Polls Update - Iowa - Will Bernie Sanders Beat Hillary Clinton?

The story of the 2016 democratic primary race will looks very different depending on which charts you chose to follow. If you look at the national primary polls according to RealClearPolitics, you'll see a very dramatic story in January: you'll see Bernie surging in the middle of the month, and then begin to lose ground. If you look at the very same graph from Huffpost Pollster, you'll see Bernie gaining ground more gradually throughout January and over the last year.

Believe it or not, both of these stories a perfectly valid and true. The differences just comes down to how you aggregate data: how you chose to weight polls, and which polls you decide to include.

But whichever narrative you chose to follow, there is no doubt that the Iowa primaries will be a significant plot point in this story.

In the 2008 race, Hillary had been a clear front-runner Nationally, until a relatively unknown senator named Barack Obama's win in Iowa generated a massive influx of media coverage, which helped to propel him into first place.

A win for Sanders in Iowa could do the same, especially since it would have an excellent chance of being followed by a second win in New Hampshire. At the same time, a win for Hillary might help to cement the notion that Sanders' is the democratic version of Ron Paul: an honest politician with a massive online following of young people, who, at the end of the day, cannot compete at the ballot box.

In a moment, I'll show you the Iowa polls. They're extremely close. Anyone who tells you today that they know for sure who will win is an idiot or a liar. But, I want to hear your best guesses in the comments below. Is this going to be a big win for Bernie, or will the day go to Hillary?

What do you think?
At the moment, fivethirtyeight.com is giving Hillary Clinton a 76% chance of winning in Iowa. I find this forecast absurd.

While Hillary maintains a slight lead in the Iowa polls by a point or two, depending on where you look, Sanders has the general momentum.

The most determinative single factor in Iowa will likely be whether young voters decide to show up or not. If the young people who said they were likely voters decide to flake, as young people sometimes do, then Iowa will almost certainly go to Clinton. If, however, Bernie's message inspires them to show up in unprecedented droves, Clinton has virtually no chance at all.

How the fine folks at fivethirtyeight.com believe they know how many young people will show up to vote is beyond me. The reality is that there are a lot of people who were too young to vote in 2008, who are old enough to do so now. Their preference is certainly for Bernie, but their likelihood to show up at the ballot box is completely untested. Attempting to predict their behaviour based on the previous voting generation's behaviour in a different election is shaky ground to say the least.

But if we want to take a guess about whether the supporters of a candidate attempting to out-flank Hillary Clinton from the left will show up more or less than expected in Iowa, that data is available to us.

Four days before Iowa, RCP puts Sanders behind Clinton by 2.1 points. Four days before Iowa in 2008, RCP put Obama behind Clinton by 2.0 points.

Four days before that, RCP estimated Obama and Clinton to be tied with 28.3% of the vote. Eight days before Iowa in 2015, they had Sanders and Clinton to be in a tie, both with 45.7% of the vote.

Now, I'm not about to say that history is going to repeat itself, because contrary to popular belief, I do not have magical powers.

What I will say is that being 2% behind in the polls quite obviously doesn't mean anything. Given that the polls in Iowa leading up to the straw poll for 2008 and 2016 look shockingly similar, do I think that Bernie could beat Hillary, just as Obama did? Of course I do. Do I think it's possible that the polls will turn out to be underestimating the turn out of young voters? Yes. Do I believe that giving Clinton a 76% chance of winning Iowa is irresponsible, absurd, and laughably indefensible?

What do you think?

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