Cruz smashed polling predictions
Polls projected that Ted Cruz would lose Idaho to Donald Trump by 11 points. Instead, he won by 17 points. It’s one of the biggest upsets of the primary season. Kathy Plonka/The Spokesman-Review
Ted Cruz made two campaign stops in Idaho the weekend before the presidential primary. Some think that could help explain why so many voters flocked to his side. Joe Jaszewski/Idaho Statesman
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.
Reporter Bryan Clark can be reached at 542-6751.
Source: Cruz smashed polling predictions
Polls projected that Ted Cruz would lose Idaho to Donald Trump by 11 points. Instead, he won by 17 points. It’s one of the biggest upsets of the primary season. Kathy Plonka/The Spokesman-Review
Ted Cruz made two campaign stops in Idaho the weekend before the presidential primary. Some think that could help explain why so many voters flocked to his side. Joe Jaszewski/Idaho Statesman
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.
Reporter Bryan Clark can be reached at 542-6751.
Source: Cruz smashed polling predictions
Polls projected that Ted Cruz would lose Idaho to Donald Trump by 11 points. Instead, he won by 17 points. It’s one of the biggest upsets of the primary season. Kathy Plonka/The Spokesman-Review
Ted Cruz made two campaign stops in Idaho the weekend before the presidential primary. Some think that could help explain why so many voters flocked to his side. Joe Jaszewski/Idaho Statesman
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.
Reporter Bryan Clark can be reached at 542-6751.
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