The best prediction for the Iowa cauceses: Expect a surprise

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a campaign rally at Music Man Square on Jan. 27, 2016 in Mason City, Iowa. Though Selzer says pollsters are poor predictors of Iowa caucus turnouts, I, too, believe the fired-up Trump and Sanders people will show up, if only for a chance to thumb their noses at the establishment.

That, however, doesn’t mean that Trump and Sanders will triumph. Those who support other candidates and who believe a contest between two runaway populists is bad for the country may show up even if they didn’t initially intend to caucus.

A surge of voters from the center that lifts Clinton and Marco Rubio, the front-runner among mainstream Republicans, may be the biggest surprise for the pollsters this year.

Leonid Bershidsky, a Bloomberg View contributor, is a Berlin-based writer.” data-id=”111407628″ data-link=”https://amnewyork.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/16259_image.jpg” class=”wp-image-1.11407628″/>
Photo Credit: Getty Images/ Brendan Hoffman

J. Ann Selzer, who has conducted polling on the Iowa caucuses since 1988, says the contests almost always yield surprises. With each election, it increasingly becomes more difficult to reliably predict the outcome, and this year is the toughest yet.

Pollster.com lists 20 Iowa Republican caucus polls for January alone. Nate Silver’s blog, FiveThirtyEight, bases its Iowa predictions on a weighted average of 19 polls.

According to Selzer, who has done polls for Bloomberg and the Des Moines Register, the large number of surveys makes it more difficult to get reliable results: “With low incidence populations like the caucuses, I’m worried about polling fatigue.”