THE STATES
Iowa
Des Moines Register/Bloomberg- Selzer (Fivethirtyeight rating A+)
Clinton 48
Sanders 39
O’Malley 4
It is finally here! The “gold standard” in Iowa polling has arrived, and it shows the same thing we’ve seen elsewhere. Clinton has a strong, but not overwhelming, lead in Iowa, and it is fairly steady.
Clinton’s 48% is unchanged from their October poll (when Biden was excluded) while Sanders has slipped a bit, dropping two points from the 41% he had in their last poll. This poll is well within what we’ve seen in other polling, though Clinton is at the lower range of her support (high 40s to mid 50s) and Sanders is at the upper end up his (low thirties to low forties).
As one of the best pollsters in Iowa (and in the business in general) we can guess that this poll is probably the closest thing we’ve got to the current state of the race, and it isn’t too different from what we’ve seen elsewhere- Clinton has a lead in the high single digits to low teens pretty much across the board.
FOX News (Fivethirtyeight rating B)
Clinton 50
Sanders 36
O’Malley 5
Yes, I know it is FOX, but they’ve actually got a pretty solid record as a pollster, and they use the combined efforts of a Democratic and a Republican aligned polling firm for their numbers. Either way, the picture they paint doesn’t look too different from Selzer’s. Clinton is a bit higher, Sanders is a bit lower, but their 14 point race really isn’t drastically different from what Selzer found, just a bit different around the margins.
FOX hasn’t been into Iowa yet this year, so we’ve got no previous poll to compare it to, but it certainly fits what we’ve seen elsewhere.
Overtime Politics (Unrated by Fivethirtyeight)
Clinton 49
Sanders 39
O’Malley 4
I don’t know anything about this pollster, but here are their numbers (not yet included on RCP or Pollster, and I don’t know if they will be). Overall, pretty much in line with what we’ve seen elsewhere.
NATIONAL
NBC/WSJ (Fivethirtyeight rating A-)
Clinton 56
Sanders 37
O’Malley 4
We haven’t heard from this poll since the end of October, and they show a definite improvement for Sanders since that time. Clinton is down six points while Sanders is up by the same amount. This is one of the best national results we’ve seen for Sanders's vote share outside of internet polling, so it will be interesting to see if other pollsters (who have continued to cluster around the low thirties) see an uptick in support for Sanders, as well. Clinton’s 19 point lead in this poll is slightly weaker than other polling we’ve seen recently, but not drastically so.
DISCLAIMER: I don’t have a lot of faith in the Ipsos/Reuters tracking poll, but they do occasionally release the daily results as well as their weekly releases, so I will include the numbers as they are available.
We have the five day averages from a few more days available from the poll today.
| 59 | 58 | 61 |
| 28 | 29 | 27 |
| 5 | 5 | 4 |
| +31 | +29 | +34 |
I diaried over the weekend about how folks who were in love with this poll when it showed a 51-36 point race not too long ago were setting themselves up for a disappointment, and the poll has not failed to impress with wild swings unrelated to anything in the real world. Their current results are on the far high end of where other pollsters have seen Clinton, and the low end of where Sanders has sat in other polling, leading to a margin that is about ten points higher than the aggregates have found.
THE AVERAGES
All results are Clinton-Sanders-O’Malley
Iowa
RCP: 52-37-5 (Clinton +15)
Pollster: 53-37-4 (Clinton +16)
National
RCP: 55-32-3 (Clinton +23)
Pollster: 55-32-3 (Clinton +23)
THE HISTORY
Then numbers are the five most recent polls from November 15th, 2007 (49 days before the Iowa caucuses). Now numbers are the five most recent polls from today (49 days before the Iowa caucuses)
Iowa
Then
Clinton 27
Obama 24
Edwards 22
(Clinton +3)
Now
Clinton 52
Sanders 37
O’Malley 5
(Clinton +15)
I’m thinking about ending the history segment of these diaries because there is almost nothing similar between the 2008 cycle and this one, and that is especially true in Iowa (and New Hampshire, for that matter). Either way, as a point of comparison, Hillary is doing about twice as well as she was at this point in the 2008 cycle, and her margin is five times greater than it was. She is over 50%, there isn’t a legitimate three way race (unless you’re an HA Goodman fan) and every indication is that she has a competent enthusiastic team who understands the caucus procedure and won’t be surprised on Caucus Night. Obviously nothing is won or lost until the caucuses have completed, but her position here is so much stronger than it was in 2007 that it seems foolish to keep comparing them. Incidentally, if we look at the same time of year, Obama already had built up a 31-27 lead over Clinton by December 14th of 2007, which could be important considering the holiday lull we’re going to see for the next few weeks.
National
Then
Clinton 44
Obama 22
(Clinton +22)
Now
Clinton 56
Sanders 33
(Clinton +23)
Once again, we see a similar margin but a much stronger positioning for Clinton than she was in 2007. In 2007, Barack Obama had 34% of the electorate not supporting him or Clinton to grow with. Today, Sanders has just 11% to work with. Once again, we find ourselves in a completely different situation- thus far this race looks a lot more like the 2000 primary between Al Gore and Bill Bradley (here’s hoping O’Malley stays in the race long enough to win a better share than noted scumbag Lyndon LaRouche’s 2% in the 2000 primaries), right down to the best hope of the challenger falling in New Hampshire.
Either way, we should have new PPP numbers out of Iowa in the next day or so, and who knows what else will be dumped before we hit the holidays. One strange thing to keep an eye on- there have been a number of recent state polls (in Indiana and Georgia msot recently) that only released numbers for the Republicans. We’ll have to see if that trend continues, and what that might say about the pollsters and their assumptions about the race going forward.