The Iowa poll the political world has been eagerly awaiting is finally here — and it has great news for Donald Trump.
On Saturday evening, Bloomberg Politics and the Des Moines Register released the results of their final Iowa caucus poll, which is conducted by by widely-respected pollster Ann Selzer and has been extremely accurate in recent years.
For the Republican race, the poll found Trump in first among likely caucusgoers with 28 percent, Ted Cruz in second with 23 percent, and Marco Rubio in third with 15 percent. Ben Carson is in fourth with 10 percent, and no other candidate gets more than 5 percent support.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is ahead with 45 percent among likely caucusgoers, followed by Bernie Sanders with 42 percent. Martin O’Malley is very far back, with just 3 percent.
In a live event announcing the poll results, Selzer said there was no indication that Thursday night’s GOP debate (and Trump’s failure to attend it) led to any serious movement in the numbers.
Selzer has a very good track record of polling the caucuses
Polling the Iowa caucuses is extremely difficult. These events aren’t like ordinary primaries — they take place at a specific time in the evening and can last hours. So predicting who will show up is extremely difficult, and has led many pollsters astray in the past. Plus, many voters end up deciding quite late, so it’s a challenge for a pollster to detect if any one candidate suddenly surges in the final days.
Selzer, though, seems to be an expert at both modeling turnout and picking up on this late movement, as her track record shows:
Source: Vox | Andrew Prokop
BCNN1 WP 