From the Thursday Morning Jolt:
What to Watch For in New Hampshire Polling
Iowa voted Monday; Tuesday would be the first full day of polling that has the Iowa results “priced in” to the respondents’ views.
For example, Harper Polling’s latest survey was conducted February 1 and 2, so only half of its sample was offering their responses after Iowa. (Also, 8 percent of the 425 likely Republican primary voters in their sample gave their party affiliation as… Democrat. If you’re a registered Democrat, you can’t vote in the Republican primary and vice versa; October 30 was the last day a voter could change their party affiliation.)
We won’t get poll results that have the Iowa effect until late this week, probably Friday.
It’s reasonable to suspect that with his winning aura at least temporarily dampened, we could see Trump’s numbers dip. Having said that, a lot of people have predicted Trump’s polling numbers to decline in the past year, and they rarely have. You would think some folks might jump on the Ted Cruz bandwagon after his big win, and probably some folks sign on with Rubio, too. Historically, the electorate clusters around the top two or three – sometimes four – candidates as the primary approaches; people don’t want to “waste” their vote on a perceived long-shot.
The bad news for Cruz is New Hampshire voters tend to see their role as refuting Iowa. If Iowa picks candidate A, New Hampshire is likely to pick candidate B, for reasons well beyond the different political cultures of the two states. If New Hampshire picks candidate A after Iowa did, they’re just rubber-stamping Iowa’s choice; Iowa is the real decision-maker in that scenario. New Hampshire Republicans, consciously or subconsciously, begin the process with an anybody-but-Cruz mindset.
Ted Cruz is not a candidate who’s ideal for winning in New Hampshire, but notice he’s been in that crowd behind Trump, with 12, 13, 14 percent for a while. Second place isn’t unthinkable. Based on Iowa, it seems likely that the data-driven Cruz operation will find a way to turn out every last potential Cruz supporter they can find.
UMass-Lowell is conducting a tracking poll, offering day-by-day results:
Meanwhile, businessman and reality television personality Donald Trump leads his nearest Republican challenger by 21 points. Trump is garnering support from 36% of Republican primary voters; he is down 2 points from Wednesday’s release. What has changed in the race for second place. Sen. Marco Rubio from Florida increased another 3 points on the Republican side to 15%, followed by Sen. Ted Cruz at 14% (no change), Gov. Jeb Bush at 8% (-1), Gov. John Kasich at 7% (no change), Gov. Chris Christie at 5% (-1), Dr. Ben Carson at 4% (+1) and Carly Fiorina is at 3% (no change). Rubio is the only candidate on either the Democratic or Republican side to increase his share of the vote every day in our tracking poll and his apparent increase is evidence that his strong third place finish in Iowa may have cemented his place in this race. Despite winning Iowa, Ted Cruz has held steady at 14%. The trends suggest that if anyone is to pose a challenge to Trump in New Hampshire, it is most likely to be the surging Rubio.
There are two caveats to point out about this poll. The first is that today’s results are from three days of polling – including February 1. In other words, one day of the results are from Monday, before the Iowa caucus results came in. Tomorrow’s tracking poll will be the first that has all responses from after Monday.
The second caveat is that we know turnout in New Hampshire can bounce around quite a bit – across both parties and unaffiliated registered voters, 29.9 percent voted in 2004 (where there was no serious GOP primary) 31.1 percent in 2012 (with no serious Democratic primary) and when both parties had competitive primaries, in 2008, 53.6 percent voted.
In the UMass-Lowell tracking poll, the sample was 1410 New Hampshire registered voters, with subsamples of a 420 Democratic Primary Likely Voters and 487 Republican Primary Likely Voters. That adds up to 907 out of 1410 registered voters participating… a turnout rate of 64 percent.
Iowa had record turnout in the GOP caucus, about 185,000, so it’s possible Republicans come out in droves in the Granite State, too. New Hampshire’s Secretary of State is indeed predicting record turnout, “more than half.” But do you think almost two-thirds of the state’s voters are going to turn out?
Finally, in Iowa, the final polls had Trump at 28.6 percent, and his final share of the vote was 24.3 percent. How much of that represented people who told the pollster they supported Trump, but who weren’t motivated enough to attend a caucus Monday night? What if Trump is masterful at dominating news cycles, but just not that wise when it comes to the nuts-and-bolts of campaign decisions and resource allocation? Take this comment from Wednesday morning:
“Well, I think we could have used a ground game, a term I wasn’t even familiar with,” he said. “You know, when you say ground game, I say what the hell is that? Now I’m familiar with it. I think in retrospect we should have had a better ground game. I would have funded a better ground game, but you know, people told me that my ground game was fine, and by most standards it was.”
(You’re running for president, and you hadn’t heard of the term ‘ground game’ to describe get-out-the-vote operations?)
“People told me my ground game was fine” – presumably, Trump means Chuck Laudner, the man who ran Rick Santorum’s winning get-out-the-vote operation in Iowa in 2012.
Here’s NBC News back in October:
Rockford, though, is the humble childhood and current home of Chuck Laudner, the man that has turned the Iowa campaign of Donald Trump — the big city developer — into a legitimate grassroots organization with the boots on the ground required to win the Iowa caucuses next February.
So, did Laudner lose his abilities overnight? Or did Trump not take Laudner’s advice?