It's time to change things up from debate discussion to actual election results.

 

The Republican Iowa Caucus has now been decided. Ted Cruz won a very tight race.

 

Ted Cruz - 28%

Donald Trump - 24%

Marco Rubio - 23%

Ben Carson - 9%

Rand Paul - 5%

Jeb Bush - 3%

John Kasich - 2%

Carly Fiorina - 2%

Mike Huckabee - 2%

Chris Christie - 2%

Rick Santorum - 1%

Jim Gilmore - <1%

 

The big surprise was Marco Rubio with late deciders. I believe we will see many drop out. Gilmore, Santorum, Huckabee, Fiorina, and Carson should be soon suspending their campaigns. If they can't win in Iowa, they have no chance to win anywhere. The big question will be... Where will their support go?

So Ted pulled it out.. interesting. I'm hoping that some of that support goes Rubio's way.

Rubio did seem to be semi-actively soliciting that support ... folks will have to see reason and drop their charades first ... still no telling where the minimal votes will end up, but I can see them ending up in his camp.  <shrug>(might have made a difference tonight though! )

Carson voters would probably go to Ted and Trump, rest likely to Rubio.

 

Natural alliance for Ted and Trump to run with establishment vs anti establishment.

Lys when is your state caucus?

 

I think Trump paid for not having the ground game up.

I think that the most interesting thing here is that Cruz didn't win by doing well. He did not exceed his polling numbers. It was more a story of a Trump failure than anything else, which could well mean the entire trump as front runner narrative was never correct and down to poor polling results.

 

Of course one data point is insufficient to draw conclusions from but I would not be surprised if he underperformed in other states soon to hold votes.

I think Cruz did what everyone thought he would, he had the best organization on the ground. Trump lost voters to Rubio because he skipped the last debate. Iowa didn't like that. Those of us who are paying attention can see one glaring point... 90% of all the votes cast in the Iowa Republican Caucus went to candidates that are considered to be anti-establishment. This is not an election that will favor long careers in politics.

 

Huckabee has already dropped out. Santorum went home and will probably drop in a couple days. Carson went home, but his campaign is saying he will be back. Look out for Marco Rubio. If you're a voter that doesn't like Trump or Cruz... your support just shifted overnight to him. There's power behind his sudden rise in numbers.

 

The biggest loser was Jeb Bush. He spent about 20 million dollars for each of his 3 percentage points. He failed to ask Charlie Crist what it was like to run against Marco Rubio. Florida Governor Charlie believed he was entitled to the Florida Senate seat in 2010. The Tea Party people... I was one of them... put Marco Rubio up against him in the primary. Marco slaughtered him. Crist was humiliated, so he ran for it in the general as an Independent anyway... and Marco beat him again. It wasn't even close.

 

I like the Cruz tax plan more than any other candidate, but moving into New Hampshire he will not do as well. It's full of moderates, and Ted is as hard right as they come, so either Trump will run away with it, or all the anti-Trump people will have to jump with Rubio to beat him. It's not a caucus, it's a straight up primary vote in New Hampshire, so participation will be high.  We shall see...

 

The Nevada Caucus is February 23. I'll be watching how things go in New Hampshire and South Carolina. My wife and I will go to a local high school and sit at a table with all our Republican neighbors, and discuss the candidates. I would rather see Marco Rubio get the nomination... he's a better debater and an exceptional candidate, but I will not buck the majority... Trump is a really big name in Las Vegas, and a very good friend of Steve Wynn, and that carries weight here. When we're done, we will write a name on a piece of paper and turn it in... and that's it.

I misremembered the polling results, I though Cruz was closer to his actual result than he was. I mean polls are all over the place and chasing a tiny population, but I do still suspect Trump is over represented in the polls as he is an insurgent candidate, and attracts people who don't normally vote which is a pollsters worse nightmare because they are very hard to predict. Which could then mean he has never actually been the front runner reported. 

 

I also don't think there was a late swing (although am willing to be shown wrong), partly because the result was effectively predicted beforehand by those following the actual events and not the headline number, but also because Trump's supporters seemed in complete denial that anything he did could be wrong. 

Polling hasn't been decently accurate since the 2004 Presidential election. The more people dump their land lines, screen their calls with caller ID, and live their lives on the internet... the harder it is to come up with a real representation of the voters. Gallup has resigned from elected races, because their business depends on accuracy and the elections started making them look bad. I use the polls as a way to see how specific actions and events are changing the trend. If you really want to know the best way to predict what will happen... try watching how people bet. When their own money is on the line they tend to be much more honest.

 

https://electionbettingodds.com/

 

Here you can see how strong things have shifted to Rubio since last night.

As far as polling analysis goes... trust Nate Silver. He's a lefty, but he's brutally honest and very good.

I do follow nate silver. As a question do US companies use Internet polling? Very popular in Uk as cheaper and easier to get responses and about as accurate.

I do follow nate silver. As a question do US companies use Internet polling? Very popular in Uk as cheaper and easier to get responses and about as accurate.

If you're talking about election polls, no one relies on internet polling. If internet polling was accurate, Trump would be getting 65% support according to the Drudge Report. If you're talking about business polling, I have no idea. That's not my area.

Online polling in the UK industry refers to market research companies that have large databases of people who take part in surveys for small sums of money, and they select samples from them to carry out political polling. They are generally considered as accurate as telephone polling, although they suffered from the same sampling errors as telephone polls in the last UK election. They would not show Trump as getting 65%. 

I think Cruz did what everyone thought he would, he had the best organization on the ground. Trump lost voters to Rubio because he skipped the last debate. Iowa didn't like that. Those of us who are paying attention can see one glaring point... 90% of all the votes cast in the Iowa Republican Caucus went to candidates that are considered to be anti-establishment. This is not an election that will favor long careers in politics.

 

Huckabee has already dropped out. Santorum went home and will probably drop in a couple days. Carson went home, but his campaign is saying he will be back. Look out for Marco Rubio. If you're a voter that doesn't like Trump or Cruz... your support just shifted overnight to him. There's power behind his sudden rise in numbers.

 

The biggest loser was Jeb Bush. He spent about 20 million dollars for each of his 3 percentage points. He failed to ask Charlie Crist what it was like to run against Marco Rubio. Florida Governor Charlie believed he was entitled to the Florida Senate seat in 2010. The Tea Party people... I was one of them... put Marco Rubio up against him in the primary. Marco slaughtered him. Crist was humiliated, so he ran for it in the general as an Independent anyway... and Marco beat him again. It wasn't even close.

 

I like the Cruz tax plan more than any other candidate, but moving into New Hampshire he will not do as well. It's full of moderates, and Ted is as hard right as they come, so either Trump will run away with it, or all the anti-Trump people will have to jump with Rubio to beat him. It's not a caucus, it's a straight up primary vote in New Hampshire, so participation will be high. We shall see...

 

The Nevada Caucus is February 23. I'll be watching how things go in New Hampshire and South Carolina. My wife and I will go to a local high school and sit at a table with all our Republican neighbors, and discuss the candidates. I would rather see Marco Rubio get the nomination... he's a better debater and an exceptional candidate, but I will not buck the majority... Trump is a really big name in Las Vegas, and a very good friend of Steve Wynn, and that carries weight here. When we're done, we will write a name on a piece of paper and turn it in... and that's it.

Trump and Cruz vote doesn't make up 90%.

 

 

Trump and Cruz vote doesn't make up 90%.

Of course not... but Cruz, Trump, Rubio, Carson, Paul, and Fiorina do. They are all running as either never been elected, or currently in their first term in Washington. The others are all establishment backed candidates. Plus... Cruz, Rubio, and Paul were all Tea Party insurgents... which means I backed their run personally. I like each and every one of them... a lot.

Online polling in the UK industry refers to market research companies that have large databases of people who take part in surveys for small sums of money, and they select samples from them to carry out political polling. They are generally considered as accurate as telephone polling, although they suffered from the same sampling errors as telephone polls in the last UK election. They would not show Trump as getting 65%. 

 

In contrast with Lysistrata's information, yes, there is actual serious internet polling of the US elections (as opposed to the totally unsceintific polling on homepages of various websites, such as Drudge, as he mentioned).  The largest organization operating is YouGov, which was founded in the UK.  See the final page of their latest polling press release for their methodology (2000 US Citizen respondents, results reported raw and weighted by age, gender, race, etc.).  Their final Iowa Republican Caucus poll was Trump +5, which is now known to be obviously wrong, but was about where most polls had the race.

Any polls in the RealClearPolitics database listed as Economist/YouGov are internet-based.

 

Other companies exist that do online polling too, and more are considering doing so in the future.  Quoting from a 2014 article about polling on 538:

Polls are headed online soon

 

With declining response rates, rising costs and falling funding, many polls are moving online. We asked our respondents when they expect Internet-based polling to overtake phone polling as the primary method used in election polling. Of the 18 who responded with a date, or “never,” the median answer was 2020. Two expected it to happen by the next presidential election.

 

“We are beginning to consider transition plans,” Borick, of Muhlenberg College, said, “but since costs have remained acceptable and results very accurate, our transition is not imminent.”

 

Some think online polling has already overtaken phone polling. Others say phone and Internet are being used side by side in some polls and will continue to complement each other.

 

“Like everyone else, I think it is a function of the reliability of phone polls (as measured and sanctioned by the academy) versus the decreasing reliability of phone polls plus their increasing cost,” one pollster said. “When do those lines cross?”

 

This is not to say that internet polling is perfect yet, 538 gave YouGov a C+ in its pollster rankings in 2014, but that was an equal or better grade than well-established traditional polling outfits like Gallup and Rasmussen received.

 

*Full disclosure: I have occasionally served as a YouGov respondent.

Thank you so much for all that information Niels! I actually thought about starting an online polling company years back, but after all the hate on Zogby for doing it, I dropped it like a rock. I think someone will nail it down someday.

 

Trump and Cruz vote doesn't make up 90%.

Of course not... but Cruz, Trump, Rubio, Carson, Paul, and Fiorina do. They are all running as either never been elected, or currently in their first term in Washington. The others are all establishment backed candidates. Plus... Cruz, Rubio, and Paul were all Tea Party insurgents... which means I backed their run personally. I like each and every one of them... a lot.

I was under the impression that establishment will rally behind Rubio after the herd is culled. They'd prefer Rubio over Cruz and Trump certainly. Therefore, Rubio is an establishment candidate?

Thank you so much for all that information Niels! I actually thought about starting an online polling company years back, but after all the hate on Zogby for doing it, I dropped it like a rock. I think someone will nail it down someday.

Zogby didn't do it properly, hence it went wrong. Its nothing to do with internet vs telephone being inherently better. 

 

The real difficulty for pollsters is the weighting and actually reaching a representative sample. In the latest UK election the pollsters all got it quite badly wrong because they failed to properly take into account the disinterested voter-the person that doesn't closely follow politics but votes anyway, a group that broke heavily towards the Conservative party and accounted for most of their win. 

 

The trouble is that group are just as likely to ignore a "fill out this online survey on politics" email from Yougov as to ignore a telephone call regarding politics. There is also an issue that Conservatives are generally in the more affluent socio-economic group so less likely to have the time to answer polls. However these issues affect both telephone and internet polling, but can be corrected through proper weighting. The trouble is that the weighting is the really difficult part and is the difference between a good Pollster and whoever the Romney campaign used in 2012.

So Ted won. But he has a lead of only 1 delegate over Trump and Rubio!!!

 

Why is the media making Ted a king?? It's basically a tie in delegate terms.....

Shocker for me... Rand Paul has dropped out. I knew it would come as soon as he had to defend his Senate seat, but I thought he would stay in longer. His major base of support comes from his anti-war, anti-NSA, and audit the Fed banner his father passed to him. I don't see his people being too excited about moving to any of these other candidates. We shall see...

 

Marco Rubio is not an establishment Senator, but when Bush, Kasich, and Christie all call it a day... they will fall in line with Rubio, over Trump. Cruz is a different story... he's the favorite of the Conservative base. It's all the people in the Senate and the House that he fights with all the time in Washington DC, that hate every breathe the man takes.

 

Hi Rafay... If the media you are paying attention to are reporting properly... Bernie Sanders had a big win in Iowa... and will win by a large margin in New Hampshire... after that he's dead in the water. He doesn't stand a chance of ever winning... even if Hillary Clinton goes to jail, they will still drag out Biden. They will never give the nomination to Bernie Sanders. Ted Cruz won, and his support was what everyone thought it would be. Trump under performed his expectations, which is a loss. Marco Rubio over performed his expectations, which is a big win for him going into other state primaries that actually like him more than Iowa did. That's pretty much where we are.

I'm completely bummed out.  Rand has been the one candidate out of everyone I've honestly really backed and wanted to see.  The past few elections, I picked the better of two evils and voted Republican because it's where I side with the most, but wasn't a fan of McCain nor Romney.  This election, I felt a connection and liking for Paul that I haven't had in awhile.  Though it was a long shot, and honestly knew he likely would never stand a chance, I felt some momentum was going his way a bit lately, and a strong showing at the next debate could continue it.  

 

Now I could honestly give a rats ass.  I despise Trump and his idiotic remarks and still feel him even being in the running, let alone leading/2nd place is a complete disgrace to a party I've always supported.  To me it's a joke he is, and what infuriates me to no end is that no matter what he says, no matter how wrong or off the wall it is, you have people who will back it.  The concept of "Sheep" that is used quite frequently is a perfect example of some of Trump Supporters.  The idea of Trump at first I honestly wasn't against, I even liked the idea, but as the months have gone on, that has turned to dislike.  Half the time he acts like a little bitch when something doesn't go his way, or someone calls him out or says something about him.  He's nothing more then a egotistical jackass who expects everyone to just praise and give him what he wants.  There's no disputing he is a good businessman, and in doing so must be intelligent at least in business, but that alone doesn't make you a good President, and that alone doesn't mean you can say what you want without repercussion.  

 

I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend anyone, but I've wanted to rant for awhile, and hearing about Rand dropping out has lit a fire under my ass.  I don't despise Cruz, I don't despise Rubio, if I had to pick I'd probably go Rubio at this point, but neither were my favorite.  Needless to say, if Trump get's the nomination, I will likely vote 3rd party or not at all, I will not vote Trump, and I certainly won't vote Clinton or Sanders.  And I'm not alone in this, it's surprising some of my friends who are more far right then me stating "I don't know/think I can vote for Trump."  Not that a few votes matter, but there are many that struggle with such an idea, and if gets nominated and wins the election, it won't be from me. 

 

Needless to say, I will truly look down on the party as a whole if Trump is nominated.  

I knew you would be posting about this Mr. Rhizo... you are not alone my friend. I want Trump to go down slowly, and not in a sudden flame out that humiliates him in any way. You are correct. He will act like a little bitch, and he's been treated unfairly. If he turns third party it will be trouble... so I want him gone, but I don't want him to have anywhere to go but home. His candidacy has been good for the party in some ways. He brought attention to big issues and has validated a lot of anger that people have with a system that all too often forces us to just sit down and shut up... that it's not our country any longer. He has brought more attention to the Republican party... we have broken records because of him.

 

If Trump wins the nomination fair and square... he should get it. If he wins it and they take it from him... I will go with him, because I believe the people choose the nominee, not the party. If it's Trump vs. a Democrat... I will vote Trump.

Now that I got my initial rant/feelings out.

 

It was a long shot, it's not like I really didn't see it eventually happening anyway, but I was hoping he'd hold on and see what happened, see if a few more weeks things started to rise for him.  He's exiting the race with more money and more votes then the likes of Christie.  Plus, with others likely ending their run soon, I was interested in seeing if some of those votes would transition over to Rand.  Also if Carson dropped out, which he hasn't but I don't expect to be for that much longer.  But Rand was expecting the Iowa Caucus results to differ then what was being estimated/polled.  He felt the younger individuals, especially college kids would account for a higher percentage, plus I imagine he hoped some of the people who won his father Ron 23 delegates in 2012 would move to him.  When that didn't happen, and ended up in the same position & percentage as estimated, it likely hit him and his campaign hard.  I believe had he of been right, and say he got 10%, and ended up 4th, I think it would be a different story.  I'm certainly going to miss him on the debate circuit as well, I enjoyed his debates, especially lately (early on going after Trump was a dumb move, and didn't win him anything).  

 

But he does have to look to win his re-election in Kentucky, and though it would be a real upset if he lost there, he needs to hold on to it.

 

Needless to say, the good thing is that I don't believe much of Rand's support will go to Trump.  I believe a lot will go to Cruz, which will likely hurt Trump.  You make good points, and that is the best thing to happen, which is Trump slowly go down.  Him running third party would be disastrous for the GOP, and likely would hand the Democrats the win.  It's best if he just starts to lose steam and either Cruz or Rubio really starts to break out.  It's what I am hoping for.  I do believe Trump has only been bad for the GOP, I agree that I think his presence has done some good things for the GOP, I just want him to go before he possibly does/says something that will do more harm then the good he brought.  To me, he's a loose cannon, he shoots from the hip, and though I do enjoy someone actually speaking their mind and not always trying to be PC, some of the things I just cringe at.  Had someone else said some of the things, their numbers would plummet.  

 

My only concern with Cruz is the legal ramifications that are still to come with eligibility.  Though in my eyes I believe he is, it's something that needs to be decided by Supreme Court.  I would be fine with Cruz or Rubio, they weren't my top choice, but I don't despise them, and I like them more then I did McCain or Romney and I voted for them.  

 

So I'm bummed, but I'll move on.  I do still care (my earlier rant I said I didn't), I just now need to start looking at which Candidate I can now get behind over the rest.  

Trump demanding a re run of Iowa after throwing a hissy fit that fox wouldn't drop Kelly. I don't think he could look more like a cry baby if he tried. Given he tried to sell himself as a tough guy I have a feeling this will hurt him more than any attack from outside.

 

 

Ted Cruz won, and his support was what everyone thought it would be. Trump under performed his expectations, which is a loss. Marco Rubio over performed his expectations, which is a big win for him going into other state primaries that actually like him more than Iowa did. That's pretty much where we are.

 

Oh. So in that perspective. Like they were comparing to the polls. 

Santorum is out... that frees up another 1%

Trump demanding a re run of Iowa after throwing a hissy fit that fox wouldn't drop Kelly. I don't think he could look more like a cry baby if he tried. Given he tried to sell himself as a tough guy I have a feeling this will hurt him more than any attack from outside.

There is a legitimate beef about this. Ted Cruz took a tweet from Ben Carson about him going home to get a change of clothes and turned it into a big hoax that he was pulling out of the race. This was a lie. This was not the only dirty politics from the Cruz camp... they also sent out "Election Violation" notices out to Iowa Republicans showing all their neighbors their attendance record for caucus, and making them think they were in some kind of trouble.

 

This is dirty politics and I hate it. It's done on purpose, and then after the damage is done they just claim ignorance and apologize. Sorry... that doesn't fly with me, and I expect this crap from Democrats, but not from the Cruz campaign.