The news of the hour, on the Democratic side, is apparently Sander's stunning surge to a 27% lead over Clinton in the latest CNN/WMUR poll in New Hampshire. Pretty much every political outlet and pundit that I have seen is quoting this number, as if the Oracle handed down the result at Delphi. I would like to include it as an interesting counterpoint to the other polls taken in that state in the past week.
It is pretty quickly apparently that one of these polls is not like the others. One of these polls just does not belong. The ARG poll (which is technically more recent) shows Sanders leading by 6 points. Admittedly, +6 is still a lead, but that's a huge difference from +27, and is in line with their previous two polls in the past month. The Monmouth poll of +14 gives the most similar result to CNN/WMUR, but is still off by double. Public Policy Polling (PPP), which performed decently well in 2012 and 2008, even gives Clinton a consistent +3 lead.
Now I'm clearly not the type of person to conclude that the minority opinion is wrong for being in the minority. Normally, I would look at three factors to validate a poll result: the demographics, the pollster's past accuracy, and the trending numbers from pollster's past results. Unfortunately, the poll did not include anything even vaguely resembling a demographic in their report. (If a more detailed report does exist, please send it to me!) The pollster (WMUR) is pretty much held to New Hampshire, but in 2012 they were highly erratic with their predictions, with back-to-back polls just days apart showed swings of 9 points. Finally, this recent result represents a large shift from December (50% to 40%) and September (46% to 30%) neither of those results or their relative motion were supported by any other outlet. Conclusion? WMUR, you're drunk. Go home.
So, uh... what's up with New Hampshire Republicans?
On the other side of the coin, something unexpected seems to be happening. There are now unconfirmed reports that John Kasich may be running for president. You may be excused if you are currently scratching your head trying to figure out who I'm talking about, but if you rewatch the Republican debates, you will distinctly see his name show up in the credits.
While desperate reporters and pundits are trying to put together a story about an outlier poll showing an upstart surging ahead in New Hampshire, they completely missed my favorite one: ARG reports that John Kasich is the anti-Trump, running only 7 points behind the "buffoon." Plus, this exciting story actually has some potential meat behind it, with recent polls from Monmouth, Reach, and ARG (again) supporting the missing link of Kasich's surge to a weak second place in early January. Now none of these polls are exactly gospel, but it is now highly plausible that Kasich could easily take second place and the self-proclaimed "Prince of Light and Hope" could emerge as the new establishment pick. With 49% of NH primary voters making up their minds in the last three days before the election, combined with an electorate that isn't completely bored with hearing his name every day, he has a lot of room to change some minds and mount a successful surprise attack.
I had been watching the news and was astounded by the "lead" Bernie Sanders was shown to have over Hillary Clinton. Without any data, it just seems wrong. Your analysis is the first to demonstrate facts. As for Kasich, he has been routinely ignored, but has been campaigning hard. It's interesting to see who the Trump supporters are, but no one seems to be tracking (in main media) the multitudes who must be out there who are repulsed and for whom they must be planning to vote.
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