Latest ARG Iowa Poll: Hillary 31% Edwards 24% Obama 24%

[Herman Munster]

They seem to be coming out every few days. This sounds a lot more reasonable than the one with the +14 Hillary lead and is in tune with the last LA Times poll that had Hillary with a 6 point lead.

http://americanresearchgroup.com/

[MonkeyFunk]

1. Nice

Here's the rest:

Biden 5
Richardson 5
Dodd 3
Kucinich 1
Gravel 0

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. I Like The Results But I Am Suspicious

Their last poll was a major outlier... That could be because they're crappy pollsters, they're corrupt or they just did a bad poll... These polls are set at .95 confidence levels... That means there's a one in twenty chance the results are outside the Margin Of Error...

[Herman Munster]

4. much more likely the previous poll was just a bad sample

Too many people travelling around christmas.

[gaiilonfong]

3. I guess this means Hillary is trending down

She was 16 points ahead a few days ago!
And Obama and Edwards up.
NICE!

[earthlover]

7. BINGO! The wishful thinkers were touting the earlier outliar poll as accurate....

...but of course this more recent one does NOT show a decline in Hillary's lead. You see, the original 16 point lead was genuine. But the more recent one showed no loss for Hillary even though it is closer. I am beginning to understand Hillary Herd logic! The key is: if the reality is good for Hillary it is reality, if the reality is bad for Hillary it is not reality. I am proud of myself for solving a mystery of science!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. Lots Of HRC Supporters Were Suspicious

I'm stil suspicious...What's to prevent a pollster from just making numbers up...

[MonkeyFunk]

11. The fact that they're in business

and their product is accuracy.

Why would they purposely destroy their business by making up numbers?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

12. You Have A Point

But what's to prevent a pollster from looking at what everybody else is doing and then base your numbers on that...

[foo_bar]

14. the problem is, the open Iowa caucus introduces bandwagon effects

not found in a traditional primary with secret ballots, and a second round of run-off voting that can't be predicted without calling the first round correctly. Mark Blumenthal:

So as should be obvious, the second round voting means that initial vote preference -- even as measured by an entrance poll -- does not directly measure the final results. So there is an important element of inaccuracy built into any Democratic preference poll. In 2004, both Kerry and Edwards did better in the reported results than the entrance poll. Most observers attribute much of the six-point gain for Edwards to a deal struck on caucus morning between the Kucinich and Edwards campaigns that sent most Kucinich supporters into the Edwards camp on the second round. Exit pollster Joe Lenski reports that most Kucinich supporters chose Edwards as their second choice in the entrance poll.

Putting aside the viability issue, which poll was "most accurate?" The answer depends on the yardstick applied, which is a tough call in a multiple candidate primary or caucus. The Des Moines Register poll has received much credit for being the only one to correctly "predict" the order of the top candidates, but notice that Edwards "led" Dean on their larger "likely caucus goer" sample by a not statistically significant three percentage points (23% to 20%). Among their narrower "definite voter" subgroup, the Edwards-Dean order was reversed (Dean had 21%, Edwards 19%). So the getting the order right may have been partly a matter of good fortune.

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/how_accurate_were_the_iowa_pol.php

[SoxFan]

16. Dick Bennett

The pollster, Dick Bennett, married money and lives off his wife's wealth. His polling act is basically a rich guy's hobby. he doesn't have a good reputation in his own backyard, where nobody hires him to do any serious opinion research work.

[earthlover]

13. OK, good point....see my comment below. :-)

[Tactical Progressive]

5. Hillary Rulez!!!

Except I don't believe those poll numbers.

The race is a dead heat in Iowa.

And while I think we're all hoping for some resolution, or at least the start of some resolution from the caucus outcome, I don't think we'll get much resolution at all.

If I had to guess right today, it would be Edwards-Hillary-Barack with barely a couple of points between them. Or Barack-Edwards-Hillary, or Hillary-Barack-Edwards. One of those three. Or maybe Edwards-Barack-Hillary. One of those four. I'm pretty sure. Probably.

I think we should all be winding our expectations down so nobody is too disappointed.

As an aside, and you might think this is weird since I'm such a strong Hillary supporter, but I'm kind of hoping that John Edwards wins in Iowa. He's really worked for it more than the other two combined.

[JackORoses]

6. Hillary loses 7 points from her lead in 3 days...

Is it the End of the World or is ARG just crap?

[bigdarryl]

8. the last three days before the caucus is when people start to make up there minds

[earthlover]

9. Keep in mind the article in Pollster.com about polling on the dark side....

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/polling_on_the_dark_side_of_th.php

Point is, any polls taken during the holiday time are suspect. We just won't be able to be confident in aNY of them. Why?

Keep in mind when a sample is changed with regard to a certain demographic, this may skew the results. The vacation time is a period of time when MANY people are not home. Are these folks demographically different? Yes, they tend to be younger and better educated. So vacation polls are taken from a sample that is smaller in this group of people. Since Obama tends to do considerably better in younger and more educated voters, this may lead to results in polling less favorable to Obama. I see this reflected in the above poll. The earlier polling was done when more were on vacation. The more recent is with fewer people gone.

Keep in mind too that normally, hardly any polling company does ANY POLLING during this time. So we are in uncharted waters, and the chances for bad results are HUGE. Hence, the title, dark side. We simply will not know who wins until Jan 3 because no polling done now is very reliable.

I think this is a great article and I think it goes along with what almost anyone knows anyway: the race is a tossup!

[goldcanyonaz]

15. Any poll that shows Hillary ahead is an outlier.

At least that's what I have learned here.