After more than four years of waiting, Iowa caucus-goers finally get their moment in the spotlight Monday night. For the past few weeks, I’ve been looking at past early polls one, two, and more weeks before the Iowa caucus to see if they were any good at predicting who would win in Iowa, New Hampshire and the eventual nomination. The answer: generally not so much. Let’s run through what the polls predicted for those three contests on Iowa caucus day in 2012 and 2008.

2012, Republican national polls: On Jan. 3, 2012, Newt Gingrich led national polls by about two percentage points over Mitt Romney. Despite his national lead going into Iowa, Gingrich finished fourth there and eventually won only two primary contests. Gingrich lost the polling lead nationally the day after Iowa but retook the lead briefly in the last week of January. Mitt Romney also lost the national polling lead to Rick Santorum, but took the lead for good in late February, just before Super Tuesday.