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Tuesday, January 26, 2016

With Six Days Till Iowa, Surprises Can Happen

Ok, so just six days left. What are we likely to see?

The media seems to have decided that Bernie will win Iowa and NH. He does seem to now have a lead in NH that a number of recent polls suggest is double digits.

But in Iowa, it seems she still leads. Fox News had a poll that showed her down 22 in NH but up 6 in Iowa.

Nate Silver has her with an 80 percent chance to win there.

My guess is she is winning there currently though by how much is hard to say. The polls have varied widely. There was another poll yesterday that showed Bernie up by a point. But on Friday another poll showed her up by 29 points.

Overall, the media focuses only on polls that are not good for her.

This is actually good for two reasons.

1. It manages expectations.

2. It keeps her supporters highly motivated. My guess has been that the campaign welcomes the media pessimism the last three weeks.

Now it's set up that if she wins, this will be a big jolt-a shock basically. This could even put NH in play.

As much as I've mocked Nate Silver on his Trump pessimism-that he himself has now distanced himself from

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/nate_silver_said_donald_trump_had_no_shot_where_did_he_go_wrong.html

there is some truth that you can't believe the polls too much. I don't mean they are meaningless as he somtimes tried to suggest regarding Trump.

But surprises happen. Sometimes the ground game, and other factors give us real surprises. Like in Iowa for the 2012 GOP caucus where Rick Santorum truly came out of nowhere to win-he had been at just 5 percent in the RCP tracker a few weeks out and yet ended up with 24.6 percent to edge out Romney.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/compare/iowa_republican_presidential_caucus_2016_2012_2008.html

And in the Dem primary of 2008, both Iowa and NH were  surprising. In Iowa according to the last minute tracking HRC and POTUS were about even. He then won by 8 points.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/ia/iowa_democratic_caucus-208.html#polls

On the other hand, in NH-on the heels of an Iowa loss where she placed third behind John Edwards-she trailed Obama in the last RCP averages by over 8 points and had trailed Obama in the last 16 polls until the primary-in many by double digits.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/nh/new_hampshire_democratic_primary-194.html#polls

Yet she won by 3 points which was in its own way just as shocking as Iowa.

So the lesson is all you can do is keep fighting for her till the very end. You can't let yourself become discouraged or overly optimistic-a different poise to be sure.

Which is good in a way. A month ago, we Hillary supporters were probably too complacent.


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