The Gambler, Glass Jaw, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma - Trump loses badly on his Debate boycott gambit - Iowa results (Updated)

Donald Trump exposed a major defect today. He illustrated the behavior last week but that it was a defect did not become obvious until today. He showed dangerous, indeed a fatal character flaw that should disqualify him for President: he’s a reckless gambler. As a candidate beyond his gambling addiction, Trump is so flawed for the general election to be considered like a boxer who has a glass jaw. One hit can take him down. Any sane rival now in the Republican race would expose and exploit that weakness but the field of rivals to Trump in the nomination race has a fatal flaw within itself: they are now governed by the Prisoner’s Dilemma. That in turn creates an illusion for Trump that he is invincible. This loss in Iowa today helps shatter that myth. Can the field he now faces end Trump’s run, or will he prevail in the summer only to bring a catastrophic historic devastating loss to the Republican party in November with a loss of epic, historic, truly gargantuan proportions in the scale of Walter Mondale and Barry Goldwater? Except Mondale and Goldwater faced incumbent Presidents. And their rivals were highly popular, not more unfavorable than favorable in what Hillary Clinton is now. (note this blog article has 2 updates, clearly marked below)

THE GAMBLER

Trump has run a clever campaign. He has been innovative and disruptive. Trump has broken taboos - successfully. He has tapped into an anger among base Republican voters that others did not. Trump has risen rapidly to the top of the polling last summer and held the national polling lead for more than five months with the briefest interruption by Dr Ben Carson for one week in November. Trump’s lead in national polls whether measured by length, consistency of that lead or spread to his nearest rival, is unprecedented in the modern era of Republican primary elections (for candidates who were not the incumbent sitting President or VP). Even more astoundly, Trump has led in in-state polls for many months now, in almost every state, totally unprecedented in this stage of the race if there was no incumbent running. Trump even leads the polling in Florida where two local politicians are also running (former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and current Florida Senator Marco Rubio). Its fair to say, in this cycle, Trump has run a campaign that has set records for how much he has dominated the field and crushed his rivals. 

In his run, Trump has taken risks and gained notoriety by publicity stunts that have kept him in the national media spotlight and highlighted his rise. Most political experts, analysts and pundits felt that attacking Mexicans was a mistake, that attacking John McCain’s hero status was a mistake, attacking Megyn Kelly (the first time) after the first Fox debate was a mistake, attacking the Hispanic journalist was a mistake, attacking the disabled journalist was a mistake, attacking all Muslims was a mistake, etc. Clearly Trump has risen in the polls or maintained his polling lead after each of those incidents. So we cannot say categorically that it was a mistake, although some of those incidents do correspond with some temporary dips in Trump’s rise. They were all gambles, where Trump gambled that the vile things he said would help him more than hurt him. And in the big picture, it does seem like he had been successful and those were ‘smart’ campaign moves, however unconventional and ‘hateful’ they might have (also) been. Certainly Trump has earned accolades among all white supremacist and Nazi groups cheering their new champion.

Its possible some (perhaps all) of those gambles were failures but that their impact was hidden inside a greater upswing engulfing the Trump candidacy. Certainly the backlash related to the John McCain incident that prompted Trump to rapidly set up his notorious ‘veterans event’ atop the battleship, which turned out to be a hoax by a supposed veterans group which consisted of one charlatan veteran exploiting veterans and who had lost his organization’s tax-free status. But that is neither here nor there. Trump had been able to climb to 35% in the national polling and held his lead there on a very consistent basis for the past six weeks or so. So while we note its possible Trump’s gambles have stumbled in the past, we now have clear evidence he stumbled today in Iowa.

Trump had contested for the Iowa polling lead from the start of the race, first fighting Scott Walker, then Dr Ben Carson. Trump took the Iowa polling lead but wasn’t able to hold it. Ted Cruz’s campaign worked meticulously the state and when Dr Ben Carson’s ‘pyramids are grain storage’ and ‘I was a violent youth’ nonsense surfaced, Cruz picked up a lot of Carson’s disgruntled supporters and surged to the top of the Iowa polling. Cruz had been on the top of Iowa for about a month when Trump launched his birtherism attacks on Cruz and that damaged Cruz so much, he lost his lead and Trump was back on top of the polls in Iowa by mid-January and for seven straight polls Trump held a consistent lead always polling above 30%. The last time Ted Cruz scored above 30% was January 21 (even then he trailed Trump by 5 points). So every one of the last 7 polls up to the last debate had Trump in a safe unassailable lead, averaging 33% in Iowa, compared to Ted Cruz in second place averaging 26%. Trump’s lead was consistent, always above 30% and after January 21, Cruz had not broken through the 30% level again. By the time of the debate, four days out before the election, the Real Clear Polling average had Trump at 32.9% and Ted Cruz at 26.1%. Trump was up 6.8% ie almost 7%.

In the 2008 cycle and the 2012 cycle, the last four days saw the polling leader see a change in his polling of 4%, once it was up, once it was down. Both times it was Mitt Romney who led the Iowa polls four days before voting. If Trump had played a normal political ‘end game’, gone to the debate, run a normal campaign to through the last four days, he would have certainly won Iowa. He might have lost a few points but his nearest rival, Ted Cruz was in decline (due to the Canadian birth issue) and Marco Rubio was far too low in the polls to realistically catch Trump. The sensible ‘adult’ and mature move would be to bank this vote and play sensible politics. If Trump intended to use the war veteran event as a political gimmick, he could easily have scheduled it one day after or before the debate, and have invited his rivals to that event (like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum did, possibly more could have joined if it weren’t scheduled specifically at the time when others were in the debate).

Instead Trump feuded for weeks with Fox News leading up to the debate and tried to get Megyn Kelly removed from moderating the debate. As this spat turned ever more silly, like Trump taking to Twitter asking his followers should he boycott the debate, and Fox answering in kind, saying in the future Putin and the Ayatollah will also be nasty to Trump, suddenly Trump’s ego got in the way. He declared that he will not debate.

The superficial calculus is that Trump was afraid of Megyn Kelly and of Fox News (the most conservative-leaning of TV networks who should be expected to be least hostile to Republican candidates, compared to other neutral and liberal-leaning networks). The more insightful analysis is of course that Trump was afraid of all the attacks coming from his rivals, in this, the last debate before voting was to start. The obvious effect was that Trump was mocking Iowa voters, denying them the chance to see the front-runner of the race, standing on a stage defending his positions given in the most hostile negative campaign in US Presidential history (at least of the modern televised era). Trump was being the Coward-In-Chief. A cynical political calculus suggests Trump had more to lose by a possibly weak debate performance, than to gain by facing the rivals and the moderators on national TV. Instead, Trump hastily arranged his second veterans event. Like real veterans groups proclaimed, they didn’t want the money from such a political stunt, and Trump should not hide behind veterans if he was afraid of Megyn Kelly.

Whether you admire or deplore this tactic, understand this is a gamble. Trump gambled that breaking with tradition, by skipping the last debate, will not hurt him and he can win Iowa by not bothering to debate, simply by virtue of his strong lead in the polls. Note that this had nothing to do with the so-called ‘wise guy’ statement from Fox News. This whole incident was totally of Trump’s making. Trump had not gotten over the original fight with Megyn Kelly. He had lobbied for weeks to get Kelly removed and repeatedly called for it. But before the CNBC and CNN debates, Trump had threatened to boycott the networks and tried to extort them for a donation - to veterans (that is how much Trump feels damaged by his disparaging statements about McCain). Both CNBC and CNN said no of course. Fox News has revealed that Trump was willing to come and do the Fox debate after this ‘wise guy’ letter and hostile Megyn Kelly - if Fox paid 5 million to veterans. Trump wanted to show the world how he can negotiate by being a bully and according to his book, the Art of the Deal, to be willing to walk away. So after two threats before, he now walked away on Fox.

That may work in some negotiations, it is ‘hardball’ negotiation tactics that do not always work. It can backfire if the other side is also willing to walk away. If the result is a lost deal, so what. Some business deal went bust. Trump can always bankrup that company if he doesn’t like how its going, like he has done four times before. But as US President, you cannot take this approach and what? Launch a war next? Thats the Bush-Cheney approach to wanton war-making. Only in a world of Vladimir Putin annexing Crimea, a trigger-happy Trump could lead the world to its first nuclear war with literally millions dead in a single day, even if its is only a ‘limited exchange’ before Trump the President is impeached and a military coup topples the war-hungry dictator Trump and urgently negotiates a new peace with Russia.

This debate gambit is a clear lesson out of The Art of the Deal. It had nothing to do with any ‘slight’ coming from Fox News and Roger Ailes. It was Trump’s intention to extort 5 million dollars as a contribution to veterans from a TV network - to prove to his voters that this is how he will have Mexico pay for his wall - and Trump’s backup plan all along was to run a rival TV show and generate 5 million dollars himself, by his rich friends and if needed, Trump himself would toss in a million or two, to get his 5 million. Trump thought this is a clever gambit and a ‘negotiation’ that he cannot lose. He even bragged that he will have bigger ratings than Fox News (imagining in his delusions that rival networks would bid for his political stunt theater).

The immediate aftermath of Trump’s gamble is plainly evident. The five-day rolling average of national polling by Reuters, reveals that polls on the day after Trump cancelled on the Fox debate, collapsed from 41% to 34% - a 7 point drop in just one day. But that is a drop in the AVERAGE over 5 days. To calculate out what the damage was, Trump’s one-day drop was to SIX PERCENT. Yes, nationally, Reuters tracking poll had seen Trump’s support at 41% on the days up to the debate but the day after he announced he is not debating, Trump’s support collapsed to 6%. It then recovered in the following days but the damage was done. Trump’s support only recovered among Republicans, his support among Republican-leaning Independents did not return. Very conservative Republicans ended up liking this gambit, especially when tied with the veterans event. Independents who lean Republican hated the cowardly act of hiding from the debate just before the election.

So we can see the polling out of Iowa. Four polls came out in Iowa after the debate. Two of those polls had interviews both before and after the debate (Des Moines Register and Quinnipiac) yet both of those saw Trump’s steady 33% support suddenly fall to 31% (Quinnipiac) and 28% (DMR). So both signalled a possible start to a downward spiral. So Trump’s support fell in Iowa after the debate. How much did it fall? Two further polls came out after the debate, that had all interviews conducted only in the days after the debate. They are the Emerson poll and the Opinion Savvy poll. Emerson saw Trump support fall down to 27%. Opinion Savvy had Trump down to 20%. Averaging these two polls says Trump support had fallen to 23.5% in Iowa. Nearly a ten point fall. That is literally a collapse. Trump lost almost one third of his support in literally one day. These are not people who hate veterans. They are honest Iowa voters who take their responsibility seriously in vetting all US Presidential candidates first, to decide who are not worthy of continuing ‘with a ticket out of Iowa’. They had fallen in love with Trump, now Trump spat in their faces. He lost one third of his support in one day. Cruz, who had been behind by 7 points with falling poll numbers - who also took heat in the debate and saw further erosion in his support - now on both of these polls was only 1 point behind Trump.

UPDATE 1 OF 2 - a few hours after I posted this blog, CNN gave the Entrance Polling data which establishes now for a clear fact that Trump's support collapsed. His support was 30% up to the debate, and then fell by more than half to 14% in the last days up to the election. Nobody else had such massive volatility but Trump's 'voter giveaway' went broadly to almost all candidates. Cruz was on a downward trajectory and Rubio on an upward one. Trump's voters went definitely to Rubio probably also to Cruz (ie his decline would have been bigger if Trump had not seen his collapse), but there were a point or two that went to almost everybody Jeb, Carson, Christie, Fiorina, Huckabee, Kasich and Paul; except not Santorum. This issue is now luckily tested. Trump had 30% support before the debate boycott and 14% after it. Idiot move.

Some of Trump’s final loss in Iowa and Cruz’s victory are due to the Ted Cruz campaign being better organized, having a good Big Data operation, having spent so much time visiting the state and talking to the voters. That reflects the last day, Monday. These two polls however, they reflect the situation by the end of Sunday. The days immediately after the debate (only). That is where Trump lost it. The solid, steady and committed support for Trump suddenly cracked. It did not die on Monday, two separate polls clearly measured that collapse as of Sunday. What Cruz was able to do on Monday only capitalized on Trump’s sudden implosion.

REAGAN TRIED THIS

Do campaigns make mistakes? Yes. All campaigns make mistakes. Some mistakes are accidents, not intentional. This was a calculated callous move by a campaign that had a strong lead. And it was a tactic signalled for months (previous threats to CNN & CNBC) and signalled in this state, Iowa (with Fox). This has been tried before, by another Republican, for a debate boycott, by a highly popular front-runner and before Iowa voted. Ronald Reagan tried this gambit in 1980, he was well ahead in the polls heading into Iowa and decided he did not want to debate his challenger George HW (daddy) Bush. When Iowa votes were counted, Reagan lost narrowly that state. So Trump should have known but countless Republican and conservative friends, advisors and commentators have reminded Trump and his team of how stupid this gambit is. Even ‘The Great Communicator’ Reagan could not win in this outrageous abuse of the trust of Iowa voters. Yet Trump did it anyway.

To gamble if you have a lot to gain, and little to lose, is perhaps wise. To gamble when you have literally nothing to gain but everything to lose, that is simply dumb. Its more than dumb, it is moronic, it is self-destructive, it is childish and it illustrates an addiction to gambling. Trump could not possibly ‘win’ in this case. He was ahead by 7 points in Iowa. If Trump won in Iowa, his nearest rival Cruz was already behind in all polls in the next three states, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. But Trump had been up and down, sometimes ahead but often behind in Iowa. Cruz needed Iowa to be seen as a real contender and if religiously conservative Cruz could not win in Iowa, one of the most religiously conservative states, and the candidate utterly not religiously conservative, a candidate of three marriages, of marital infidelity, of eating the cookies at communioin, of ‘Two Corinthians’ and who cannot think of any case of begging for forgiveness - if this candidate beats Cruz in Iowa, then Cruz, Trump’s strongest rival could be fatally damaged.

Meanwhile Trump, who was already ahead in all polls for NH, SC and Nevada, but who had been behind in many polls recently in Iowa, if Trump ‘stole’ Iowa also to launch his campaign, Trump could achieve what no (non-incumbent) candidate had ever done in Republican races in the modern era - win all three of the first states, and be seen as truly invincible and inevitable by mid February. Trump had everything everything in his hand, just waiting for him. Trump had everything to lose, and truly nothing to gain - he was already ahead on all those polls. So this stunt could not give Trump ‘more than winning’ in Iowa (nor NH nor SC nor Nevada). Trump was gambling when he literally could not win, but he only could lose. That is a sign of exceptional stupidity and incredibly bad judgement. And nobody can say this was not forseeable. Reagan himself had tried this idea once. And Reagan got bloodied so badly, no politician has since tried this on either side of the aisle, when leading in the polls. It was a boneheaded move. And today we can see the result.

GLASS JAW

Trump would make a horrible gambling-addicted megalomaniacical authoritarian Fascist President of incredibly bad judgement. Some who have watched his campaign have known this and an increasing chorus of Republicans and conservatives have come to that conclusion. I am not writing anything new with that. This debate boycott gambit only underlines how dangerous President Trump would be - to Americans and the USA. Some extreme factions of the political spectrum may think that this type of bullying behavior ‘works’ (it quite literally did not, CNBC, CNN and Fox did not cave to Trump’s threats). Trump cannot just threaten the world and expect Mexico will pay for his wall, like Trump might threaten a local New York constructor or journalist with lawsuits etc.

In the future, political analysts will wonder about this election cycle, how is it possible for a candidate as flawed as Trump, to have been so enduring and get so far in the race. Lets ignore if Trump is a ‘real conservative’ (obviously he is not, he is a moderate Republican at best, a right-leaning Democrat at worst). He has alienated almost every voter group that the Republican party decided after Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012, that the party has to appeal to. Trump has the worst gender gap of any Republican candidate. He is the most hated Republican among Hispanics and among Blacks. He does not appeal to the youth, there is nothing where Trump helps heal the rifts that the Republican party has caused to prevent general election victories. All that is true, but it ignores the biggest fault in Trump for taking the Republican nomination. Trump’s value is honesty, that he tells it like it is. Trump has captured this image by his nasty rhetoric about Mexicans, women, John McCain’s hero status, the disabled, immigrants, refugees, the Muslims etc. However, Trump is nothing like honest. He is the most deceptive deceitful candidate in US political history. Politifact has measured Dick Cheney as lying 59% of the time. Trump lies 76% of the time !!

The Republican voters feel they have been duped, lied to and deceived in the past election cycles. They feel betrayed by their Presidential candidates like McCain and Romney. They feel betrayed by their Congressional leaders from departed John Boehner to Mitch McConnell. Now they want someone to tell the truth. And Trump sounds like he is telling the truth. But he is the master con-man. The best or worst kind of used-car-salesman. The pathological liar. The most deceitful politician ever measured in US politics ! He makes Richard Nixon seem like the Pope. Trump flipflops on positions so much he makes Mitt Romney seem like a block of granite. For Republican voters to now go for Trump is like a severely sick person going to a doctor, to discover that person is actually a torturer, who will not just prevent the person from being cured, but rather prolong the illness and cause pain in the duration !!! Trump sings a siren’s song, he is the worst painful poison the Republican voters could ever consider taking. And so far, they have been drinking the Trump ‘truth serum’ with reckelss abandon.

One can argue that Trump has a ‘glass jaw’ in the general election, where many of Trump’s positions that appeal to the Tea Party and racist wing of Republicans would repell support of Independent voters. Trump also has considerable vulnerabilities in his background that would typically work more in the general election (like his four corporate bankruptcies). But for a candidate to run on being honest and telling the truth, and then be the most untruthful candidate ever measured, that means Trump is incredibly vulnerable already now, in the nomination fight. A prototype of how Trump could be torn down ‘easily’ is seen in the comedy ‘debate’ that Stephen Colbert did on The Late Show when he ran videotape of Trump saying literally opposite things on the same topics. Those of us who follow the race, are dumbfounded that Trump has not been ‘called’ on the systematic pathological lying. It is obvious to anyone with half a brain, that Hillary Clinton (or Bernie Sanders) would pummel Trump relentlessly on this in the Autumn, with one ad after the next just ridiculing Trump for being such an obvious con-man. On just about any issue, Trump is now on videotape taking both sides of the issue (usually with fellow Republicans condemning him on at least one, if not both of those positions).

As Trump cannot claim political competence, has no foreign policy or military competence (he even didn’t know what the US nuclear weapons arsenal or its strategy consists of) and has no ‘likability’ in the style of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, and his business background is questionable at best (starting with the four bankruptcies) if Trump loses his ‘brand’ of honesty and truth, there is nothing left. He collapses. Trump is what follows after a comprehensively incompetent candidate, Sarah Palin is offered as (Vice) Presidential candidate. The vulnerability of base Republican voters to a blatant 76% of the time lying snake-oil salesman like Trump, is after Fox News has brainwashed them about issues that are clearly untrue (Obamacare has not cost jobs the USA has had the longest continued span of job-creation in its economic history, Obama has not cut the US military that was the Republican Congress and the the sequester, Obama is not a Muslim or born in Kenya, etc etc etc). Fox is the least accurate TV network in the USA. Republican voters are less educated than Democrats on average. Trump appeals to the least educated section of Republican voters, and after the Sarah Palin fear of press interviews, the narrative has hardened that any serious question by media is ‘gotcha’ questions by a ‘Republican-hating’ press corps of the ‘mainstream media’ where now paradoxically even Fox News is counted as the enemy.

So a ‘sane’ person or analyst looks at the Trump campaign, has been truly bewildered, how can he still lead in all the polls (up to now, the Iowa loss), with such obvious ‘glass jaw’ faults. How is this possible.

PRISONER’S DILEMMA

So WHY was Trump still standing (and likely will continue to lead most polls and likely win in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada going forward)? Early on, Trump took hits at the front-runners, that is normal in any race. But Trump’s attacks were far more vicious than most expected, and with Trump’s big media visibility, those attacks also ‘stuck’ far more than usually someone with a slight share of the voter preference. Trump took down Jeb Bush from a national polling lead, and destroyed number 2, Scott Walker. Then Trump beat Rick Perry and took credit also for Bobby Jindal’s fall. Trump proclaimed loudly that anyone attacking him will be destroyed. The early narrative supported this perception and soon the pattern emerged that only ‘backmarker’ candidates like Rand Paul or Lindsay Graham or Rick Santorum would bother to attack Trump. The front-runners decided not to. Specifically the new number two, Dr Ben Carson, was projecting his image of not picking fights. When Carly Fiorina rose briefly to second position, Trump attacked her very hard and (probably much more due to her idiotic claims of seeing brain harvesting than Trump’s attacks) Fiorina fell back into near obscurity never to rise again.

Trump was left alone. Carson didn’t attack him. But when Carson did briefly climb to the top of the polling in November, for one week, Trump did attack Carson. Carson then fell, again not because of Trump’s attacks, but because the truth came out about Carson’s alternate reality of pyramids as grain storage and an imagined youth of being a violent gangster rather than the nerdy science student that everybody remembers from his past. Another candidate claiming to be honest turned out to be a fraud and collapsed. But the point is, Carson didn’t try to attack Trump. Neither did Ted Cruz who became the new number two and in a few polls nationally, and in several polls in Iowa, took the lead from Trump. Cruz wanted to obey Reagan’s 11th Commandment, to not say anything bad about any fellow Republicans. Like Cruz said in one debate, he doesn’t want to get into a cage match with Trump, for the delight of debate moderators. And again, the ‘strongest’ rival to Trump refused to attack him, until Trump suddenly ambushed Cruz and turned on his attacks (born in Canada etc).

So now in the early stages of the race, those who were near Trump (or briefly ahead of him) in polling, who would have had a genuine ‘platform’ - ended up not attacking Trump. Those who did, were almost always backmarkers like Jeb Bush or Lindsay Graham. And the pattern emerged that attacking Trump resulted in overwhelming response utterly crushing that rival, like Carly Fiorina saw, and to a lesser extent rivals like Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie and Rick Santorum. They learned quickly to avoid challenging Trump - and to attack OTHER rivals instead. Trump was ‘too strong’. Ironically, they avoided attacking the candidate who had the most support to ‘steal’ and the candidate who genuinely was most vulnerable for his political positions and support.

So how does this play forward? We are witnessing a case of the gaming theory of “Prisoner’s Dilemma”. If all Republican rivals join together and attack Trump, he folds, and his 35% is divided essentially ‘proportionately’ to all remaining rivals. Trump would be out fast if this happened. But Prisoner’s Dilemma is the dilemma precisely because of the self-interest placed in conflict with the common interest. Any individual candidate knows, if they attack Trump, he will attack them and possibly crush them. So the individual is tempted to not join in such attacks, in case it fails. And in the case it succeeds, it means that individual who did not attack Trump, still gains from the voters who switch to new loyalties. In fact, this is a variation of the ‘suicide pact’ that for example the TV show Veep where the staff were afraid one would be fired, and they decide to band together, that if one is fired, all will resign, thus protecting each from being fired. And then they immediately fold, when one says he won’t actually resign.

So its possible for Trump to play this bullying game theoretically all the way up to the last votes of the nomination season, and as long as not everybody gangs up against Trump, he can take the one or two rivals and easily crush those. Its a classic case of ‘divide and conquer’. Now, can this survive into the general election? No. Thats when it is just Trump against his one Democratic rival (Hillary or Bernie). Then there is no prisoner’s dilemma, and either of those rivals will hit Trump on every one of his vulnerabilities and Trump goes down with the glass jaw that he has.

The question for Republican voters now, going forward, is whether they want to nominate a serial liar destined to lose the general election. The question for Trump’s remaining rivals (Huckabee has already quit today) is, can they unite against him now, when many delegates can be had, or shall they let him run as the bully and keep collecting delegates and messing up the race. And theoretically for a supposedly great communicator (I am looking at you, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz) this is now the chance to become the ‘dragon slayer’ to expose the charlatan in Trump and remove that cancer from this contest.

The one good thing from a point of considering future elections, is that Trump has proven once again that skipping a debate is a boneheaded suicidal move.

UPDATE 2 OF 2 - The Reuters Daily poll has an interctive tool which lets you measure each day's result by 5 day polling average. I've discussed before that this daily tracker showed the immediate drop on 27 January after the Trump gamble with the debate. This is not an in-state Iowa poll. Its the Reuters national poll of the race, each day updated for the latest 5 days. The last 5 days before Trump did this stunt, the Reuters poll (using 'Likely Voters' for the Republican Nomination, as the filter) was steady at 41%. Exactly 41% for two days actually. Then in the two polls out completely after 27 January, the result is also steady, at 31% and 30%. So not looking just at Iowa, the before-and-after effect of this gamble cost Trump one quarter of his support, down from 41% to 30.5%. 

This is my read of Reuter's daily poll. It is a national poll, and it shows Trump lost one in four supporters. I expect all national polls now out within the next week or so, to show this same effect. There should be approximately one quarter fall in Trump's support compared to the previous poll by THAT SAME polling organization, but less of a drop, the further back the previous poll was. Could be as little as losing one in 8 supporters if its 2 months back. Then expect SOME drop in state-wide polling but again, only if that pollster has done a previous poll in that state within the last two months. This effect is INDEPENDENT of the loss impact coming out of Iowa and the boosts to both Cruz and Rubio, out of their win and surprisingly strong finish in Iowa. Trump is now working hard to try to spin the story that he 'outperformed' when he in fact threw a victory away. But the effect of the relative lesser performance by Trump in polling after Iowa, should now show two bad trends for Trump, the lingering lost support out of the debate boycott gambit - combined with the bad press about not winning Iowa. That combines with a surge in Cruz & Rubio support out of their strong showings in Iowa. The race should be tightening BUT also remember, Trump was so far ahead, he will likely remain to be ahead in national polls even after these setbacks. And PPP has already been on Twitter saying they see a clear impact to Trump support out of their current poll being interviewed in the field, that Trump support is down. We have to see how PPP poll counts it when that is released.

Comments

[Catriona]

Tomi, you must have written this days in advance. First, the polls were notoriously inaccurate on both sides and have been so for years now. In a caucus state it is mostly about the ground game, which Trump did not have. Now, to be fair, it does seem that the late deciders went to Rubio, and no doubt HE was helped by not having Trump on stage. But as you yourself noted, Cruz is an excellent debater and might have "beaten" Trump last Thursday. So perhaps if Trump shows up, Cruz wins in a landslide and Rubio is a distant third instead of a very close third with 23% of the vote, which no poll had him at.

As for Reagan, he got the nomination, right? How many GOP presidents won the Iowa Caucuses? 1. GW Bush. He's the only one to even get the nomination. But third is a good showing for Rubio and it puts a LOT of pressure on Bush, Kasich, etc to drop out. Cruz and Trump can continue to fight each other. If Trump tries to attack Rubio, the latter can triangulate.

[Catriona]

The bigger question is whether Rubio has the chops to remove the real cancer from this race (Hillary Clinton). She represents the worst of this country. She is not just evil, she's insidious.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Catriona

Of course I wrote parts of this well in advance as I often do. Now on the polls. The polls were CONSISTENT through the weeks up to the debate, 9 polls in a row had Trump ahead of Cruz. All 9 polls had Trump OVER 30%. Trump averaged 33% before the debate. All 9 polls had Cruz in second place ! The average of Cruz polling just before the debate was 26%. Cruz finished Iowa with 28%. That 2% gain is in line with what is the history of Iowa, a last-minute gain to the religious candidate. But Cruz came close to the polled result.

Trump COLLAPSED. He was never below 30% and averaged 33% with a peak as high as 39%. The TURNOUT model was the main driver of whether Trump was doing something closer to 30% or closer to 39%, the higher the turnout the bigger Trump's advantage over Cruz. This day was a record turnout for Republicans. Trump should have EXCEEDED his RCP average. Or if you want to say, Cruz stole from Trump, then WORST CASE, Trump should have lost those two points that Cruz gained, so Trump should have been at 31% in the worst case.

Trump's actual result collapsed to 24%. He lost NINE POINTS (seven of which did not go to Cruz, so were not caused by a Christian evangelical surge). Trump lost nine points in four days, that is a collapse. It is not because Iowa is a pacifist state that hates wounded war veterans and punishes people who set up charity events for veterans. Nothing else 'happened' to Trump in the last 4 days. He boycotted the debate, and Trump arranged his little veterans telethon. But Trump's STEADY support suddenly collapsed, collapsed by 9 points - this CLEARLY was due to the revenge by Iowa voters about Trump's debate stunt.

So is this a wild Tomi-Ahonen-fantasy-scenario? Wolf Blitzer on CNN is talking about how the debate boycott hurt Trump, Laura Ingraham on Fox is talking about it, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC is talking about it. The Des Moines Register 'gold standard' polling lady WARNED about this happening and the 'most accurate forecaster' in politics, Nate Silver of 538 blog is saying it. So, Catriona is correct and all those experts are wrong? Or once again, Tomi did see the reality of what is ACTUALLY happening, and warned about it before we could measure the result, and now can also measure the result. So there you go. I win :-)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Catriona]

You can convince yourself of that, Tomi. But you're still wrong. Trump did not lose that support any more than Hillary lost a 4-point lead she had today. You lose. Sorry. You said Trump would win today. Don't weasel out by looking to delegate counts. I say this as a friend. Stop deluding yourself. It's OK to be wrong sometimes. Trump's showing happens regardless of whether he showed up at the debate. The biggest question was whether his support was real. Maybe it wasn't. Wolf Blitzer, Laura Ingraham and Rachel Maddow are giant blowhards who are looking to rationalize polls that got things wrong. Those same polls still predicted that Trump would win, and NONE had Rubio at 23%. Even the ones taken yesterday. So clearly the results weren't accurate. And none had the Democratic race within a percentage point. How about the narrative that the polls that predicted an easy Clinton victory were wrong. For that matter, the ENTRANCE polls had Trump and Clinton winning easily. So obviously the polls were inaccurate.

[Catriona]

Here's also what Nate Silver said BEFORE the caucuses. Iowa is difficult to poll. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/iowa-is-the-hardest-state-to-poll/

[Catriona]

"So imagine that we have a forecast showing Trump 4 percentage points ahead of Ted Cruz in some state. If Trump wins by 12 points instead, or Cruz wins by 4, the pollsters would be pilloried, and we’d come in for our share of flak too. But that’s what an 8-point error looks like"

And guess what happened. Sorry, Tomi, there was no 9 point collapse. Perhaps the polls just overestimated Trump's support and underestimated Rubio's support.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Catriona

The issue is now SETTLED. CNN just showed the exit poll data. Those Republican caucus goers who decided in last days after debate - selected Trump at 14%. His support COLLAPSED. He was at 33% before debate, it was 14% after debate. This is now FACT. Exit polls. You can accept data or not, I deal with the facts.

Why are you so obsessed with trying to deny reality? In the first reporting out, Fox has said the debate boycott was part of Trump's loss, CNN has said so, CNBC has said so, BBC news has said so, Politico says so, Slate says so, NY Times says so, Bloomberg says so, Washington Post says so, Huffington Post says so, Boston Herald say so, Nate Silver says so - the best statistician in the political game ie kind of the Tomi Ahonen of politics haha comparing to us in mobile (and the Des Moines Herald polling lady warned this would happen so I can be pretty sure DMH will be saying so when they write their story about how this race was won and lost).

PS on my prediction that Trump wins the nomination - READ THE BLOG - I said CLEARLY it is a prediction on DELEGATE COUNT, and I EXPLICITLY said it is not a forecast of states to win, but I was giving that too, since I had done the work, just for the fun of it. My prediction that Trump clinches on July 7 - is SOLID as of this result. I only lost 3 delegates from my forecast and as I already told you, Catriona, I can afford to lose 3 delegates every single day they vote, and still get to my forecast. I had not expected Trump to blow out in Iowa haha... In terms of DELEGATE COUNT which is what matters, not how many states are won - that is what my FORECAST was about.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Winter]

We have two ties in Iowa: Hillary vs Bernie and Donald vs Marco

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2016/feb/01/iowa-caucus-results-live-county-by-county-interactive-map

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/2016/primaries/2016-02-01

The betting "polls" have gone berserk, Marco now second place and Bernie getting close to Donald :
(paddypower, sportsbet, williamhill, oddsshark was not updated)
Hillary: 10/11, 1.91, 4/5
Marco: 10/3, 4.33, 9/4
Donald: 5/1, 6.00, 5/1
Bernie: 8/1, 9.00, 6/1

[Shiksa]

Tomi how did Sanders fight Clinton to a draw? Shouldn't Clinton have done much better?

[Winter]

The betting sites all think Marco will get the Republican nomination.

Interesting development. Tomi, did you miss something or do you think they are simply wrong?

[Winter]

@Tomi
"If all Republican rivals join together and attack Trump, he folds, and his 35% is divided essentially ‘proportionately’ to all remaining rivals. Trump would be out fast if this happened."

My thoughts about the rise of Marco in the betting "polls". The prisoner's dilemma is based on the assumption that there is no dealing between the participants. Maybe, Iowa is the push that gets the Republicans (minus Ted) to assemble behind Marco.

I guess there are frantic negotiations and strongarming going on behind the scenes.

[Pekka]

Tomi you are suppose to be objective, stop being such a non-Trump believer. Even though he got second spot I think he did a fantastic job in Iowa. As he got more voters than Rick santorum did in 2012 which should be impossible for a canditate like Trump.

Also Ted Cruz winning Iowa might turn out to be good for Trump. As the party elite wanted Trump to win Iowa to knock out Ted Cruz early than later in the race knock out Trump with a massive negative ads(100-200 million $ range). This plan has now failed.

Even though Marco Rubio did good, Ted cruz won Iowa which make him strong in South carolina. Now I think Marco Rubio must win New hampshire otherwise he won't win South carolina and if this happen he is dead. Maybe I'm wrong as the betting sites is very favorable to Marco rubio :)

[Winter]

@Pekka
"As the party elite wanted Trump to win Iowa to knock out Ted Cruz early than later in the race knock out Trump with a massive negative ads(100-200 million $ range). "

The next-funniest thing about this race, after the on-stage bickering, is the conspiracy theories about Byzantine behind-the-stage plots with Trump as the defender of The Little Guy.

Guys, this is simple. A dozen big ego's financed by even bigger ego billionaires trying to get on top of the rock.

Read Frans de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics" and you know everything you need to know. There is absolutely no need for any hidden conspiracy.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/389530.Chimpanzee_Politics

[Stephen Reed]

Sad day for Trump partisans. I agree with Tomi's analysis that the debate gambit failed for Donald Trump. I put too much faith in the predictive value of the most recent Iowa polls.

Lets see how accurate are the polls for New Hampshire.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

To all in the thread

I added a paragraph into the article after CNN posted the entrance polls. Its clear to see there was a collapse of Trump support. He had 30% before the debate stunt and 14% after it. He lost more than half of his support. That support had to go somewhere. It was DISTRIBUTED where almost all rivals except Cruz and Santorum GAINED. That weird pattern also supports the theory that it was not one candidate suddenly surging (else all others would be flat one jumping, ie Rubio. Nor that it was a debate win/loss where one stole voters from another - we see that too in Rubio rising and Cruz falling - but the big change where most voters went was the collapse of Trump. There WAS strong support for Trump to win it, and a race clearly between Trump and Cruz looking at the time before the debate. If Trump had held his support gosh, even if he saw NORMAL changes to the support towards the last days - he would have easily won the race. Instead he tanked. He collapsed. The pattern is very clear. And we know there were only two things that Trump did which could have caused this, either Iowans hated that he skipped the debate - so nuc that more than HALF of his support ran away - or else it must have been that Iowans hate war veterans and punished Trump for raising money for veterans. Yeah. Nothing else happened in Trumpland in the last days to allow for this collapse. This was not good debate performance by Rubio, otherwise the GAINS to Rubio would be bigger and Trump's loss far smaller than what Rubio was able to steal (Rubio went up 11 points, Trump went down 16 points - this Trump damage cannot mathematically be caused by Rubio gains), and Trump's decline would be half of what he lost, and Trump would have won Iowa still easily.

So if we try a quick allocation of the votes, Trump & Cruz lost while all others except Santorum gained. Cruz voters are aligned more with Huckabee. Huckabee gained two, give one of Cruz's 5 lost voters to Huckabee. Then give the remaining 4 to Rubio based on the debate result. That accounts for 4 out of 11 points Rubio gained.

Now Trump's 16 points. Give 7 to Rubio and that leaves 9 points. Who got the rest? Two of the moderates, Christie and Kasich gained 2 points (makes sense especially as Christie is the 'kinder-gentler' Trump). Then Bush, Carson, Fiorina, Huckabee and Paul each got one point. Thats your 16 points of Trump votes redistributed. Makes sense. Nothing else supports this. Christie and Kasich did not have great ground games in Iowa, why were they gaining much more than Huckabee or Paul in the last days? Its because they were Trump supporters seeking a new home.

There are many reasons why polls are not accurate as well as many reasons why voters make up their minds one way or another at the end. The polls did VERY well capture the BIG CHANGE that happened four days before the election. The Des Moines Register and Quinnipiac polls that covered partly the time after the debate showed a shift. And the two polls that were conducted only on the days after the debate, showed the tight race correctly between who was fighting whom. Using the Real Clear Polling average in this kind of watershed moment is not accurate enough and as you've seen me do with the debate 'results' I take the snapshot of the polling as the RCP average before the debate, and then take the first about 3 polls that come out after the debate, to see who won. That is again the best method. Not perfect, but best. And it tells us clearly. Before the debate (and Trump's boycott) the order of finish was: Trump 33%, Cruz 26%, Rubio 14%. The two polls that came after the debate (and boycott) when averaged, had the race as: Trump 23.5%, Cruz 22.5%, Rubio 19.5%. Those two last polls reflected the reality of the race FAR more closely than any polls that measured the race from before the debate and boycott. The reality ended up being Cruz 27.6%, Trump 24.3% and Rubio 23.1%. The average error looking at RCP from before the debate was 6.3 points. The average error if only looking at the two polls from totally after the debate was 3.3 points. If you want to argue that polls are not precise, fine. They DID capture the collapse in Trump's support rather well but not perfectly. Such a big shock to voters who had thought they really liked a candidate would be a nasty measurement problem, as some voters no doubt struggled with that decision up to the minute they voted, actually inside the voting booth.

But the Entrance Polls do show clearly what happened. And as I indicated on this blog as it was happening, the polling out after the debate including the two polls with partial interviews after the debate, AND the Reuters daily tracking national poll - showed a collapse in Trump support. And the last two polls that were published on Sunday suggested for the first time that Trump might actually lose his now-razor-thin one-point lead, due to Cruz's stronger ground game and Big Data operation(s). As also happened.

NOTE - this will NOT be a factor into the coming votes, because now all polls already capture any 'punishment' behavior and Trump will be skipping no more debates, so he will fix some of the damage by attending now the next debate, as he was so quick to announce already on Saturday, when Trump's own polling told him how catastrophic that gambit was turning out to hae been.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Ok and we heard it from the horse's mouth.

Trump has now said yes, he thinks skipping the debate 'might have cost' him Iowa. He knows how he lost. And this must really REALLY sting. Imagine the Republican party euphoria if their new Messiah had arrived where such a non-Christian candidate as Trump had just beaten Cruz, who was far ahead in all polls to also win NH, SC and Nevada and Trump was on all TV screens now bragging about how he never loses and how brilliant he was...

Anyway, for someone who was arguing this point before - its like those who were trying to defend Elop's mad Microsoft strategy for Nokia, or those who thought Blackberry's tablet gambit was smart etc... there are some who cannot see reality even when it stares them straight in the face. We deal with the facts on this blog.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi all

Note, that BEYOND the Iowa vote, this will also impact Trump going forward. He lost his growth-momentum. He lost some voter support. We have the Reuters daily polling tracker with its 5-day polling average. If we look at the time just before the debate boycott (ie up to 26 Jan) and the two polls fully 5 days after the debate boycott stunt (polls averaging days of 28 Jan and after) we can see how Reuters polling scored the NATIONAL effect of the stunt.

Trump support was steady on the two days leading to the stunt, at 41% (using the likely voters filter). It has now been nearly flat also the two days fully after it, at 31% and 30%. So if we average those last two, we can day Trump NATIONALLY went from 41% to 30.5% so he lost one in four supporters nationwide (while losing more than half, or precisely 54% of his support in Iowa, based on the Entrance Polls of Iowa voters). This means Trump's steamrolling campaign that had just reached (according to Reuters) the 'ceiling' level of 40% has now fallen back to the 30% level, nationally. This should now be visible in national polls going forward - note this is SEPARATE from the damaging impacts of losing in Iowa (and corresponding bumps that Cruz & Rubio should see coming out of Iowa). With all that, Trump is STILL the leader. Only with a far smaller lead.

Ok, next going back to hitting the 'update' button on RCP polling average haha...

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Winter]

When talking about the conspiracy comedians
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/02/no-trump-fans-marco-rubio-and-microsoft-didnt-steal-your-votes/

"Users of website 8Chan began a conversation thread on its less-than-politically-correct message board /pol/ ranting about the connection between Rubio and Microsoft, which has donated millions of dollars to the senator's campaign. The fact that Microsoft is volunteering its services for free in the form of a vote-counting app was enough to send theorists over the edge."

The trolls did it again, getting the Tea Party crowd in arms on Yet Another Conspiracy Theory that takes what is rightfully theirs. Lullz all around.

[Wayne Borean]

Well, that was interesting.

1) I wasn't sure whether skipping the debate would hurt him as badly as Tomi estimated. Turns out Tomi was right. I'm not sure how this will play out going forward. We hear talk of momentum, but personally I think that a lot of this is a black art.

2) Bernie did really well. Which will get him marginally more press coverage...

3) Ted Cruz won by accident. Of course I don't expect Toxic Teddy to understand that.

4) Marco Rubio comes out of it looking really good.

I've got to cut down on the popcorn! The expense is killing me.

[Winter]

Trump is losing it:
"Donald Trump accuses Ted Cruz of stealing Iowa in lengthy Twitter tirade"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/03/donald-trump-tweets-that-ted-cruz-stole-iowa-illegally-and-quickly-deletes-the-illegally/

"Donald Trump: 'Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it' - outspoken Republican hopeful hits out at rival"
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/donald-trump-ted-cruz-didnt-7301716

I am afraid this could be the beginning of the end for Trump. Nothing breeds contempt like a sore loser.
(actually, I can think of a lot of things that are more likely to breed contempt, anyhow)