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.
Source, please.
From strictly a political point of view does anyone honestly think Ted Cruz can win states like Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Virginia and Pennsylvania in November? Those battleground states will decide the election and Ted has yet to prove he can win in any of them and I don’t think he has a shot in Florida or Ohio next week. He would be a total disaster in the fall election if be were the nominee.
Nobody cares about Idaho
Nobody cares about <insert state that Trump lost>, but <insert state that Trump won> is a YUGE deal!
1 out 4.
He might get some but Rubio was hurt by Cruz.
That song makes me cry.
really?
Damn.
I could make you cry all night.
How old are you?
That is not the only poll.
If you can find a poll that has Trump beating Hillary or Sanders, please post it.
LOL what is it you said.
Oh yes this
Get off your butt and do your own research. try copy and paste in a search engine.
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
The gutter. It’s where you guys go these days.
I live here in Idaho and I don't care about it. /snicker
I honestly don’t see a road for him unless jeb in that meeting he is having with them tells the others to drop out and I think cruz knows it and that is why he keeps saying to the other drop out and vote for me, not them.
He really isn’t adding any new voters, he is not really generating much interest outside the base and when it comes to the national election he has to have non party voting for him and right now I just don’t see it.
Ted Cruz would be the best candidate by far that we could nominate.
He is far above Donald Trump in national popularity.
Why would you say Ted would be a total disaster? I mean, I guess that’s the view from Trumpville, but all the polls show that he would do far better against Hillary than Trump.
Really?? Funny, don’t recall that poll.
I think because you pulled it outta your a$$.
BTW, virtually every poll shows then beating Trump but don’t let the facts get in the way of a good belly laugh.
is it any wonder why he keeps asking for others to drop out and now is OK with a contested election when he stated he was against it. Then getting cozy with the establishment.
he wants to win and fair enough but don’t go to the very people he was first against .
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
Yes. You posted what you purport to be an excerpt from a Ted Cruz speech.
Has nothing to do with my doing research.
You are the one who supposedly has the speech and got the excerpt.
I asked for verification because that does not sound like Ted Cruz.
I cannot imagine Ted Cruz making that statement and would be very interested if you can prove he did.
So, yeah, if you’re gonna throw stuff out there, be prepared to at least defend it.
Typical response from a liberal...
You posted what you purported to be something Ted Cruz said in a speech.
Do you have a source for that. It does not sound like something Ted would say.
If you post something, you should be prepared to back it up.
Has nothing to do with doing research. You supposedly have it.
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