PORT WASHINGTON, Wis. — Donald Trump had a rough week on the campaign trail, judging by normal standards, but Trump doesn’t operate by normal standards. The polls generally put Cruz as the favorite in Wisconsin’s primary Tuesday, but there’s reason for Trump to hope.
Seven polls have been conducted since the Arizona and Utah contests two weeks ago. Cruz leads in five of them, one is basically a tie, and in one — the American Research Group poll — Trump holds a 10-point lead.
The ARG poll is eye-catching mostly because it’s the most recent poll, and the only one conducted entirely in the past five days. It shows Trump leading Cruz 42 percent to 32 percent. That puts Trump about 8 points higher than his average in the other polls, and Cruz about 8 points lower.
Here are reasons to trust the ARG poll:
It is the most recent poll, and it echoes a tiny trend suggested by the other recent polls. The other two polls to include any part of April — Emerson and CBS News — showed Trump higher than earlier polls, averaging 36 percent instead of 32.5 percent last week.
It’s possible that media attacks on Trump (for his inconsistent and unpopular answers on abortion, for instance) rallied Republicans to the billionaire in the past five days. It’s possible that Wisconsites’ newfound focus on the race in recent days led them away from Cruz and toward Trump.
But here are reasons not to trust the ARG poll showing Trump ahead:
It has the smallest sample size of any recent poll (only 400 likely voters), and the largest margin of error (5 percent). It is an outlier, far off from all the other polls.
One thing to always watch for in primary polls is how soft is the support for minor candidates. In other words: of Kasich’s 19.6 percent RealClearPolitics average, is any of that likely to break at the last minute to one of the front-runners.
In Fox’s poll last week, about 6 percent of the state was Kasich supporters who said they might change their mind in the coming week. Additionally, in that poll, about 7 percent of likely voters wer undecided. Cruz and Trump also had some supporters willing to flip.
Trump has been predicting a Wisconsin upset all week. One poll (albeit an outlier with a small sample size and large margin of error) suggests Trump’s talk wasn’t just bluster.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
