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.
Yes Ted is, along with self proclaimed conservatives Jeb, Neil Bush, and Lindsey Graham etc..., all who have recently become enamored with Ted Cruz.
Don’t forget other Cruz endorsers like Meghan McCain and Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner.
Last I checked, the US is pretty evenly divided politically. If we're going to get serious about winning somebody damned well better start caring.
Trump’s unfavorable rating in the ABC News/Washington Post poll is minus-67 — the worst ever recorded for a domestic political figure in the poll’s history. And that’s after months of the best, most extensive media coverage he could’ve ever hoped for.________________________________________
Nah, it’s actually a pretty easy answer, but the pollsters haven’t adjusted their formulas yet.
As this article points out, Cruz gets a surge of election day deciders (may not be a literal “day of”, but people who choose in the last couple of days.) Couple this with the fact that the polls are very accurate when it comes to Trump’s support and you can make a strong case that the last minute deciders have already decided not to vote for Trump, and they are trying to figure out who they can vote for besides Trump. They tend to fall Cruz’s way (except for Virginia where both Kasich and Rubio surged way above expectations.)
The second reason, my speculation and very little way to prove, is that there is a reverse Bradley effect for Cruz. Because he has been pilloried in the public by the press, the GOP establishment, and his fellow candidates, many people may feel uncomfortable sharing that they are voting for Cruz, including telling pollsters. So they either say they are undecided (re-enforcing the first point) or they just lie and say one of the other candidates.
funny it is working for others.
Try this
or this.
how many more links do you need to show he said this?
“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
Just copy and paste the statement and then put it in a search engine.
Let me know now if you still think he would not say such a thing?
yet he is winning LOL
Our local radio talking heads here in Dallas are gaga over Cruz. Really pushing for Trump and Cruz to kiss and make up plus yapping about Rubio fitting into a VP position. They talk like Cruz is in the lead with the Rube right behind. Trump who?
With Idaho at +32 for Romney in Nov 2012, it’s hardly worth any campaign money.
As always, the Nov 2016 fight will come down to Florida and Ohio.
Perhaps Virginia, but that’s gone pretty blue due to the DC gravy train.
Here there you go, Now do you believe he said such a thing?
It does not sound like Ted Cruz. He is usually elegant and clear in his speaking.
That quote does not make sense and is not in line with anything else he’s ever said.
My guess is it is something grabbed out of context to try and make Ted Cruz look bad in some way.
No, but I'm sure there's a lot of good people there that at least deserve simple respect. What's that cost?
Who would that be, bonfire? Mark Davis?
so now it is taken out of context, seriously.
I have given you links for different sources with the exact quote, did all the media outlets say lets say the same thing and take it out of context?
Come on altura, we have a different guy , and I don’t expect you to suddenly start giving money to Trump, but to deny this too, come on you are way better than this.
“....poll shows then beating Trump but don’t let the facts.... “
Poll = fact?
There is considerable statistical variance in Polls, less so with facts.
What does that quote even mean?
It doesn’t make sense.
Keep on giving to the
Okay, since it means so much to you, I will go back and look at it.
Off to bed soon so good night
“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
Okay. What does this say to you? I can’t make any sense out of it. Who are ‘other members of the establishment?’
Sorry. It makes no sense at all. Is he saying that if you support Trump you are telling conservatives who you stand for?
Have we really spent all the time on this?
Can we just call it a day?
“Trump wins in open primary where independents and even Democrats can vote for him....”
In open primary states Democrats can vote for the weakest Republican candidate. Ever think of that?
It’s a “fact” that vitually all the polls show Trump getting beat by Clinton/Sanders.
Understand Einstein?
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