Amid Lead for Romney in Iowa Poll, Momentum for Santorum
The much-respected Des Moines Register poll was published on Saturday night and shows Mitt Romney in the lead in the Iowa caucuses, with 24 percent of the vote to 22 percent for Representative Ron Paul of Texas and 15 percent for Rick Santorum.
However, as The Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs noted, there is a “twist” in the survey. Over the final two days of polling on Thursday and Friday, Mr. Santorum got 21 percent of the vote, much better than he polled on Tuesday or Wednesday. Mr. Paul, meanwhile, dropped to 18 percent in the final two days of the survey, while Mr. Romney’s standing remained intact at 24 percent.
Because voter preferences in a primary or caucus can be fickle and can change on a near-daily basis, there is a premium in accounting for the most recent information. Thus, we have entered The Des Moines Register’s poll, which sampled 602 likely voters, as two separate surveys for purposes of our forecasts: treating it as equivalent to a 300-person survey conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday and another 302-person poll conducted on Thursday and Friday. The more recent Thursday and Friday interviews thus receive more weight in our forecasts.
Still, our numbers remain very close to what they were yesterday, as our model had already detected a lead for Mr. Romney and favorable momentum for Mr. Santorum. The model estimates that Mr. Romney has a 63 percent chance of winning the caucuses on Tuesday, Mr. Paul a 21 percent chance, and Mr. Santorum a 12 percent chance.
There is a 5 percent chance of a dark-horse winner — Newt Gingrich, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas or Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. None appears to have favorable momentum in the surveys, but upsets are possible in primaries and caucuses, especially in the first few voting states when voter preferences can be volatile.
Some information in The Des Moines Register’s poll, like the standing for lower-tier candidates such as Jon M. Huntsman Jr., was not included with the initial release of data on Saturday night and will instead be published in
You can read the rest of this article at:: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/amid-lead-for-romney-in-iowa-poll-momentum-for-santorum/
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Posted by RobertButler
on Dec 31 2011. Filed under 2012 Presidential Campaign.
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