The New Hampshire polls:Final post before tomorrow's election

 The GOP: If the polls are anywhere near accurate, both the Republican and Democratic races for first place will have no drama and the media will have to invent any drama out of whole cloth. On the other hand, the race for second and the allocation of delegates in the Republican primary could have some drama.

Political junkies such as myself are still flapping our gums about Rubio's bad showing at the weekend's debate, but so far the tracking polls are not showing any significant downward movement on his part. While this average of polls puts him in second, it wouldn't really be an upset if either Kasich or Cruz catches Rubio. As long the spread between second and fourth is no more than five points and if all of them are over 10%, no one can claim victory. That said, if Kasich wins second, the press will pay him much more attention than they have so far.

While Jeb:( averages less than 10% this month, the size of the None of the Above gives him a good chance to be over the threshold if those people stay home or their votes break just about evenly, which means he'll get some delegates. It will definitely be an interesting story if he is not fifth, either by passing one of the people above him or getting caught by Chris Christie, who peaked in December then went right back into the invisible crowd.

As for moral victories, if the second place candidate is within ten points of Trump, that won't be good news for America's Favorite Birther™, whose national poll numbers slipped after his second place showing in Iowa last week.

The Dems: Here it is ALL expectation games. If Bernie wins by 20% or so, any positive spin from the Clinton is just hooey. I would set a 15% loss for Hilary as the Beat Expectations threshold, and a 25% win by Sanders brings us into the ass-whuppin' territory.

Wednesday: back with the post-mortem.

The national polls:First week of February

The Dems: As usual, outlier polls grab headlines, and the Quinnipiac poll from this week showing a two point lead for Clinton got some serious buzz.

This is why I like looking at the average during the primaries and the median during the general.

The sharp peaks and valleys in this poll are almost entirely due to weeks with very few polls to sample. The real story is a steady improvement for Sanders since mid-October and a slight drop in Hillary's numbers over roughly the same time period. The thing that makes me wonder is the steadiness of the None of the Above at about 10%. This can either mean lazy pollsters or possibly some malaise in the Democratic base.

The GOP:  One of the problems with reporting on polling weekly is lagging breaking news events like Rubio's robotic performance in last night's debate. I get my polling data from two sites, the left leaning Pollster run by Huffington Post and the right leaning Real Clear Politics site. It is not their fault that every poll is from before the debate. We will have some idea in the polling from New Hampshire which I will report tomorrow whether Rubio will see a slip or his main attacker Christie will climb.

The story of the polls this week before the Saturday fracas was Trump losing Iowa and Rubio making a strong third place showing. Trump's number took their worst plunge since late November, and the previous drop can be attributed to small sample size. With Trump losing and Ted 'The Snake' Cruz and Rubio gaining, this may become a real three man race. My friend Jodi, who has a stronger constitution than I do, tells me Limbaugh is now attacking Trump. Rush isn't the superstar he once was, but it does say there are chinks in The Donald's armor. It's pretty much a given he will have a strong showing in New Hampshire this Tuesday, so we will see how his numbers change.
 What I said about the None of the Above vote for the Democrats goes double for the Republicans. It's either a sign of dissatisfaction or a sign of lazy polling. Since the Democrats have only two candidates left, dissatisfaction is to be expected. Given how many choice the Republican voters have left, their None of the Above vote hovering at about 10% is a worse sign.

Tomorrow: The last report on the New Hampshire polls.  

New Hampshire polls: The last week of January

The Dems: The story on this side is simple. It's a two-person race and Sanders appears to be pulling away. His median lead in all January polls is 11 points and that increases to 16 points when looking at the five polls in the last week. I'm sure the press will play down a victory in New Hampshire for Bernie, but it looks like it will be a comfortable win a week out.

The GOP: As I said last week, the drama in New Hampshire is not for first place, but for finishing over 10%, the threshold for delegates. I Apologize for how difficult it is to read the log jam for second place, but right now its Kasich at 11.9% and Cruz and Rubio tied at 11.6%.

Numbers I think are more relevant is how many times in January these five candidates polled above 10%, which tells a slightly different story. Each of the five candidates will be list with two numbers, the percent of the polls in January where their numbers were over 10%, and the same question, but only taking into account the polls in the past week.

Ted 'The Snake' Cruz: 79% for the month, 80% past week
Marco Rubio: 71% for the month, 40% past week
John Kasich: 64% for the month, 60% past week
Jeb:(: 29% for the month, 40% past week
Chris Christie: 29% for the month, 0% past week

These numbers would suggest Ted 'The Snake' Cruz is most likely to stay over the 10% threshold and Chris Christie is in serious trouble. We have one more week of polls before votes are cast on the 9th, so I will have another update next week.

Tomorrow: post-mortem in Iowa!

New Hampshire polls:Third week of January

The Dems: Sanders still has a comfortable lead in New Hampshire. The average for January is a 10.2 point lead, the median poll says 9 points. The Confidence of Victory method would give Bernie a 98% chance to come in first, but historically New Hampshire splits the delegates proportionally in both the Democratic and Republican contests; for the Democrats, the threshold to get delegates is 15%. For the Republicans, it is 10%. On the Democratic side, this means Martin O'Malley is shit out of luck. 15% for him would be a miracle.

The GOP: There is no drama for the first place finish like there is in Iowa, but the second through sixth contest has drama because of the 10% threshold. If the polling data is a fair indication, Rubio, Kasich and Cruz will have enough with Jeb:( and Christie will coming up short. But there is the idea of the confidence interval (or as it is known colloquially, the margin of error) and every one of the five guys in this pack has a measurable chance to succeed or fail.

I will admit that I always thought Trump would have faded by now, but he plays the media like a violin and his voters have not been turned off by anything he has said or done so far. Chuck Grassley introduced him to a crowd in Iowa, and though Grassley didn't endorse him, if the old school Republicans will be seen on the same stage with him, it's a sign the establishment is moving forward in its stages of grief. Bob Dole made a statement condemning Ted 'The Snake' Cruz - it looks like the 'nobody likes him' meme isn't an overstatement - and said Trump would be better than Cruz.

Here's a tiny piece of math the establishment could cling to. In this polling data, the two main outsiders add up to 41.9% and the four establishment Republicans add up to 41.8%. (I'm not counting Fiorina and Carson anymore, as their campaigns show no signs of life.) The thing is no one has really mounted an Anyone But Trump campaign effectively, so even when people drop out - and I expect several people to drop out after Iowa and New Hampshire - even voters whose first choice was someone traditional might switch over to Trump or Cruz, the least palatable candidates in the eyes of the establishment.

To quote Nassim Taleb, a writer I intensely dislike, this does look like a Black Swan event.

The Iowa polls:Second week of January

The Dems: Last week, the data set used to discuss the situation in January was only two polls, which for me is the absolute bare minimum. It is now up to five polls, a more robust sampling, and the story has changed very little. Hillary leads in three of the five polls, Bernie leads in the other two. Every poll has both candidates getting 40% or more, none has anyone getting 50% yet. For O'Malley, one outlier poll has him at 8%, the rest have him between 3% to 5%.

So the average of the five polls now has Hillary with a 0.6 point lead. Since this is effectively a two candidate race, I can use my Confidence of Victory method and give Hillary about a 70% chance to come out ahead using the median poll, where her lead is 42% to 40% in a poll of 504 likely voters. As more polls come in, these numbers are very likely to change, but in what direction I cannot say.

The GOP: We could say Iowa effectively looks like a two person race, but I am reluctant to use the Confidence of Victory method when the top two candidates account for barely over half the responses, unlike the Democratic side where the top two candidates get about 90%. The January numbers are now based on six polls, and the respective positions of the four top candidates have not changed in any appreciable way, with Ted 'The Snake' Cruz still holding a slim half a point lead over Donald Trump. A story on the fivethirtyeight.com website rates the Cruz ground game as much better than Trump's, but for a news organization that prides itself on using math well, the method used for this story is slipshod.

A number that looks unimportant that I still find interesting is the slowing rate of decline for The Completely Sane and Honest Ben Carson in Iowa. In New Hampshire, his numbers are down among the no-hopers, but in Iowa he is still dominating establishment guys like Christie, Kasich and Jeb:(, all of whom are in the race for second in the Granite State. Once again, the ground game can make a big difference in Iowa, where turnout is tiny compared to New Hampshire, so I would actually be surprised if the polls are a perfect predictor of the candidate's relative positions when The Voters of the Corn actually come out on February 1st.

Tomorrow, the numbers from New Hampshire.

The Iowa polls:First week of January

 The Dems: Let's start with the most dramatic news. It's only the average of two polls, but Hillary's 16 point lead in the Iowa polls has slipped down to zero. I always have to add the warning that polls don't do a great job of predicting caucuses, but if I'm asked to pontificate, it now looks like it's all about organization and enthusiasm. It's my assumption Hillary has an organizational advantage and Bernie's folks have the enthusiasm.

I'm confident there will be more polling data by next week, but right now this is the most dramatic polling news of the new year.

The GOP: The dramatic story last month was the remarkable rise of Ted 'The Snake' Cruz in Iowa. News reports in December said Trump had no organization in Iowa, but more recent reports say that problem has been fixed. The numbers are a little hard to read on this graph without clicking on it to expand it, but Cruz does have a slim lead of 28.3% to 27.8% based on the average of four polls. Ben Carson continues to slide, but his numbers are still twice as high as his nearest trailing competitors Chris Christie and Jeb:(. It's only three weeks out, and it looks like it would take a miracle for anyone other than Trump or Cruz to win this thing.

More polls next weekend.

The New Hampshire Polls:First week of January

 The Dems: It is the prejudice of an old man for me to think New Hampshire is more important than Iowa, but if I may defend my position, Iowa will be a test of the most committed campaign's ability to get out their loyalists, while New Hampshire is about getting out a substantial percentage of the voting age population.

There were only five New Hampshire polls in December and so far, there are only three in January. The story hasn't changed much since the change from November. Bernie Sanders holds a small but steady lead over Hillary.

The GOP: Just as the press is giving more coverage to the Republican race, and of course Donald Trump in particular, there were more polls of their contest in December and in January than there were polls of the Democratic race.

The race for first place has no drama at all, but there is a fierce competition for second through sixth. Right now, Marco Rubio is alone in second at 13.3% in an average of four polls, while four candidates - Ted 'The Snake' Cruz, Jeb:(, Chris Christie and John Kasich - are all within spitting distance of one another at around 10%. I am breaking the rules I set for myself to mention everyone above None of the Above, but the crowd between 3% and 5% - Rand Paul, The Completely Sane and Honest Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina - don't show any signs of gaining any traction.

Tomorrow: The earliest polls from Iowa.

The New Hampshire polls: Second week of December

Welcome to the first installment of state poll watching, in particular New Hampshire. Sometimes, dominance in the national polls does not translate into dominance in every state poll, as we will see today and tomorrow, when we look at the Iowa numbers.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump does have a lead in the Granite State, though not quite as dominant as his lead nationwide, and it's Marco Rubio in second. Ben Carson's fall from grace in New Hampshire is much steeper than his national slippage and he is currently hovering below the None of the Above numbers.

Chris Christie is currently in fourth in New Hampshire and just barely behind Ted 'The Snake' Cruz, much better than his anemic national numbers putting him in sixth place, barely in the lead of the group hovering around 3%.

Not shown on the chart are Jeb:(, tied with Carson at 7.3%, and Kasich, polling at 7%. They aren't part of the picture because they haven't been above None of the Above either in November or December. If they improve, they could be included in the overall picture.

And then we have the Democrats, where we see our first inversion. Bernie Sanders is in the lead this month, though that only means two polls so far. (The paucity of polls is the reason I'm going with the monthly picture. This might change in January.) I can't predict if the press will give Sanders more coverage if he wins and makes it a horse race - the press loves horse races- or if they will accept the conventional wisdom that winning in New Hampshire is not a surprise because he's from Vermont. I think it will be the former, and if he pulls off a win in Iowa as well, then the press will run with the "Hillary's in trouble" meme for sure.

What's Bernie's situation in Iowa? Stop by tomorrow to find out.