Iowa’s Biggest Loser? The Polls. Again.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

If you recall, the polls blew the mid-term elections in 2014, the polls really blew the highly-publicized Virginia Senate race, the polls in Israel greatly under-estimated Benjamin Netanyahu’s most recent victory, the polls completely whiffed on the conservative win in Britain, and now the polls have blown the Iowa Caucus.

On the GOP side, every recent poll out of Iowa showed Trump as the victor. In the Real Clear Politics poll of polls, Trump was up by an average of +4.7 points. Polls predicted Trump winning with 28.6% support. He ended up in second place with just 24.3% support.

Marco Rubio was predicted to come in third with just 17% support, and ended up almost thumping Trump with a whopping 23.1%.

Cruz was supposed to come in second with 24%, he ended up winning the day with 27.7%.

These are big misses.

The polling was equally bad for Democrats. According to the Real Clear Politics poll of polls, Hillary Clinton was soundly beating Bernie Sanders by an average of +4 points. The race ended up in a virtual tie.

The thing, though, is that this is good news — very good news. Over the last few election cycles, the DC Media have used polling as a means to control the national political conversation, and, by extension, the ultimate outcome. If the polls are seen as unreliable, so too will any narrative or message built on them.

Take yesterday’s media conventional wisdom that said higher turnout would benefit Trump. The exact opposite happened. Republicans enjoyed a record turnout in Iowa but Rubio and Cruz were the beneficiaries. On the Democrat side, the media told us a low turnout would benefit Hillary. Again, the exact opposite happened. Turnout was much lower in Iowa than in 2012 and Bernie came thisclose to an upset.

Voters scoffing at polls, at anything that sets any kind of Narrative or conventional wisdom, at anything used by our media overlords as a means of control, is good for our democracy.

Freedom is most free when it is messy and unpredictable.

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