don't give Dan Jones bad ratings for accuracy, though its ratings aren't stellar either.
FiveThirtyEight, a data reporting group headed by statistics guru Nate Silver, rates polling firms from around the nation. They rate Dan Jones & Associates' accuracy in the middle of the pack. That means you would expect its results to be less accurate than top national polling organizations such as CNN, but much more accurate than some major national pollsters such as Research 2000, which is so inaccurate that FiveThirtyEight ignores its polls.
Another possible issue is that Dan Jones focused on Republicans rather than likely Republican primary voters. But with a record 74 percent of registered Republicans coming out to vote, according to a GOP news release, it's unlikely that can explain why the polls didn't match the outcome.
• Maybe lots of voters rushed to Cruz at the last minute.
The latest Dan Jones poll was conducted a little less than two weeks before the primary, but a lot happened in those two weeks. Ben Carson dropped out of the race. Both Cruz and Marco Rubio paid visits to Idaho. And there were a slew of primary results that came in from other states, clarifying to voters which candidates might have a shot at the nomination and which are likely hopeless.
And there's something else to consider: The poll wasn't wildly inaccurate for all candidates, just for Cruz. In fact, the poll called other candidates' numbers remarkably well.
The Dan Jones poll put Trump at 30, and he came in at 28. The poll put Rubio at 16, which is almost exactly what he got. The polls put John Kasich at 5, and he got 7.
Political commentator David Adler said the fact that Dan Jones got so many other predictions right indicates that it probably wasn't a bad poll. Rather, it's likely that lots of Idahoans (a quarter of GOP primary voters) decided to back Cruz within the last two weeks.
And the polls also included a large group of voters who were uncommitted. Of those surveyed, 11 percent backed Carson. Another 11 percent said they hadn't decided yet. And another 9 percent said they didn't like any of the GOP's candidates. That's more than 30 percent of voters who hadn't yet picked a favorite, and if most of them flocked to Cruz, that could explain his victory.
• So why did they go to Cruz?
Adler said he thinks Cruz might have scored some big points by deciding to visit Idaho, something Trump never did. Rubio visited twice, but Adler said his campaign is widely seen to be floundering (he has less than half the delegates Cruz has and less than a third as many as Trump). Adler said that could explain why so many Idahoans chose not to back Rubio.
The arch-conservative Cruz also likely fits Idaho primary voters' ideological preferences better than Rubio, Adler said.
But political commentator Jim Weatherby said he was still surprised that so many in eastern Idaho backed Cruz, given his proposal to eliminate the Department of Energy. That move could have huge implications for Idaho National Lab, though Cruz subsequently clarified that he would keep INL alive under the Department of Defense.
yep it is the swing states we have to look so here it is.
VA Trump won, but Cruz never won a single county.
FL cruz could come 2nd possibly though I am here and it does not look like it.
OH That is between Kasich and Trump so maybe cruz might come third again there.
CO, Not sure about there as I can’t see many voters for a certain candidate. I will wait on someone who knows the state more.
OK thanks Bud
What poll is that and did Reagan not be behind by over 20 points to Cater by this time?
Cruz wins in states with closed primary - only Republicans vote.......
Trump wins in open primary where independents and even Democrats can vote for him....
Idaho was +32 for Romney in Nov 2012.
I’m sure Republicans don’t have to spend a penny for those 4 evs.
And then they’ll vote for Hillary in the general.
Yes. I cannot imagine Rubio supporters voting for Donald Trump.
BWAAAAHAHAHA
Nobody cares about Idaho?
Hey, I did not know that.
What an interesting and delightful fact.
At this moment on Fox News, it looks like Megan Kelly is on her knees smoking Ted Cruz with an audience stacked with all Cruz supporters cheering them on.
The polls for Trump are on average with 2% of his actual results. The polls are good.
But for some reason, they are off by over 25% for Cruz.
No other candidate is off as much as Cruz. Both Kasich and Rubio are within 10%.
So why are pollsters consistently off when they report the Cruz numbers?
Excuse me, manc, get off your butt and do your own research.
I guess 1 out of 3 is much better than 0 out of 3.
And the other side will say.
“Two out of three, ain’t bad.”
Also, Never, Ever, let your Meat Loaf.
Indont get the offense and worry over polls.
Wins at the polls that matter, for any candidate, is the job.
If the Cruz camp wants to pump up the team with some rah rah, go ahead. Win more on election day, and it wouldn’t be necessary.
“And Trump is losing to Sanders by 13 in a head to head BWAAAAAAHAHAHA.”
Yeah, by the same pollsters that had Cruz win South Carolina,
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
“Let me encourage other members of the establishment: Keep supporting Donald Trump because every time you do it, what it is doing is telling conservatives all over the country is where you stand and who stands with you”.
- Ted Cruz, New Hampshire stump speech
““Two out of three, ain’t bad.”
Also, Never, Ever, let your Meat Loaf.”
That song makes me cry.
.
Yes, Trump is winning the democrat vote now.
I wonder why?
Trumpers would like to think that he is drawing democrats into the fold.
What an interesting fold that would be with trumpers and democrats.
But is that why?
Could they be voting for Trump because it is widely assumed that he would lose to Hillary?
Did you ask those people or are you going to vote for them?
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