Usually, the question on the eve of the Iowa caucus is "who"?

* who is going to win the caucus?

* who is going to head into New Hampshire with momentum?

* who is going to drop out after disappointment in Iowa?

This election cycle is different. In 2016, the dominant question on the eve of the Iowa caucus is "why"?

* why is Sanders drawing such bigger crowds than Clinton?

* why is Trump still ahead despite such offensive statements?

* why didn't the establishment candidates in both parties dominate as predicted six months ago?

There is a reason for this.

Americans have lost faith in their government. There has been an historic drop in faith in Congress as discussed by NPR in "Even Lawmakers Ask: Does Anyone Like Congress?" and by the Huffington Post in "Congress' Approval Rating Remains Dismal":



The government is literally less popular than Paris Hilton and Nickelback:



Significant majorities think the country is headed in the wrong direction:



There is real discontent and dissatisfaction with the status quo in the electorate.

Trump taps into this discontent by exploiting fear, but the reason for his success is that he is unique among the Republican candidates in his ability to exploit this discontent.

Sanders taps into the the dissatisfaction with the status quo by offering hope for a better way forward. As much as the establishment may want to pretend that Sanders' platform is "out of the mainstream," America wants and needs change and it is the establishment that is now out of the mainstream:



This is a change election cycle. The status quo will lose if the voters are given a chocie between change and the status quo. Sanders hope and Trump offers fear -- the question is which change will America choose?

First, the overall result is within the +/-4% margin of error with Sanders at 42% to Clinton's 45%.

Second, the "famously accurate" 2008 DMR poll understated Obama's result by 5.6% and understated Edwards' result by 5.7%.

Third, there has been a HUGE divergence between the robo-call polls which favor Clinton and ALL other polls which show a tie, and the DMR polls confirms the non-robo-call polls, and when you aggregate the new DMR poll with all of those other polls, the race in Iowa remains a dead heat:



Fourth, Sanders is crushing among nonreligious voters, those under 35, independents, first-time caucusgoers, those who say the system favors the rich, and liberals:

nonreligious

67% - Sanders
27% - Clinton

among those under 35

63% - Sanders
27% - Clinton

independents

55% - Sanders
30% - Clinton

first-time caucusgoers

53% - Sanders
34% - Clinton

system favors the rich

50% - Sanders
39% - Clinton

liberals

51% - Sanders
41% - Clinton

Finally, 51% say Sanders is the candidate who cares most about people like them.

are more reliable.

538 and other polling analysts have confirmed that the robo-call polls are projecting different results than the many polls conducted according to all of other polling methods.

The Democratic race in Iowa is an excellent example of this phenomenon.

If you look at just the robo-call polling, you see Clinton well ahead:



However, if you look at ALL of the polling except the robo-call polls (the live cell + landline phone polls and the internet-based polls come to similar results), you see a race that is a dead heat with Sanders rising while Clinton falls:



The reason why the poll aggregation websites (538, RCP, Pollster) show Clinton with a slight lead is that they average the robo-call polls (which consistently favor Trump and Clinton) with the other polls which use a traditional methodology (so Clinton's lead is smaller than her robo-lead but the race is not tied as the non-robo-polls indicate).

Check back Monday night to see which polls were more accurate!

link; excerpt:

The other day in Manhattan, Hillary Clinton supporters met for lunch at the home of the media executive Geraldine Laybourne. A group of 50, mostly women, was determined to generate excitement for Clinton’s campaign for president. They were frustrated to see her lagging again among younger voters, and their invited speaker was Kenyatta Cheese, a young Obama campaign veteran and internet impresario.... “When you are in the White House, you’re going to be connected to the establishment,” says Sarah Kovner, who served in the Clinton administration and was at Laybourne’s lunch. “That’s just a fact.”

Sanders put Hillary Clinton on notice last summer, when no one was paying him much heed. “All over this country,” he declared, “ordinary people, working people, elderly people are moving in our direction because they do want a candidate to take on the establishment.”

During that most recent Democratic debate in South Carolina, I read texts about Clinton by some students at Harvard, where I teach, and talked to some afterwards. Although Clinton’s difficulties with young voters have been much written about, their comments revealed a more acute ennui.

“Hillary, can you excite us?” asks Osaremen Okolo, a 21-year-old African-American who supports Clinton but “misses feeling fired up” as she was for Barack Obama and as some of her friends feel about Sanders.

“Young people like Bernie because he sounds like a revolutionary,” she says. But Okolo prefers Clinton’s experience and positions on issues like equal pay for equal work and criminal justice reform. “Hillary sounds pragmatic, which can come across as stuffy to young people. Her experience can almost count against her.” She adds: “Sanders seems bold, even if none of his ideas can happen.”... Kara Lessen is a 23-year-old in her final year at Harvard who has volunteered for Sanders but was excited by Clinton eight years ago. “The ‘I’m a woman and it’s OK to vote with your uterus’ message is tired,” she said. “Bernie really understands systemic oppression. Her neo-liberal politics is pretty tired.”

link; excerpt:

According to a recent Associated Press poll, the public lacks confidence in government. And by “lacks confidence,” I mean “really lacks confidence.” Specifically, “More than 6 in 10 respondents expressed only slight confidence — or none at all — that the federal government can make progress on the problems facing the nation in 2016.”

And this isn’t just Republicans in a sour mood after seven years of Obama. As the AP noted, “Perhaps most vexing for the dozen or so candidates vying to succeed President Barack Obama, the poll indicates widespread skepticism about the government's ability to solve problems, with no significant difference in the outlook between Republicans and Democrats.”...The Middle East is on fire; Putin is running rampant in eastern Europe and Syria; Saudi Arabia is probably looking to get an atomic bomb to balance the one that Iran is expected to get in spite of (because of?) the recent U.S./Iran nuclear deal; and Europe is flooded with migrants who don’t look likely to integrate well. The latter is of course a result of the Middle East problems and of the overthrow of Libya’s dictator, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, in a war-of-choice launched without congressional approval at the behest of Hillary Clinton, then-United Nations ambassador Susan Rice and then-National Security Council senior aide Samantha Power.

Meanwhile, at home, the economy limps along despite seven years of “recovery” and record deficits. Among the Democratic political candidates, only Bernie Sanders seems to make a big deal of real unemployment (including underemployment and people who have given up looking for jobs) being much higher than the rosy official unemployment numbers. ... Then there’s the official lawlessness. The IRS, hiding from investigations that it targeted Tea Party groups, keeps "accidentally" destroying hard drives. Hillary’s emails also keep mysteriously disappearing, and now the State Department has used the blizzard as an excuse for not producing court-ordered emails, though it’s known about the order for months. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, former attorney general Michael Mukasey says that Hillary should face criminal charges, but who really expects that? She’s politically untouchable, which says bad things about the rule of law.

Yesterday brought news stories about the CBS poll where Sanders' lead over Clinton in New Hampshire rose to 19% (57% to 38%).

Tonight brings two more blowout polls in New Hampshire: The Anderson Robbins/Shaw poll shows a 22% Sanders lead (56% to 34%) and the Franklin Pierce poll shows a 16% Sanders lead (55% to 39%).

The aggregation of ALL polls shows a widening gap of over 13%:



If you drop out the robo-call polls, the aggregation of all other polls shows a widening 15% aggregate lead:

link; excerpt:

{O}n the verge of Monday night’s Democratic town hall in Iowa — the last time the candidates will face off before the caucuses in that state — and with Bernie Sanders’s poll numbers climbing not only in Iowa, but also in New Hampshire, the Clinton campaign seems increasingly desperate and reckless.

I noticed the turn in the last debate as Clinton seemed to me to go too far in her attacks on Sanders, while simultaneously painting herself into a box that will be very hard to escape.

She wrapped herself in President Obama’s legacy so tightly that she could hardly breathe... But practicality and incrementalism, as reasonable as that strategy and persona may be, are simply no match for what animates the Sanders campaign ... But instead of Clinton finding a way to express that her plans are more tangible than Sanders’s, and her chances in the general election are stronger than his, she and her campaign have made some incredulous inferences about Sanders’s honor.

The swipes at him as being soft on the gun industry as some way of cozying up to it, or of being anti-Obama because he wanted Obama to be stronger in pursuing a liberal agenda, or that he wants to scrap Obamacare, simply do not connect.

Sanders may be a dreamer, but he’s not dishonorable. Trying to sully him in this way only sullies her.

There are a tremendous number of echoes starting to be heard between the way Clinton ran against Obama, and the way she is running against Sanders.... If Clinton can’t find a positive, energetic message to project, and soon, she is going to be swept away by Sanders.

Sanders leads in a three-way race with Trump and Bloomberg, but Trump leads a three-way race with Clinton and Bloomberg:

Sanders 35%, Trump 34%, and Bloomberg 12%

Trump 37%, Clinton 36%, Bloomberg 13%

Among independents, Clinton does even worse:

Sanders 31%, Trump 33%, Bloomberg 11%

Trump 37%, Clinton 24%, Bloomberg 18%

Sanders does even better in three-way races against Bloomberg and Cruz or against Bloomberg and Rubio:

"Sanders gets a boost in poll numbers when competing with Bloomberg and a different Republican nominee, like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Sanders gets 36 percent of voters against Cruz, who gets 28 percent of voters and Bloomberg, who gets 11 percent of voters. The Vermont senator gets 38 percent of voters when he’s up against Rubio, who gets 33 percent of voters, and Bloomberg, who gets 10 percent of voters. Clinton similarly held larger leads in potential match-ups with Cruz and Rubio."

Here is a link to the ARG polling data:

48% - Sanders
45% - Clinton
3% - O'Malley

Interesting internal numbers on 18-49 year olds:

55% - Sanders
38% - Clinton
3% - O'Malley

Also, look at the split among those (regardless of age) who were polled by cell phone (versus landline):

53% - Sanders
38% - Clinton
3% - O'Malley