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How Much Can Really Change Before Iowa Votes
This article is from yesterday and is by Harry Enten - just a warning for those who immediately want to jump on Nate Silver for anything sourced to FiveThirtyEight ... 
He gives an overview of some historical polls forecasts and actual results dating from 1980. It's an interesting read, whichever candidate one supports in the primaries. Sorry - here's the link: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-can-really-change-before-iowa-votes/
The tremendous buildup to the Iowa caucuses is about to culminate in real voting. We’re less than a week away. But anything can still happen … there’s still plenty of time … right? Sort of. It’s true that even the final Iowa polls are sometimes way off. But it’s also true that every caucus winner since 1980 was either within about 10 percentage points of the leader or showing at least some momentum in the polls by this point.
Right now, only two candidates on both the Democratic and Republican side are even close to the lead. In the Republican race, Donald Trump seems to have some momentum over Ted Cruz, though Cruz remains within striking distance. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton continues to hold a small lead over Bernie Sanders, though the race remains as close as it did a week ago.
How does that compare to past races? Let’s time travel to a week before the caucuses in each open election since 1980 (we don’t have any polls for this time period for the Democratic caucuses in 1984 and 1992): What did a 10-day polling average show, and how did that average compare to the results?
Right now, only two candidates on both the Democratic and Republican side are even close to the lead. In the Republican race, Donald Trump seems to have some momentum over Ted Cruz, though Cruz remains within striking distance. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton continues to hold a small lead over Bernie Sanders, though the race remains as close as it did a week ago.
How does that compare to past races? Let’s time travel to a week before the caucuses in each open election since 1980 (we don’t have any polls for this time period for the Democratic caucuses in 1984 and 1992): What did a 10-day polling average show, and how did that average compare to the results?
