RESULTS ARE IN: Winner of Des Moines Register's Final Iowa Poll Before The Caucus

The big political news of the weekend is here, and the Des Moines Register‘s poll results are out. Here we go:

WINNERS

Trump wins. Cruz is close. Rubio third, and Carson fourth. Here’s the rest of the field.

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WINNERS2

From the Register:

Trump stands at 28 percent, while rival Ted Cruz has slid to 23 percent. But there’s still a strong case for Cruz in this race — he’s more popular and respected than Trump, the final Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll shows.

“The drill-down shows, if anything, stronger alignment with Cruz than Trump, except for the horse race,” said J. Ann Selzer, the pollster for the Iowa Poll.

This is important news. Historically, the final DMR poll has been a pretty good, if not perfect, predictor of the final Iowa result. In 2012, it showed Romney at 24, Paul at 22, and Santorum at 15. Santorum actually won with 24%, but the other two candidates were spot on and Santorum’s charge over the final two days of the race was missed by all the pollsters. In 2008, it correctly predicted the finishing order of Huckabee, Romney, McCain, and all the candidates’ support was within the margin of error.”

Trump’s biggest problem is not being anyone’s second choice. From The Register again:

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“Donald Trump could win Iowa,” said Stuart Stevens, a Maryland-based GOP strategist who has worked on five presidential campaigns but is neutral this election cycle. “But he has little room for error. He is almost no one’s second choice.”

On the Democratic side, in 2008 it correctly predicted that Obama would beat Hillary Clinton by 7 points, and was the closest poll to the actual results.

Here are today’s Dem results.

Winners3

Hillary up, but that is a dang close race.

In any case, when it comes down to it, there’s a pretty good chance that this is an accurate picture of the race as it stands today, but of course the caveat is that it ain’t over ’til it’s over. Things can change.

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