Until last week, Iowa was viewed as a two-man contest between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. But there’s been a lot of “buzz” lately about Marco Rubio. “Buzz” isn’t necessarily worth anything — candidates can start buzz about themselves, after all. But three late polls suggest that Marco Rubio is going to make it a close finish. These aren’t necessarily the best three companies for polling in Iowa, but at least two of them are known by reputation, and all three confirm that there’s been something real happening for Rubio in the last few days.
First, the WSJ/Marist poll from last Friday:
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Trump: 32 percent
Cruz: 25 percent
Rubio: 18 percent
Second, today’s Quinnipiac poll:
Trump: 31 percent
Cruz: 24 percent
Rubio: 17 percent
Again, Trump leads and there’s a surge for Rubio. Among previous caucusgoers, the Q-Poll had the same order for the candidates, but the numbers were 26 percent-25 percent-20 percent.
Then there’s this third and unusual poll by OpinionSavvy. I say unusual because it deliberately screened out all respondents who didn’t know where their caucus site was. I have no idea whether this is an accurate way to screen for caucuses, and I’ve never heard of this pollster before. But it seems to convey the same basic idea that Rubio is on the rise and that Trump has a “yuge” challenge tonight turning out potential caucusgoers who are not used to doing this sort of thing. Like other campaigns that have fallen short in the past, he has a lot of passion on his side and not much of a ground game.
Trump: 20 percent
Cruz: 19 percent
Rubio: 19 percent
Finally, and because it is so much in line with these published polls, I’ll share an internal tracking poll conducted in recent days by Republicans who are not affiliated with any of the presidential campaigns. They say that early last week, they had Trump leading Cruz, 30 percent to 22 percent. Last night, they had Trump at 26 percent, Cruz at 24 percent, and Rubio at 18 percent. I wouldn’t bother to share an unnamed poll like this except that it seems to be telling the same story as the others.
We’ll have the final and all-important poll before the day is out anyway.
It’s also worth cautioning that the poll that serves as the gold standard for Iowa, the Des Moines Register poll, did not show quite as pronounced a jump for Rubio when it came out Saturday — it had Trump 28 percent, Cruz 23 percent, and Rubio 15 percent.
